Whencery

Season 1: New York City

The Ship in the Harbor

  • Episode 2
  • 1609
  • Coming soon
Animated view of the Halve Maen, a small wooden ship, under sail on a calm sea.Coming soon

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In September 1609 men fishing off this coast saw something enormous floating far out on the water. It was the Halve Maen, a small ship of the Dutch East India Company under Henry Hudson, an Englishman. The Company’s merchants had argued over whether the voyage was worth sending at all: the prize was a northern sea route to China and the Spice Islands, the Zeeland chamber called it money thrown away, and Amsterdam went ahead for fear that a rival would hire Hudson first. Hudson sailed late, met the ice off Nova Zembla, and then broke his orders and turned west. On September 3 the ship came to three great rivers, turned away from a shallow bar, and anchored in the harbor. For two days the people of the country came aboard and traded green tobacco for knives and beads, each side working out what the other one was.

Then and now

Animated map of the harbor in September 1609: forested shores with no city, and smoke rising where the Lenape lived.
Then: September 1609, a harbor with no city on it.
Animated map of the same harbor today, with today's streets drawn over Manhattan, Brooklyn and New Jersey.
Now: the same harbor, with today’s streets.

Animated reconstructions from the episode, built on elevation data and today's shoreline.

The map

Animated map of the harbor's mouth on September 3, 1609: lines mark three great rivers, and the ship's track comes in from the south.
September 3, 1609, three in the afternoon: the ship reaches three great rivers.

How We Know

The full transcript, chapters and every source go up here the day the episode is published.