Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson

An acclaimed historian tells the tale of Henry Hudson's doomed final voyage in search of sea passage across the New World. In 1610, the English mariner Henry Hudson set off on a journey to find the Northwest Passage, the famed water route that all Europeans hoped would speed the time of travel to East Asia. But Hudson's search for the Northwest Passage did not go well. Taking a far northerly route past Iceland, Hudson and his crew on the ship Discovery passed through fields of dangerous icebergs as they rounded the northern tip of Labrador. Braving the harsh arctic climate, the Discovery entered what would eventually become known as Hudson Bay. By winter, the ship was trapped in ice near the shores of James Bay. Provisions grew scarce, tensions among crew-members flared, and when the ice began to thaw the following June, members of his crew mutinied. They forced Hudson, his teenage son, and seven other men onto a shallow-bottomed boat and pushed them away. Historian Peter C. Mancall's "Fatal Journey" is the first book to tell the full story of Hudson and the other 23 men who set sail from London in April 1610. Based on an extraordinary array of primary sources, including narratives from the expedition itself, testimony offered in two trials of the survivors, and indigenous sources from the Hudson Bay area, "Fatal Journey" teases out what the experience must have been like for the men on Discovery. An exhilarating narrative of exploration, desperation, and icebound tragedy, "Fatal Journey" vividly chronicles the undoing of a great explorer-not by an angry ocean, but at the hands of his own men.