“Fourthly, wee being pestered in the Ice, hee had used words tending to mutinie, discouragement, and slander of the action, which easily took effect in those that were timorous; and had not the Master in time preuented, it might easily have overthrowne the Voyage:  and now lately being imbayed in a deepe Bay, which the Master had desire to see, for some reasons to himselfe knowne, his word tended altogether to put the Companie into a fray [fear] of extremitie, by wintering in cold:  Jesting at our Master’s hope to see Bantam by Candlemas.

“For these and diuers other base slanders against the Master, hee was deposed, and Robert Bylot [Bileth, or Byleth], who had showed himself honestly respecting the good of the action, was placed in his stead the Masters Mate.

“Also Francis Clement the Boatson, at this time was put from his Office, and William Wilson, a man thought more fit, preferred to his place.  This man had basely carried himselfe to our Master and the action.

“Also Adrian Mooter was appointed Boatsons mate:  and a promise by the Master, that from this day Juats wages should remain to Bylot, and the Boatsons overplus of wages should bee equally diuided betweene Wilson and one John King, to the owners good liking, one of the Quarter Masters, who had very well carryed themselves to the furtherance of the businesse.

“Also the Master promised, if the Offenders yet behaued themselves henceforth honestly, hee would be a means for their good, and that hee would forget injuries, with other admonitions.”

Hudson’s fame is the brighter for this testament of the poor “Student in the Mathematickes” whose loyalty to his commander cost him his life.  At times, Hudson seems to have temporized with his mutinous crews.  In this grave crisis he did not temporize.  For cause, he disrated his chief officers:  and so asserted in that desolate place, as fearlessly as he would have asserted it in an English harbor, that aboard his ship his will was law.

But his strong action only scotched the mutiny.  Prickett’s narrative of the doings of the ensuing seven weeks deals with what he implies was purposeless sailing up and down James Bay.  He casts reflections upon Hudson’s seamanship in such phrases as “our Master would have the anchor up, against the mind of all who knew what belongeth thereto”; and in all that he writes there is a perceptible note of resentment of the Master’s doings that reflects the mutinous feeling on board.  Especially does this feeling show in his account of their settling into winter quarters:  “Having spent three moneths in a labyrinth without end, being now the last of October, we went downe to the East, to the bottome of the Bay; but returned without speeding of that we went for.  The next day we went to the South and South West, and found a place, whereunto we brought our ship and haled her aground.  And this was the first of November.  By the tenth thereof we were frozen in.”