HUDSON (Henry), an eminent English navigator, who, about the beginning of the last century, undertook to find out a passage by the north-east or north-west to Japan and China. For this purpose he was four times fitted out: he returned three times unsuccessful; but in the last voyage, in 1610, being persuaded that the great bay to which his name has been since given, must lead to the passage he sought, he wintered there, to prosecute his discovery in the spring. But their distresses during the winter producing a mutiny among his men, when the spring arrived, they turned him, with his son and seven sick men, adrift in his own shallop, and proceeded home with the ship. As Hudson and his unhappy companions were never heard of afterward, it is to be supposed they all perished.