But the starting point of this geographical error is immaterial.  The important fact is that Hudson entertained it:  and so was led to offer for first choice to his mutinous crew that they should “go to the coast of America in the latitude of forty degrees.”  His readiness with that proposition, when the chance to make it came, confirms my belief that his own desire was to sail westward, and that he made the most of his opportunity.  And the essential point, after all, is not whether the mutiny forced him to change, or merely gave him an excuse for changing, his ordered course:  it is that he was equal to the emergency when the mutiny came, and so controlled it that—­instead of going back, defeated of his purpose, to Holland—­he deliberately took the risk of personal loss that attended breaking his contract and traversing his orders, and continued on new lines his exploring voyage.  It is indicative of Hudson’s character that he met that cast of fate against him most resolutely; and most resolutely played up to it with a strong hand.

VII

As the direct result of breaking his orders, Hudson was the discoverer of our river—­to which, therefore, his name properly has been given—­and also was the first navigator by whom our harbor effectively was found.  I use advisedly these precisely differentiating terms.  On the distinctions which they make rests Hudson’s claim to take practical precedence of Verrazano and of Gomez, who sailed in past Sandy Hook nearly a hundred years ahead of him; and of those shadowy nameless shipmen who in the intervening time, until his coming, may have made our harbor one of their stations—­for refitting and watering—­on their voyages from and to Portugal and Spain.

The exploring work of John and of Sebastian Cabot, who sailed along our coast, but who missed our harbor, does not come within my range:  save to note that Sebastian Cabot pretty certainly was one of the several navigators, including Frobisher and Davis, who entered Hudson’s Strait before Hudson’s time.

Verrazano was an Italian, sailing in the French service.  Gomez was a Portuguese, sailing in the Spanish service.  Both sought a westerly way to the Indies, and both sought it in the same year—­1524.  Verrazano has left a report of his voyage, written immediately upon his return to France; and with it a vaguely drawn chart of the coasts which he explored. (It is my duty to add that certain zealous historians have denounced his report as a forgery, and his chart as a “fake”—­a matter so much too large for discussion here that I content myself with expressing the opinion that these charges have not been sustained.) Gomez has left no report of his voyage, but a partial account of it may be pieced together from the maritime chronicles of his time.  He also charted, with an approximate accuracy, the lands which he coasted; and while his chart has not been preserved in its original shape, there is good reason for believing that we have it embodied in the planisphere drawn by Juan Ribero, geographer to Charles V., in the year 1529.  On that planisphere the seaboard of the present states of Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island is called “the land of Estevan Gomez.”