Henry Hudson was an English explorer in the early 1600s who led four expeditions trying to find a northern passage to Asia over the top of the world. His explorations for the Dutch led him to discover the river that would be named after him, the Hudson River, and the area that would later become New York City. On his final expedition for the English, Hudson explored north into Hudson Bay but his crew mutinied and left him adrift, and he was never seen again.