The Dutch East India Company is one of the first international corporations in the world. An Englishman, Henry Hudson was enlisted by this company to find an alternate route to China, as Asia was crucial to Western trading. His goal was to find a Northwest Passage, and eventually simply to find a Western passage, versus having to go East and around Africa.
On this day August 28th, in 1609, English explorer Henry Hudson first enters Delaware Bay for the Dutch East India Company. It would be Samuel Argall in 1610 that named this bay Delaware for his boss and Virginia Governor, Lord DeLaWarr. Ironically, Lord DeLaWarr never even saw the bay he was named for.
Delaware Bay is an estuary connected to the Delaware River. It mixes with the Atlantic Ocean on the coast of New Jersey and Delaware. Hudson thought this would be a great place for settlement, even though he himself never stepped ashore at that time. So began the Delaware Colony.