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Jet fuel melting steel beams wasn’t the only bad thing that happened to Manhattan on this day. Four centuries previous the white guy who the river is named for was looking for that Northwest Passage to India and encountered Manhattan Island and the people already living there.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: September 11, 1609--
Henry Hudson was an English explorer in the employ of the Dutch East India Company, a name which implies why they were looking for that mythical shortcut to India, because going via South Africa sucked. So, he headed west and found the north was ice and shit and decided to see if there was a way through North America.
On September 6 his ship, the Half Moon, was anchored between Coney Island and Sandy Hook. A five-man crew in a rowboat was scouting the area when canoes of Native Americans attacked them with arrows, killing sailor John Colman and wounding two others. Hudson then took his ship into Upper New York Bay and on September 11, 1609, he was the first low-melanin man to see Broadway before it was Broadway.
For the next 12 days he ascended the river, reaching as far as modern-day Albany. During that time, he traded with Native Americans who weren’t shooting them full of arrows, obtaining mostly furs. On September 23 he decided it was time to head home.
When he returned to England the English authorities wanted to know what he’d found and were all “Let’s see that captain’s log stuff” and he was “Ew, gross. We throw that shit overboard.” Meanwhile, the book form of the log was passed in secret to the Dutch ambassador to England, because Hudson was a loyal employee. The log was sent to Amsterdam and was used to lay claim to the region, creating a trading post on Manhattan Island five years later, followed by establishing “New Amsterdam” there in 1625.
Attend my sweary open bar cheese bun book launch on Sept 21!
For Hudson, in 1610 he was hired by the English to try that Northwest Passage thing again, and the crew was very excited when they found what would be called Hudson Bay thinking it was the passage—shit, the dude got a river and a big-ass bay named for him? And then a company that makes really expensive blankets? Lucky.
Except not so lucky. No passage to Asia was found. They became trapped in the ice and wintered on the shore. Come spring Hudson wanted to do more exploring and find that passage, but the crew was fucking done with that bullshit and wanted to go home. They mutinied, and Hudson, his teenage son, and seven loyal crewmen were set adrift in a small boat. They were never seen again.
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