Henry Hudson’s Discovery of Cape May

Although Henry Hudson “discovered” Cape May, his actual visit was short lived and involuntary.  A little history first.  Hudson had made two trips in search of a passage to China by way of a northern route.  Both of these attempts failed and he was unable to find backers in England to finance a third trip.  The Dutch East India Company in the Netherlands finally agreed to finance a third expedition in 1609.  Hudson was supposed to sail north toward Sweden and Norway, but finding his way blocked by ice, and against his agreement with the Dutch, he turned westward and headed for the “New World,” where he hoped to find a westward passage to the Far East.  He reached Newfoundland and then turned south along the coast.  He sailed as far as the Chesapeake Bay, explored enough to determine it wasn’t going to lead him to China and then turned north again.  After several days of sailing, he spotted the Delaware Bay.  The following is from the ship’s log kept by his senior officer Robert Juet in August of 1609:

The eight and twentieth, faire and hot weather, the winde at South South-west. In the morning at sixe of the clocke wee weighed, and steered away North twelue leagues till noone, and came to the Point of the Land ; and being hard by the Land in fiue fathomes, on a sudden wee came into three fathomes ; then we beare vp and had but ten foote water, and joyned to the Point. Then as soone as wee were ouer, wee had fiue, sixe, seuen, eight, nine, ten, twelue, and thirteene fathomes. Then wee found the Land to trend away North-west, with a

great Bay and Riuers. But the Bay wee found shoald; and in the offing wee had ten fathomes, and had sight of Breaches and drie Sand. Then wee were forced to stand backe againe; so we stood backe South-east by South, three leagues. And at seuen of the clocke wee Anchored in eight fathomes water ; and found a Tide set to the North-west, and North North-west, and it riseth one fathome, and floweth South South-east. And hee that will throughly Discouer this great Bay, must haue a small Pinnasse, that must draw but foure or fiue foote water, to sound before him. At fiue in the morning wee weighed, and steered away to the Eastward on many courses, for the Norther Land is full of shoalds.

Translated, it says that they came to a point of land (Cape May), but when they turned into the bay, they promptly ran aground, and as soon as they were able, the turned around and headed back out to sea.   He noted that anyone who wishes to explore this great bay needed to have a shallow draft boat (a Pinnasse) because the bay had many shoals, as many local fishermen know.  The shoals off Cape May Point are great fishing grounds.  As he travelled north along the coast, Juet noted many heavily wooded islands and inlets, the barrier islands that make up our shore resorts today.  Hudson eventually reached the Hudson River, and sailed up it as far as present day Albany, claiming all the area between the Hudson, which he named the North River and the Delaware, which he named the South River, and all the lands along both rivers on both sides.  Since New Jersey lies between the two rivers, it became a Dutch colony.  It wasn’t until 1620, when Captain Cornelius Jacobson Mey explored the Delaware Bay and River that the Dutch actually set foot in Cape May County, and although they did “purchase” land from the local Lenape Indians, they never built a settlement here. 

Henry Hudson returned, not to the Netherlands, but to England.  In 1610, with English backing once again, he made another voyage, this time to find a Northwest Passage.  He arrived off Labrador in June and explored the Hudson Straits and the Hudson Bay.  After spending the winter trapped in the ice in James Bay, when the ice cleared in the spring of 1611, the crew wanted to go home.  They mutinied and put Hudson, his son and several loyal crew members into a small boat.  In spite of later search expeditions, no one knows what became of them.