Henry Hudson's Voyages On A Google Map

Henry Hudson never did find the Northwest passage to India, but this year marks the 400th anniversary of his third voyage—the one where he came to New York and sailed up what is now the Hudson River (he made it as far as modern-day Albany). Hudson showed that often it is what you stumble upon on your way to somewhere else that turns out to be your great discovery. To celebrate the anniversary, the Henry Hudson 400 Foundation has charted all of Hudson’s voyages onto a Google map, along with overlays of historical maps. The overlays are kind of clunky, but just being able to see the actual routes Hudson took is kind of cool.

I only wish the custom map was available on the Google Maps site itself (maybe it is, but I wasn’t able to find it, although I did find this map of Hudson’s third voyage which was put together by an elementary school class). In fact, Google Maps should have an “Explorers section” where you could see famous expedition routes from Lewis and Clark’s to Shackleton’s voyage to Antarctica. Many of these have already been mapped out for Google Earth or as custom Google Maps, but it would be nice to have them all in one place as a section within Google Maps, or at least make Google could make them easier to find.