Halve Maen

The Halve Maen (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈɦɑlvə maːn]; English: Half Moon) was a Dutch East India Company vlieboot (similar to a carrack) which sailed into what is now New York Harbor in September 1609. She was commissioned by the VOC Chamber of Amsterdam in the Dutch Republic to covertly find a western passage to China. The ship was captained by Henry Hudson, an Englishman in the service of the Dutch Republic.

In 1909, the Kingdom of the Netherlands presented the United States with a replica of Halve Maen in order to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Hudson's voyage; the replica was destroyed in a 1934 fire. Eighty years later, the New Netherland Museum commissioned a second replica.

History

Halve Maen sailed from Amsterdam to the Arctic, turning westward to traverse the Atlantic Ocean, then sailed from Newfoundland to the south in search of the Northwest Passage.

In his 1625 book New World, which contains invaluable extracts from Hudson’s lost journal, Johannes de Laet, a director of the West India Company, writes that they "bent their course to the south until, running south-southwest and southwest by south, they again made land in latitude 41° 43’, which they supposed to be an island, and gave it the name of New Holland, but afterwards discovered that it was Cape Cod".