Worse, his present crew included five men who had sailed with him before. Of only one could he be sure -- young John Hudson, his second son. The mate, Robert Juet, who had kept the journal on the half Moon, was experienced -- but he was a bitter old man, ready to complain or desert at any opportunity. Philip Staffe, the ship's carpenter, was a good worker, but perversely independent. Arnold Lodley and Michael Perse were like the rest -- lukewarm, ready to swing against Hudson in a crisis.

But men willing to sail at all into waters where wooden ships could be crushed like eggs were hard to find. Hudson knew he had to use these men as long as he remained an explorer. And he refused to be anything else.

It is believed that Hudson was related to other seafaring men of the Muscovy Company and was trained on company ships. He was a Londoner, married, with three sons. (The common misconception that he was Dutch and that his first name was Hendrik stem from Dutch documents of his third voyage.) In 1610, Hudson was probably in his early forties, a good navigator, a stubborn voyager, but otherwise fatally unsuited to his chosen profession.

Hudson's first error of the fourth voyage occurred only a few miles down the Thames. There at the river's edge waited one Henry Greene, whom Hudson listed as a ``clerk.'' Greene was in actuality a young ruffian from Kent, who had broken with his parents in order to keep the company he preferred -- pimps, panders and whores. He was not the sort of sailor Hudson wanted his backers to see on board and he had Greene wait at Gravesend, where the Discovery picked him up.