Devices that were used by mariners and geographers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

      Sir Hugh Willoughby, an English explorer, had reported on the existence of Novaya Zemlya in 1553, and another Englishman, Stephen Borough, had landed there in 1556. William Barents had been there in 1596. Nonetheless, very little was known of this frozen land in an icy sea. Western Europeans knew almost nothing about the Kara Sea. The one fact they were certain of was that a six hundred mile long land mass north of Russia was a barrier in the path of a Northeast Passage to Cathay. Hakluyt had sent an emissary to St. Petersburg to see if he might learn more about the place. But people in Tsarist Russia were forbidden to give foreigners any information about their country. To break that law was to risk having your tongue cut out. If anyone in St. Petersburg had valuable information on Novaya Zemlya, they kept it to themselves.

      Hakluyt and his Dutch colleague, Peter Plancius, had ignored the rivalry that now existed between their countries, and shared what sketchy information they had on Novaya Zemlya. Much of that came from ancient Norse legends. But Plancius knew that Barents (who had died in 1597) had seen the Kara Sea, though he did not know if Barents had actually sailed around Novaya Zemlya or had crossed it overland.

      Most of Stephen Borough’s log had been lost, but Hakluyt had a copy of a surviving fragment in which Borough claimed that a “placid sea”lay to the east of Novaya Zemlya. Hakluyt felt he had sound reason to believe in the existence of that ice-free sea. He knew that a mighty Russian river, the Ob, flowed into the sea east of Novaya Zemlya. Might the Ob be a potential route to China?

      Hakluyt knew something else. Someone had found a six foot long ivory horn on Vaigat Island. This was actually the tusk from a narwhal, an Arctic sea mammal that was practically unknown to Western Europeans. Hakluyt and most of his contemporaries who knew of this fantastic object believed it was a unicorn’s horn. According to an account written at that time, the unicorn horn was proof that, “there must of necessity be a passage out of the said Oriental Ocean into our Septentrional (northern) seas.” It was a well-known fact, the report said, “that unicorns are bred in the lands of Cathay, China and other Oriental Regions.” In the early seventeenth century, even a learned man like Richard Hakluyt could be taken in by a myth.

      Hakluyt shared all of this information with Hudson. The explorer was especially excited by the chart William Barents had made of the western shore of Novaya Zemlya. The eastern shore had not yet been mapped, but Barents’ chart showed what appeared to be the entrance of a channel (the Matochkin Strait). No one knew if it connected to the Kara Sea. Hudson wanted to find out. He was willing to risk his life on another voyage of discovery. Would the Muscovy Company be willing to risk some money?

      Aside from the fact that Hudson had meetings with Richard Hakluyt, nothing is known of his time in England after his first major voyage. No doubt he and John spent long hours at home, telling the family about their adventures in northern seas. Katherine and the others probably listened breathlessly to the story about the ice pack that almost took the Hopewell and all of her crew. They would have believed, as Hudson did, that the hand of God had spared them. Indeed, this might have given the family some comfort. The Hudsons would have been thankful in their belief that God was watching over Henry and John. No sailors needed divine protection more than those who sailed into the unknown. Henry Hudson was about to do just that again.

      Hudson was confident when he met the Muscovy Company directors in their headquarters on Budge Row. He knew very well how valuable the Whale Bay discovery was to them. But he also knew that these were men for whom there could never be enough money. The possibility of trade with the Far East was still a golden beacon to them. Hudson did not tell them everything he had learned from Hakluyt. His nuggets of information were his best cards. He told them only that he possessed secret information about a Northeast Passage.

      The businessmen conferred. Hudson had done well by them on his first voyage. If there was a chance he could still find a Northeast Passage, it was worth taking a chance with him again. They asked Hudson if he would be willing to make the voyage in the Hopewell, and for the same amount of money he had been paid for the first voyage. Hudson agreed, but this time he had some conditions of his own.

      Hudson said he would need a larger crew. Arctic sailing added to the sailors’ hardships and duties. He asked for five extra men. The directors frowned at the idea of having to pay another five sailors. They protested that a little ship like the Hopewell did not need so many men. They finally, grudgingly, agreed to increase the crew by three.

      Then Hudson said he wanted the hull of the Hopewell reinforced with extra planking for protection from ice. Once again the directors howled with indignation. They asked Hudson if he was aware of the costs this would involve. Could he not simply sail around the ice? Hudson reminded the merchants that he had been up there, and knew better than they the hazards ice presented. Would it not be better, he asked, for them to spend whatever it cost to strengthen the ship, than to have the hull pierced by ice and lose the entire ship? Again, with much grumbling, the Muscovy men said they would strengthen the Hopewell’s hull.