Book goes on Hudson voyage

HALF MOON: Henry Hudson and the Voyage that Redrew the Map of the New World. By Douglas Hunter. Bloomsbury. 329 pages. $28.

Some 195 years before Meriwether Lewis and William Clark began their momentous "Voyage of Discovery" across the unexplored American West, Henry Hudson, a veteran sea captain, embarked on the third of his four voyages in the vast, frigid regions of the North Atlantic.

In the employ of the Dutch East India Company, Hudson had been sent from Amsterdam to find an Arctic route to the Orient. As in the two previous attempts, he failed to discover the elusive Northwest Passage and turned his ship south to the coast of North America, contrary to orders, in an attempt to discover an alternate route.

Douglas Hunter has done a commendable job in ferreting out rare charts and maritime documents of the time from archives all over Europe, not only to track the Half Moon's course across the Atlantic, but to discern Hudson's motives in assuming the risks and challenges of this voyage.

With an experienced sailor's eye for details, the author recounts all the intricacies of the ship's layout, the duties of the crew and their activities and observations as they plied the perilous Eastern Seaboard of North America from Nova Scotia to Chesapeake Bay. Also of interest were the accounts of the interactions with various tribes of Native Americans they encountered.

It was on this voyage that Hudson found the outer reaches of what is now New York Harbor, continuing his exploration inland up the river now named for him to just below Albany. He had to turn back in disappointment when he finally came to the shallows as the river narrowed some 150 miles upstream.

This true adventure story of 17th-century seafaring life is well-documented and exciting to read.