Henry Hudson was was hired by the Dutch Trading Company in 1609 to find a northeastern passage around Russia to more easily access China. Hudson started his voyage aboard the Half Moon with a mixture of English and Dutch crewmen. Part way into his voyage, he decided to turn his ship around and go west to America where he would discover the Hudson River and other uncharted territories. Hudson found himself with his hands full, wondering if there was mutiny brewing and also wondering how he would be received by the Dutch when he finally decided to back. When he did go back, he found himself on another mission to find a northwestern passage to China. That was his last voyage.

When I closed the book after reading the last paragraph, I had to just sit in thought for a bit. Douglas Hunter, who is a sailor himself, wove such an intricate story of Henry Hudson. The amount of research that went into this book is amazing, and to present it like Hunter did was even more amazing to me. From the start I was drawn in, and felt like I was reading a puzzle with pieces being put together from all different sources, a little at a time, until the picture became clear. Who was Hudson? Where did he come from? Why would he blatantly disregard his orders and sail the opposite way?

Since there was no journal of Hudson's to go by, many of the notes about the voyage were taken from Robert Juet's journal. Reading some of the thoughts and feelings of an actual crew member was a real treat and very insightful. I had no idea what exploration was like in the 1500 and 1600's besides the basic textbook "stuff" I received in school. I had no idea of the amount of espionage, threats of mutiny, and pirating that went on. Most of all, I had no idea how much history was re-written for gain, both financially and politically. Hudson ended being a totally different man than the explorer that was captain of the Half Moon.

This book was a fascinating read, and now that I'm done, my family will be able to go back to normal dinner banter, instead of listening to me rattle on about what I found was amazing in the book. Both of my teens are now wanting to read Half Moon and I know they'll enjoy it as much as I did!

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I don't exactly know where to start this review. This book is a worthwhile read, but I was disappointed by it. For me, it was confusing to read. The author seemed to jump back and forth in telling the story of Henry Hudson's exploration in 1609. At times, the story was about preceding events, then subsequent events, then Hudson's voyage and back and forth again. As another reviewer has commented, it also seemed that the author had trouble deciding whether to write a scholarly work or a general interest work.

Included in the book is background on the Dutch company that commissioned the journey by Hudson that eventually led to his exploring the New York estuary. Hudson began his journey as assigned by exploring for a Northeast passage to the Orient. He soon reversed course and headed for North America. Hudson was an Englishman, but most of his crew were Dutch and this contributed to communication difficulties. Hudson had to always watch his back and be aware of unrest among his crew.

The book includes many maps, but some of them were very difficult to read. I am not sure why, but the maps were not as helpful as maps usually are for me. One of the more interesting parts of the book were the excerpts from the journal kept by Robert Juet, one of the Englishmen on the journey.

Limited source material would have made it difficult to compile the information needed to cover the topic. Sometimes, the author conjectured on what must have happened. This included much of the discussion of the interaction with the native peoples.

I would recommend this book only for readers who are interested in a thorough discussion of early exploration of the east coast of North America.

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