Discovering The New World

By JOSH KAUFMAN

Giovanni de Verrazano, a Florentine who sailed for the French, was the first European to enter New York Harbor in 1524 and begin the discovery that would bring the first new cultures to the shores of Queens.

The Verrazano Bridge is named for his successful negotiation of the narrows. Esteban Gomez, a Portuguese sailing for Spain, was next to sail the area around New York City.

Henry Hudson, an Englishman under contract with the Dutch East India Company, lived from 1550 to 1611. His third voyage in 1609 was an effort to discover a passage to East Asia.

He tried to carve a way through the ice, but his crew mutinied, so he traced a path down the coast of North America, finding the Hudson River and New York Harbor.

He then discovered Hudson Bay, where he spent three months exploring eastern islands and shores.

By 1610, his ship—the Halve Maen—was frozen in ice, and once again his crew revolted, but this time Hudson could not escape their wrath. He was placed on a raft with his son and seven others, and sent adrift without any provisions, never to be heard from again.

Dutch explorer/trader Adriaen Block became the first white man to view Astoria in 1614, when he became the first person to navigate Hell’s Gate, through the East River and into the Long Island Sound.

In 1637, Thomas Foster sailed into Little Neck Bay, also on a Dutch frigate, and became the first settler in Bayside.

Settlements turned into villages, and villages expanded into towns. The towns swelled into the cities we have today, that range as far as the horizon, and sometimes above it, as skyscrapers intrude into the underbellies of fat white clouds. And the land and the people still change so quickly today that if one looks away for too long, one may forget the past.