In addition to showing the ship, the coin displays a version of the Hudson city seal, with Neptune riding a whale, a design that has drawn commentary over the years.

Although the city of Hudson was a relatively small municipality, legislation to issue a coin in honor of its 150th anniversary went through Congress without opposition and was signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, becoming the Act of May 2, 1935.

[2] In 1935, commemorative coins were not sold by the government—Congress, in authorizing legislation, usually designated an organization which had the exclusive right to purchase them at face value and vend them to the public at a premium.

[4] A bill for a half dollar to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the incorporation of Hudson was introduced in the House of Representatives by New York Congressman Philip A. Goodwin on March 6, 1935, and provided for 6,000 pieces.

[13] On the day Roosevelt signed the legislation, Congressman Goodwin wrote to Charles Moore, chairman of the Commission of Fine Arts, requesting the names of suitable artists to design the coin.

The commission was charged by a 1921 executive order by President Warren G. Harding with rendering advisory opinions regarding public artworks, including coins.

Moore suggested Laura Gardin Fraser as standing in the first rank of medallists, with other possibilities to include Mint Chief Engraver John R. Sinnock, Paul Manship, Francis H. Packer and Chester Beach.

Mayor Frank Wise of Hudson asked if John Flanagan, who had recently designed the Washington quarter, would do; Moore agreed by telegram.

Beach quickly prepared sketches and met with Wise on May 13, but convinced the mayor that instead of the explorer (no actual portrait of him is known) his ship, the Half Moon, would be a better choice.

Working at speed unusual for a commemorative coin of that era, Beach completed plaster models in one week, adding a crescent moon to the left of the ship.

Beach quoted this praise in reporting to Moore on May 27 that Lee Lawrie, the sculptor-member of the Commission of Fine Arts, had approved the designs.

[20] Swiatek and Breen referenced "the quaint device of King Neptune riding backwards on a spouting whale, whose eye is represented as being about where its blowhole should be.

[21] Art historian Cornelius Vermeule, in his volume about U.S. coins and medals, considered the ship on the obverse "straightforward fare for commemorative half-dollars", though he found the name "HUDSON" beneath the waves unneeded given the legend on the reverse.

[22] Vermeule noted "the baroque motto above Neptune and his group [that] makes it evident that this subject, appealing and amusing in itself, appears here because it is the singular characteristic of the City of Hudson on the river of the same name".

Many of these sold, helping set off a commemorative coin boom that continued later in 1935 when low-mintage varieties of the Daniel Boone Bicentennial half dollar came on the market after a similar immediate sellout.