"Henry Hudson's life as we know it is compressed into the four years from 1607 to 1610, when he made four momentous voyages in search of the passage to Asia, journeys that greatly expanded geographical knowledge of the world. And while his beginnings will remain a mystery, we can be quite certain he died shortly after being set adrift in a small boat by a mutinous crew in the frigid waters of the bay that bears his name." "One of the foremost explorers of the Age of Discovery, Hudson was a captain-for-hire who served both his native England and archrival Holland, making arduous northern passages to the east to Russia and Siberia and to the west to Greenland and beyond." "In 1609, under the Dutch flag, he explored America's east coast from the Chesapeake to Penobscot Bay, including a push up the Hudson River as far north as Albany. His accounts of the land's richness led to the Dutch colonization of America, from which sprang much of our religious, philosophical, and governmental ideals, including the concepts of freedom of religion, separation of Church and State, and a free public school system." "Yet historians have virtually ignored Henry Hudson, a far cry from the admiration he inspired in no less a contemporary than Captain John Smith, who wrote "...the bounds of America doth stretch many thousand miles: into the frozen partes whereof one Master Hutson did make the greatest discoverie of any Christian I knowe of, where he unfortunately died."" "Author Donald Johnson became fascinated by this mysterious explorer while sailing his schooner in the high latitudes near Hudson Bay, and later while working on the 1989 replica of Hudson's Half Moon. Frustrated by the lack of biographical material, Johnson set out to uncover what he could of Henry Hudson." "Charting the Sea of Darkness brings into focus the world as Henry Hudson knew it. Using Hudson's original logs, those of his mate, Robert Juet, and a passenger, Abacuck Prickett, Johnson rebuilds the man and his times, bringing new insight to an explorer whose influence on history is far out of proportion to his recorded place in it."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved