Henry Hudson
Henry Hudson, (d. 1611). English explorer and navigator. On his first two voyages, in 1607 and 1608, Hudson reached Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya. In 1609 he attempted to find a north-west passage to China and Japan and reached Canada at the mouth of the Hudson river. On a return voyage in 1610 Hudson explored the vast area of Hudson’s Bay, but his crew mutinied and left him and eight others to die in an open boat. Al-though Hudson’s attempts to establish shorter trading routes to the East via America were unsuccessful, he greatly increased European knowledge of the geography of North America and the Arctic.
