Mennonite Weekly Review

Four hundred years ago an English navigator, commissioned by Holland’s well-funded trading company, the United East Indies Co., left Amsterdam on April 4, 1609.

Four hundred years ago this year, the forward lookout in the crow’s nest spotted land along the Hudson River, the site of today’s New York City. — Photo by Jan Gleysteen

Little is known about Henry Hudson, except that he had already made two earlier exploratory voyages, both underwritten by English investors, in search of new routes to the Far East. Both were foiled by icy storms as he ventured north along the highest reaches of Norway’s arctic coasts.

On his now-acclaimed third voyage Hudson set sail from Amsterdam on a small three-masted vessel, the “Halve Maen” (“Half Moon”) with a crew of no more than 20.

Disobeying his orders to search once more for a northeasterly passage, he sailed west in search of warmer waters, somehow convinced of finding a passage to the Far East somewhere along the coast of North America.

Instead he found a river that now carries his name and “a very good harbor for all windes,” a discovery that gave rise to the founding of the trading post Nieuw Amsterdam and the territory of Nieuw Nederland — today New York City and New York State.

Arriving there on Sept. 11, 1609, Hudson sailed upriver as far as present-day Albany, far enough for him to conclude, on Sept. 14, that he had reached another dead end. He returned via England where his compatriots, fierce competitors of the Dutch, incarcerated him for eight months.

Freed at last, Hudson reported to his Amsterdam sponsors that, apart from an excellent natural harbor, the lands on both sides of the river were of the finest for cultivation, populated by peaceable natives one could well do business with. The Dutch were quick to see the possibilities, and this led to the founding of Nieuw Amsterdam (today, New York).

Gift from the Dutch

To mark the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s historic voyage, the Dutch government is making a gift of a beautifully landscaped Nieuw Amsterdam Plein (square) and a 5,000-foot-square interpretive center within Lower Manhattan’s Battery Park. Naturally, it will be bicycle accessible.

The 2009 celebrations further include special exhibits, performances and the translation and publication of some 12,000 documents, all of which make it increasingly clear that the Dutch, with their focus on commerce and manufacture as a source for the common good of all, in many ways shaped the character of New York City today.