Halve Maen

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The Halve Maen (Half Moon) was the name of a Dutch East India Company yacht which sailed in what is now New York harbor on September 11, 1609. It was commissioned by the Dutch Republic to find (covertly) a western passage to China.

The ship was captained by Henry Hudson who was in the service of the Dutch Republic and who named the discovery of the river, which now bears his name, the Mauritius River after Holland's Lord-Lieutenant Maurits. The Halve Maen's arrival had profound implications on American history and culture as it laid the foundation for the only colony among the Original Thirteen with a legal-cultural tradition of toleration as the underpinning of cultural diversity.

Namely, the Half Moon was the predecessor event of the arrival, in June 1624, of the ship New Netherland which transformed the territory of New Netherland, so named on a map by the first explorer Adriaen Block in 1614, to a North American province from a place for private commercial interests through patents issued by the States General since 1614.

Therefore, the significance of the Half Moon’s appearance in 1609 lies in the fact that it gave rise to the most tolerant, most diverse city in the world and the nation’s largest municipality (a legal concept of New Amsterdam in 1653). It meant the onset of the most pluralistic, most powerful nation of this world based on the implicit precept of personal freedom that can only be defined by the notions of tolerance and liberty as equal partners. That dual notion is the true underlying meaning and distinct theme of the Half Moon’s 1609 entrance as it foretold the emergence of American freedom.

Originally, in 1614, New Netherland stretched from the Delaware Bay till Nova Francia. Later, New England interposed itself above Cape Cod reducing New Netherland to below the 42nd parallel and roughly comprising the New York Tri-State region. The 1624 transformation to a North American province took place on Noten Eylant or in pidgin language Nutten Island. The island was renamed Governors Island in 1784.

The Halve Maen sailed (overtly) from Amsterdam to the Barents Sea, turning westward to traverse the Atlantic Ocean sailing from Newfoundland to south in search of the Northwest Passage. In his 1625 book “New World”, in which are 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”.

From there they sailed south to the Chesapeake and then went north along the coast navigating first the Delaware Bay and, subsequently, the bay of the river which Hudson named the Mauritius River. The Halve Maen sailed up Hudson’s river as far as Albany, New York, where the crew determined the water was too shallow for farther progress. Realizing that the river was also not a passage to the east, Hudson exited the river, naming the natives that dwelled on either side of the Mauritus estuary the Manahata. Leaving the estuary, he sailed north-eastward, never realizing that what are now the islands of Manhattan and Long Island were islands, and crossed the Atlantic to England where he sailed into Dartmouth harbor with the Dutch East India Company yacht and crew. A map of 1610 depicts the Manahatas west and east of Hudson’s river and from which the name Manhattan originates.

Image:Half Moon in Hudson.jpg

A replica of the Halve Maen, (officially Anglicized to "Half Moon"), was built in Albany in 1989 and is docked in Albany, New York.

The Town of Halfmoon in New York is named after the ship.

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