<P> Many authors have wrongly stated that it was the discovery of large numbers of whales in Spitsbergen waters by Hudson during this voyage that led to several nations sending whaling expeditions to the islands . While he did indeed report seeing many whales, it was not Hudson's reports but rather those by Jonas Poole in 1610 which led to the establishment of English whaling and the voyages of Nicholas Woodcock and Willem Cornelisz. van Muyden in 1612 that led to the establishment of Dutch, French and Spanish whaling . </P> <P> In 1608, English merchants of the East India and Muscovy Companies again sent Hudson in the Hopewell to attempt to locate a passage to the Indies, this time to the east around northern Russia . Leaving London on 22 April, the ship traveled almost 2,500 miles, making it to Novaya Zemlya well above the Arctic Circle in July, but even in the summer they found the ice impenetrable and turned back, arriving at Gravesend on 26 August . </P> <P> According to Thomas Edge, "William (sic) Hudson" in 1608 discovered an island he named "Hudson's Tutches" (Touches) at 71 ° N, the latitude of Jan Mayen . However, records of Hudson's voyages suggest that he could only have come across Jan Mayen in 1607 by making an illogical detour, and historians have pointed out that Hudson himself made no mention of it in his journal . There is also no cartographical proof of this supposed discovery . Jonas Poole in 1611 and Robert Fotherby in 1615 both had possession of Hudson's journal while searching for his elusive Hold - with - Hope (which is now believed to have been on the east coast of Greenland), but neither had any knowledge of any discovery of Jan Mayen, an achievement which was only later attributed to Hudson . Fotherby eventually stumbled across Jan Mayen, thinking it a new discovery and naming it "Sir Thomas Smith's Island", though the first verifiable records of the discovery of the island had been made a year earlier, in 1614 . </P> <P> In 1609 Hudson was chosen by merchants of the Dutch East India Company in the Netherlands to find an easterly passage to Asia . While awaiting orders and supplies in Amsterdam, he heard rumors of a northwest route to the Pacific through North America . Hudson had been told to sail through the Arctic Ocean north of Russia, into the Pacific and so to the Far East . Hudson departed Amsterdam on 4 April in command of the Dutch ship Halve Maen . He could not complete the specified (eastward) route because ice blocked the passage, as with all previous such voyages, and he turned the ship around in mid-May while somewhere east of Norway's North Cape . At that point, acting outside his instructions, Hudson pointed the ship west and decided to try to seek a westerly passage through North America . </P>

Who explored north america and the arctic brainly