Americans rightly look at his arrival as one of the seminal events in the exploration and discovery of the United States. The British, too, looked with pride at the accomplishment of their native son, who came from Wales. But the contribution that Flanders made to this discovery seldom receives the credit it deserves.

No one who looks at the history can deny that Flemings made a sizable contribution to the success of explorers to the New World. After all, it was Gerardus Mercator, born in the Flemish river town of Rupelmonde, who first delineated the Western Hemisphere into North and South America on his world map in 1538. Mercator's projection map, first printed in 1569, represented the meridians of longitude by equally spaced parallel lines, which greatly increased the accuracy of navigational maps (and the likelihood that ships knew roughly where they were).

One year after Mercator printed his world map in Antwerp, Abraham Ortelius printed the world’s first modern atlas. This brought together in one volume a collection of the best maps of each region, regardless of provenance.

This atlas, the Theatrum Orbis, was the first to depict America as a continent. The term “atlas”, incidentally, was first coined by Mercator. So it is perhaps no surprise that the first atlas dedicated solely to the New World was also printed by a Fleming, Corneille Wytfliet, on presses at Leuven in 1597.

At roughly this same time, the Antwerp publisher Christoffel Plantijn printed the world’s first maritime atlas, the Spieghel der zeevaerdt, known in English as The Mariner’s Mirror. The sea atlases were indispensible in the age of sail, right up into the 20th century, and were used on virtually every British voyage to the New World. Henry Hudson was more than likely one of the very early users of The Mariner’s Mirror, if only because he was friendly with Plantin’s collaborator Judocus Hondius.

Hudson not only benefitted greatly from the legacy of the discoverers and cartographers before him, but leaned almost exclusively on Flemings for his cartographic information. He first came to the attention of the Dutch by way of the Dutch Consul at London, Emanuel Van Meteren, who was born in Antwerp and knew the cartographers and printers. (His father was Jacobus Van Meteren, who funded, printed and distributed the first English vernacular Bibles, while his mother was an Ortelius, making Van Meteren a cousin of Abraham Ortelius.)

Hudson spent several months in the Netherlands up until his departure in April 1609, where he met Judocus Hondius, the creator (with Plantin) of the first Sea Atlas and heir to Ortelius’ and Mercator’s cartography business.

Henry Hudson’s responsibility was to explore and seek a Northwest Passage (over the top of the North American continent) to the riches of the Indies. His craft, De Haelve Maen, or The Half Moon, was one of the nearly 100 fregats operated by the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC). This type of ship – a “frigate” in English – was, incidentally, invented by the Flemish.

The agreement that Hudson signed to undertake this voyage (his first to America but third as captain) was countersigned by the Antwerp-born merchant Dirk van Os, whose home in Amsterdam served as the headquarters of the VOC.

Eight of the top 10 shareholders of the VOC came from either Flanders or Brabant and the company’s oldest financial document (signed by Van Os) is the oldest surviving stock certificate issued by a company involved with America. This company, with its powerful Flemish identity, was the foundation on which the Dutch maritime empire was built in the 17th and 18th centuries and which, in large part, was responsible for the prosperity of the Golden Age of Dutch history.

Hudson, while an experienced navigator, received most of his charts and maps from Pieter Plancius, a native of Dranouter in West Flanders. Plancius’ son-in-law, the Englishman Matthew Slade, was not only a Protestant but, for many years, one of the top three leaders in the main English Separatist Church at Amsterdam. This is the same congregation that the Pilgrims joined when they first moved to the Netherlands. So it may very well be that the spark for the Pilgrim’s emigration came from the heated discussions among the Flemings supporting Hudson.

In the end, when Hudson pushed off from the quay at Amsterdam on a clear spring day in 1609, he had been headhunted, financed and supplied by the Flemish. His crew of 20 included three Flemings and at least another half-dozen Netherlanders. When he returned in 1610 from his first voyage to America, the first printed record of his discoveries was made by Van Meteren in Dutch. Only one copy of this work (Commentarien ofte Memorien van den Nederlantsen Staet) exists in the United States. It is kept under lock and key in the Library of Congress.

The immediate exploitation of his discoveries was financed by Brabant merchants, like Martin Vogelaers, and carried out by sailors who were sent on fur trading expeditions to the Hudson River area as early as 1611.

The Dutch and Flemish sailors built the first recorded European settlement in New York in 1613 from the remains of one of their shipwrecks. And the reason we call the river “The Hudson” is because Flemish merchants first named it after the English captain (“de Riviere Hudson”) in a document and map of 1614 submitted to the Netherlands’ governing body, the States General.

So the next time you look at a map of New York – which for most of the 17th century was equally referred to as Nieuw Nederland and Nova Belgica – remember that the history of one of the modern world’s great cities really began at the instigation of a cadre of dedicated Flemish émigrés.

Hudson anniversary

The Henry Hudson 400 Foundation has planned a programme of events to mark the 400th anniversary of Hudson’s sea voyage to New York. There will be a flotilla of Dutch barges in the Hudson, walking tours of Dutch Manhattan and a New York Night in Amsterdam.

www.henryhudson400.com