In the early 17th century, English explorers were obsessed with finding the Northwest Passage and understanding ice. Through the Northwest Passage they sought a quicker route to the South Seas, but each time they set off they ran into floes, fields, tongues, calves and other pernicious forms of frozen water.

Henry Hudson, he of Bay, River and Strait fame, was one of Britain's best northern navigators, setting off on five trips through Arctic waters between 1607 and 1610. On his last trip, he led a crew of 22 on the Discovery deep into what is now Hudson Bay. When the weather grew cold, the ship became icebound. The crew spent a miserable seven months onshore, and food grew scarce. Once spring arrived, the men mutinied. They put Hudson, his son and seven ailing men into a small boat and left them there, floating in the bay, never to be seen again.

Through meticulous research, Peter C. Mancall, professor of history and anthropology at the University of Southern California, reconstructs the Discovery's voyage, Hudson's previous trips and the trial of the mutineers back in England. The book tries to keep us turning pages by holding us in suspense. What happened to Hudson and the others? Did they join the Inuit? Did their skiff hit an iceberg? But since there is no evidence whatsoever of what happened to Hudson, the mystery is slightly trumped up.

Mancall's knowledge of early Atlantic explorers is not thin, however, and his facility with primary sources is astounding. The story of Hudson's last voyage becomes, in his experienced hands, a lucid, fascinating lens into early Atlantic explorations. The book bristles with action, details about ship life, insight into British laws (the mutineers were found not guilty), and jaw-dropping accounts of encounters with Americans.

In an earlier voyage, Hudson traveled as far south as the Chesapeake. The crew met a group of Delawares, the Munsees. They were friendly, and for a few days the British and Americans traded peacefully. Then the Munsees inexplicably killed a crew member. The English sailed off, from then on wary of locals, preferring the open sea.

Hudson was not a colonizer, and the crew was surprisingly incurious about those who lived between Britain and the South Seas. Up in the Arctic, though, some saw a mermaid, and Hudson described her features in his diary. "Fatal Journey" proves the truism that we tend to find (or not) what we are looking for, missing much along the way.

Anne Trubek is a professor at Oberlin College in Ohio. Her literary column for Good magazine is at www.good.is/series/signatures.