HOST: Welcome back to the Time-Traveling Journalist. I’m your host. Today, we are stepping into the candlelit gloom of the High Court of Admiralty in London. The year is 1611. The city is buzzing with a scandal that smells of salt water, scurvy, and blood. The ship Discovery has returned from the New World, but its captain, the legendary Henry Hudson, is missing. Out of a crew of twenty-three, only eight have come back alive. They look like walking skeletons. They claim the Captain and eight others were... lost. But the Crown suspects something far darker. We are about to witness the interrogation of the man whose journal has become the only record of this disaster: Abacuk Pricket. A haberdasher turned explorer, a man who claims to be innocent, yet somehow survived when the Captain did not. Let’s listen in.
PROSECUTOR: State your name and station for the record.
PRICKET: Abacuk Pricket. Serving-man to Sir Dudley Digges, and... land-man upon the ship Discovery.
PROSECUTOR: You speak with a steady voice for a man standing in the shadow of the gallows, Master Pricket. You are aware of the charges? Piracy. Murder. Treason against the Crown.
PRICKET: I am aware of the accusations, my lord. But I am no pirate. I am a survivor. A witness to God’s judgment upon wicked men.
PROSECUTOR: Wicked men? You returned on a ship stolen from its master. You ate the King’s victuals while Henry Hudson and his son were left to rot in the ice. Tell me, Pricket, how does a haberdasher survive a winter that killed seasoned sailors? How did you survive the ice of James Bay?
PRICKET: It was not the ice that killed us, my lord. It was the silence. We were trapped there... three months. November to June. The ship was frozen fast in the floes. The white desert stretched out in every direction. At night, the ice would groan, like a living thing, squeezing the hull until the timbers screamed. It was so cold that breath turned to snow before it left your lips. And we were hungry. God, we were so hungry.
PROSECUTOR: Hunger is a common companion at sea. It does not justify mutiny.
PRICKET: It does when the Captain hides bread in his cabin while the crew gnaws on moss and frog bones! Henry Hudson was a great navigator, sir, I do not deny it. But in that ice, he changed. He became... possessive. Paranoid. He had a scuttle in his cabin, a hidden store. Two hundred biscuits, a peck of meal, a butt of beer. We were dying of scurvy, our teeth loose in our heads, our skin spotted black, and he was hoarding.
PROSECUTOR: So you say. But Hudson is not here to defend himself. Only you and the other survivors. Tell me of the ringleaders. Henry Greene. Robert Juet. You claim they forced your hand.
PRICKET: Henry Greene... he was a man of dark passions. Hudson had taken him into his house in London, treated him like a son. But on the ice, Greene turned. He was a big man, strong, and the hunger made him mad. And Juet... the old mate. He had been demoted. He hated the Captain with a cold, ancient malice. They came to my cabin, my lord. It was the twenty-first of June. The ice had finally broken. We were free to sail. But Hudson... he talked of continuing the search. Westward. Into the void. We wanted to go home.
PROSECUTOR: And because the Captain wished to do his duty, you decided to kill him?
PRICKET: Not kill! Never kill. We swore an oath! Greene and Juet came to me, their eyes hollow, whispering in the dark. They said they would not starve for one man's pride. They wanted to take the ship. I begged them to wait. I said, 'Stay your hand three days! Let me speak to the Master!' But they would not hear it. They made me swear upon the Bible. To do nothing to the harm of any man, but only for the good of the action. God help me, I swore it.
PROSECUTOR: You swore an oath to mutineers, Pricket. You sanctified their treason. Tell me of the morning. The twenty-second of June. What did you see?
PRICKET: I was lame in my leg, my lord. I could not leave my cabin. But I heard it. The scuffling on the deck. The shout. Hudson had come out of his cabin and they were on him. Henry Greene and William Wilson. They pinned his arms behind him. The Captain asked them what they meant to do. They told him he should know well enough when he was in the shallop.
PROSECUTOR: The shallop. The small open boat. In the middle of the subarctic sea. A death sentence.
PRICKET: They took the sick men. Those who could not work. Poor Michael Butt. Arnold Ludlow. Adam Moore. They dragged them from their bunks. Hudson called to me. He looked through the horn of my cabin window. He said, 'Juet will overthrow us all.' I... I could do nothing.
PROSECUTOR: You could have fought. You could have cried out. Instead, you watched. Who else went with him?
PRICKET: The carpenter. Philip Staffe. He was the only good man among us. He stood on the hatch and looked at the mutineers with disgust. He said he would not stay in a ship where there was no God. He took his chest and his tools and he climbed down into the shallop of his own free will. He chose to die with his Captain rather than live with us.
PROSECUTOR: A brave man. Unlike those who remained. Describe the moment they were cast off.
PRICKET: We cut the cable. The Discovery caught the wind. We sailed out of the ice. The shallop... it was heavy laden. Nine men. Hudson, his son John—only a boy, really—and the sick. They tried to row after us. I saw them, bobbing in our wake. The Captain had the oars out. He thought we would relent. He thought we were just frightening him. But Henry Greene ordered the topsails loose. We picked up speed. The little boat got smaller and smaller. A black speck against the grey water. And then... nothing. We left them there. In the silence.
PROSECUTOR: And then God’s justice found you, did it not? You say Greene and the others are dead.
PRICKET: We made for the Digges Islands, seeking food. We found savages. Inuit. Greene thought he could trade with them. He was arrogant. He went ashore unarmed. They fell upon us. I was in the boat, keeping guard. I saw a man stab Greene. I saw William Wilson with his bowels cut open. Michael Perse hacked down. I fought them off with a head-piece and a dagger. We dragged the dying men back to the ship. Greene died shouting curses. Wilson died cursing the day he was born. Juet... old Juet died of starvation on the voyage home, just as we sighted Ireland. He died looking at the land he would never walk upon.
PROSECUTOR: Convenient, Pricket. All the ringleaders are dead. The men who could contradict your story are at the bottom of the sea or buried in the frozen earth. And here you stand. The innocent chronicler. You tell us Hudson failed. You tell us he starved you. You tell us you had no choice. But I look at you, and I see a man who calculated his survival very carefully. You kept the journal. You wrote the history. Did you truly try to save him, or did you just wait to see who would win?
PRICKET: I... I am a humble subject of the King, my lord. I brought the ship home. I brought the maps. The charts of the bay. Without me, the Discovery would be a ghost ship, drifting in the Atlantic. Is that not worth mercy?
PROSECUTOR: Mercy? Perhaps. The Crown needs your maps more than it needs your head on a pike. But do not mistake utility for innocence. You left Henry Hudson, the greatest explorer of our age, to freeze in a darkness we cannot imagine. You say the ice didn't kill you, Pricket. But I think a part of you died in that bay all the same.
HOST: The inquiry dragged on, but in the end, Abacuk Pricket was right. The Admiralty needed the knowledge more than the justice. No one was ever hanged for the mutiny on the Discovery. Pricket’s journal became the official account, the story we all know today. But historians have always wondered. The timeline in his journal is vague. The details of the food hoarding were never corroborated by anyone but the mutineers. Was Pricket really a helpless bystander? or was he the quiet architect of the whole affair, ensuring he remained useful enough to survive no matter who was in charge?
HOST: As for Henry Hudson, his son John, and the loyal carpenter Philip Staffe... they were never seen again. Did they die quickly of exposure? Did they make it to the shore of James Bay and live among the indigenous people? In the 1950s, a stone was found in the area carved with the initials 'HH' and the date 1612—a year after the abandonment. A hoax? Or a final message from a man who refused to die? The ice keeps its secrets well. But when you look at the map of Canada, and you see that massive inland sea, remember the price that was paid for it. A ship sailing away, a small boat bobbing in the wake, and the terrible silence of the North closing in.
Backgrounder Notes
As an expert researcher and library scientist, I have analyzed the transcript of the inquiry into the Discovery expedition. To provide a deeper understanding of the historical and technical context of this event, I have identified the following key facts and concepts for further clarification.
1. High Court of Admiralty
The High Court of Admiralty was an English court established in the 14th century to adjudicate cases involving crimes committed at sea, such as piracy, mutiny, and prize disputes. During the 17th century, it served as the primary legal venue for the Crown to investigate failed maritime expeditions and the conduct of surviving crew members.
2. The Ship Discovery
The Discovery was a 55-ton "bark" that served as a workhorse for English exploration, utilized in six different expeditions to find the Northwest Passage. While most famous for the Hudson mutiny, it was later used by other legendary navigators, including William Baffin, to map the Arctic.
3. Henry Hudson
Henry Hudson was an English sea explorer best known for his attempts to find a shortcut to Asia via the Arctic Circle. His four recorded voyages between 1607 and 1611 led to the naming of the Hudson River, Hudson Strait, and Hudson Bay, significantly expanding European knowledge of North American geography.
4. Abacuk Pricket
Pricket was a "land-man" and servant to the voyage’s financiers who served as the expedition's unofficial chronicler. His journal is the only surviving eyewitness account of the mutiny, though historians remain skeptical of its accuracy because it conveniently blames the uprising on crew members who died before reaching England.
5. James Bay
James Bay is a large body of water located at the southern end of Hudson Bay in Canada. Because it is relatively shallow and surrounded by land, it freezes earlier and more thoroughly than the main bay, which led to the Discovery becoming fatally trapped in the ice for over seven months.
6. Scurvy
Scurvy is a debilitating disease caused by a severe deficiency of Vitamin C, which was the primary killer of sailors on long voyages before the 18th century. Its symptoms include the loosening of teeth, the reopening of old wounds, and extreme lethargy, all of which contributed to the desperation of Hudson’s crew.
7. Shallop
A shallop was a heavy, open boat, often equipped with oars and a small mast, used by 17th-century ships for coastal exploration or as a tender. Being cast adrift in a shallop in the subarctic was effectively a death sentence, as the vessel lacked the protection and storage needed to survive the open sea or heavy ice.
8. Haberdasher
In the 17th century, a haberdasher was a merchant who sold small items for sewing—such as buttons, ribbons, and needles—or men’s clothing. Pricket’s background in this trade highlights that he was not a professional sailor, but rather a representative of the ship's investors sent to keep a record of the voyage.
9. Sir Dudley Digges
Sir Dudley Digges was a wealthy English politician and a founding member of the "Company of Merchants of London, Discoverers of the North-West Passage." As a primary financier of Hudson's voyage, his political influence is often cited as a reason why the mutineers were treated with leniency upon their return.
10. The Northwest Passage
The "westward search" mentioned in the text refers to the Northwest Passage, a sea route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the Arctic Archipelago. For centuries, European powers sought this route to bypass the long and dangerous journey around the southern tips of Africa or South America.
11. "King’s Victuals"
The term "victuals" refers to the food and drink supplies provided for a ship's crew. In the context of the 1611 inquiry, eating the "King's victuals" while abandoning the Captain was a specific legal point used to argue that the mutineers had committed theft and treason against the Crown's interests.
