"It hath a fair river, fit for harboring of ships, and abounds
with rich and goodly meadows." This description of New Haven, or
Quinnipiac, as the Indians called it, was brought back to Boston
in the summer of 1637, after the Pequot War, by some of the
English soldiers who had pursued the flying Pequots into that
part of Connecticut and had noticed the good harbor of New Haven
as they passed.
The report sounded so pleasant and so satisfactory in the ears of
a company of London merchants, who, with their families and their
fortunes, had recently come to New England and were looking about
for a suitable spot in which to settle, that they decided to
visit this place and judge of it for themselves.
These people, about two hundred and fifty in number, had arrived
in Boston in June of that same year, after a voyage of two
months. Of course in the small ships of those days there must
have been many discomforts, even in a pleasant season, and no
doubt some of the people were seasick. An old record of that time
says, "We fetched out the children and others that lay groaning
in the cabins, and having stretched a rope from the steerage to
the mainmast, made them stand some on one side and some on the
other and sway it up and down till they were warm. By this means
they soon grew well and merry. ... When the ship heaved and set
more than usual a few were sick, but of these such as came upon
deck and bestirred themselves were presently well again,
therefore our captain set our children and young men to some
harmless exercises, in which the seamen were very active and did
our people much good, though they would sometimes play the wags
with them." When at last the Hector dropped anchor in Boston
Harbor, and "there came a smell off the shore like the smell of a
garden," her passengers must have been glad that the long voyage
was over.
The two leaders of the company were Theophilus Eaton, a
successful shipping merchant of London, a man of affairs and of
great personal dignity and kindliness, and his friend, Reverend
John Davenport, a London clergyman, who, like many other Puritan
ministers of those days, had been obliged to leave England on
account of his religious opinions. These two men had been
schoolboys together in the town of Coventry, they had been
associated later in London, they came together to America, and
they remained friends to the end of their lives.
As many of their party were merchants, and not farmers like a
large number of the settlers on the Connecticut River at
Hartford, it was important to select a place for their colony
which would be convenient for trade and where there was a good
harbor for the commerce they hoped to establish. For this reason
the report of Quinnipiac interested them, and in September
several members of the company went to Quinnipiac and liked it so
well that seven men were left there through the winter to prepare
for the coming of the rest in the spring. In April the whole
number removed there from Boston.
The people of Massachusetts Bay were sorry to have them go. They
would have been glad to have this rich and influential company
join their colony, but these new settlers wished to found a
colony of their own in which they could carry out their own ideas
of what a model state should be, both in civil and religious
matters. They took ship, therefore, from Boston for Quinnipiac,
carrying all their goods and provisions with them. The expedition
was well fitted out and all its details had been carefully
planned before they left England. Friends already in the colonies
had written offering suggestions: "Bring good store of clothes
and bedding with you; bring paper and linseed oil for your
windows, with cotton yarn for your lamps."
As they sailed into Quinnipiac Harbor they saw for the first time
the two great cliffs, the East and West Rocks, called by the
Dutch "the Red Hills," which still stand like guardians, one on
each side of the present city of New Haven. On the level plain
between them, which is watered by several small streams, they
determined to build their town and to place it at the head of the
beautiful harbor.
They made large and generous plans for it. They laid it out in
regular squares and set aside a great open space in the center
for a market-place. This is the New Haven Green, which exists
to-day just as John Brockett, the surveyor, laid it out in 1638. It
is still the largest public square in the heart of any city in
the United States. In the middle of the Green they built the
first "meeting-house." It was fifty feet square, made of rough
timbers, with a small tower on top where the drummer stood on
Sundays to "drum" the people to church; for at first there were
no bells. Each person had a seat carefully assigned to him, or
her, in the meeting-house. Sometimes the boys sat with the
soldiers near the door. We read later in the records that at one
time the children in the galleries were so restless during the
long sermons, that "tithing-men" were appointed "to take a stick
or wand and smite such as are of uncomely behavior in the meeting
and acquaint their parents." On week-days the children went to
school in a schoolhouse which was built on the Green.
The town of New Haven was soon noted for its large and fine
houses, Eaton's having nineteen fireplaces according to
tradition, and Davenport's, thirteen. But at first any kind of
shelter was used for protection. The people met under an oak tree
for service on the first Sunday after landing and Reverend John
Davenport preached a sermon to them on the "Temptation of the
Wilderness," so it is said. During the first winter some of them
slept in cellars dug out in the banks of one of the creeks and
covered with earth. A boy named Michael Wigglesworth, who came to
New Haven with his parents in October, 1638, when he was nine
years old, lived in one of these cellars. When he grew up he
wrote his autobiography and in it he says, "I remember that one
great rain brake in upon us and drenched me so in my bed, being
asleep, that I fell sick upon it, but the Lord in mercy spared my
life and restored my health."
When the settlers at Quinnipiac, or New Haven, as it was soon
called, had been there a little more than a year, they met in
Robert Newman's barn "to consult about settling civil government"
and also about establishing a church. Up to this time they had
lived under what was known as the "Plantation Covenant," which
was a simple agreement among themselves that they would all "be
ordered by those rules which the Scripture holds forth." At this
meeting on June 4, l639, they decided that they would continue to
accept the Bible as a code of laws, and that only church members
should hold office or have the right to vote for magistrates.
They did this under the direction of John Davenport, who in one
of his writings had described this colony as "a new Plantation
whose design is religion." This agreement, made in Robert
Newman's barn, was known as the "Fundamental Agreement." Twelve
men were appointed on that day who chose seven from among
themselves to found a church. These seven men were called the
"Seven Pillars." On August 22, the "Seven Pillars" met and
established a church, and on the 25th of October they met again
and set up the civil government.
[Illustration: MEDAL COMMEMORATING THE TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY
OF THE FOUNDING OF NEW HAVEN.]
Like the Connecticut Colony, the New Haven Colony in setting up
its government made no reference to any authority beyond itself;
the people elected their own magistrates and made their own laws.
But the New Haven Colony was unlike Connecticut in one important
respect. In New Haven no man could vote or hold a place in the
government unless he was a church member. This led later to much
discontent among some of the people, and was one reason, among
others, for the failure of New Haven as a separate colony and for
its beng absorbed, twenty-five years afterward,--in 1664,--into
the larger and more liberal Connecticut Colony.
Meanwhile, even before the government was organized, the
merchants and shippers of the company had bought or built boats
and had begun to trade along the coasts to the north and to the
south. During the first winter while some of the people, like the
family of Michael Wigglesworth, were still living in cellars dug
in the river-banks, Master George Lamberton was sailing in his
sloop, the Cock, on a trading voyage to Virginia. Other New Haven
ships soon established commercial relations with Boston and New
Amsterdam, with Delaware, where beaver skins could be obtained in
abundance, with Virginia, whose great staple was tobacco, and
with other plantations still farther away, such as Barbados in
the West Indies, where sugar was the most important article of
exchange. Now and then we hear of a New Haven ship in strange and
foreign parts of the world.
There was one which set out in December, 1642, for the Canary
Islands, laden with clapboards, and fell in with pirates near the
Island of Palma, one of the Canaries. A Turkish pirate ship of
three hundred tons with two hundred men on board and twenty-six
guns, attacked this small New Haven ship of one hundred and
eighty tons, which had only seven guns fit for use and twenty men
armed with rusty muskets. The fight lasted for three hours, and
Captain Carman, the master of the New Haven ship, and his men
succeeded in killing a good many Turks in spite of being taken at
a disadvantage. But at last the pirates put their ship alongside
and sent one hundred men on board the New Haven ship, When,
however, they found that their captain was shot and the rudder of
their ship broken, the pirates hauled, down their flag and drew
off so quickly that they left fifty of their men behind. "Then
the master [Captain Carman] and some of his men came up and
fought those fifty hand to hand and slew so many of them that the
rest leaped overboard. The master had many wounds on his head and
body and divers of his men were wounded, yet but one slain. So
with much difficulty he got to the Island [of Palma], where he
was very courteously entertained, and supplied with whatever he
needed."
But New Haven ships did not always come off as well as in this
encounter with the pirates, and their voyages were not always
successful. Some members of the New Haven Colony bought land in
Delaware and attempted to establish a trading-post in order to
take advantage of the profitable trade in beaver skins. But the
Dutch and Swedes, who had settled there, objected to the coming
of the English, and once, in 1642, they seized Captain Lamberton,
who had come in his ship the Cock, accused him of inciting the
Indians against them, and threw him into prison. As the charges
against him could not be proved he was soon released, but the
hostility of the Dutch and Swedes continued until the New Haven
merchants were driven away from that coast and out of the rich
fur-trade of Delaware. This was a great blow to the colony. Other
losses, too, were met with, and at last the people became greatly
discouraged as they saw their hopes of founding a successful
commercial colony slowly, but surely, disappearing.
The voyage of the "Great Shippe" which took place about this time
is the most tragic adventure in the story of New Haven's early
shipping days. It began in this way. In 1646, as a last resource,
the merchants of New Haven decided to fit out a ship with what
was left of their "tradeable estate," and send her to London. Up
to this time they had sent goods to England by way of Boston or
of the West Indies; there might be more profit, they thought, in
a direct trade, cutting out the cost of reshipment. So they
bought a ship. We do not know her name, she is always spoken of
as the "Great Shippe," although she was only one hundred tons;
perhaps the title was given her because the colonists were
staking so much on this venture. If it succeeded, their
prosperity might be assured; if it failed, they must give up the
sea and commerce as a dependence and turn their energies to
agriculture. The "Great Shippe" was a new boat, said to have been
built in Rhode Island, and she was loaded principally with wheat
and peas shipped in bulk, with West Indies hides, beaver skins,
and what silver plate could be spared for exchange in London. Her
cargo altogether was worth about twenty-five thousand dollars,
which was a large sum in those days, especially in a new and
struggling colony.
The master of the ship was the same Captain Lamberton we have
heard of before. He was a brave and bold skipper, but it is said
that he was not altogether pleased with the ship when he first
saw her; that he did not like her lines and thought her not quite
seaworthy. Other people, too, besides Captain Lamberton,
complained that she was not only badly built, but badly loaded,
with the light goods of the cargo below and the heavy above, and
some old seamen predicted that the grain would shift in rough
weather and make trouble. These were mostly rumors, however, and
few paid attention to them at the time; but long afterward, when
people talked over the strange fate of the "Great Shippe,"
Captain Lamberton's words, "This ship will be our grave," were
recalled and believed to have been a prophecy.
That winter of 1646 was a bitterly cold one in Connecticut, and
New Haven Harbor was frozen over. When the "Great Shippe" was
ready to sail, it was necessary to cut a way out for her with
handsaws through the thick ice for nearly three miles. A good
many people from the town walked out on the harbor ice beside the
ship to see her begin her voyage, and to bid good-bye to a number
of their friends who were going home to England on business of
one kind or another. Seventy people had taken passage in the
"Great Shippe," and among them were some who were very prominent
in the colony, as, for instance, Captain Nathaniel Turner, who,
having had experience in the war with the Pequot Indians, had
been given "the command and ordering of all martial affairs" in
the plantation, and Thomas Gregson, one of the magistrates, who
was charged by the colony to obtain a charter for them, if
possible, from the English Parliament, then in control in
England.
Reverend John Davenport, the minister, stood in the crowd of
people on the ice that winter day and offered a prayer to God for
the protection of the travelers. "Lord," he said, "if it be thy
will to bury these our friends in the bottom of the sea, they are
thine, save them." This does not sound like a very cheerful
send-off, but we must remember that a long voyage was a serious
undertaking in those days and that people sometimes made their
wills even before sailing from New Haven for Boston.
When the "Great Shippe" had really gone, when the people had seen
the last of Captain Lamberton standing on her deck giving orders,
and had watched her white sails dwindle and disappear, they
walked back over the ice to their homes on the shore remembering
sadly that it would be a long time before they could expect to
have any news from her. It might be two or three months before
she reached London and as many more before word of her arrival
could come back to them. So they waited patiently through the
hard New England winter and the early spring, but by summer time
they were eagerly looking for tidings of her. Ships came from
England as usual to the colonies, but no one of them brought news
of the safe arrival in London of the "Great Shippe" from New
Haven. Then the people began to question the skippers of other
boats, boats from the West Indies and from the plantations on the
southern coasts, and to ask if anything had been heard of her in
that direction. For they remembered that there had been an
unusually violent storm soon after the ship had sailed, and they
began to fear that she might have been blown out of her course
and possibly wrecked on some such coast or island. Public prayers
were offered for her safety and for the safety of her passengers.
Meanwhile, the summer passed and the cold weather came again, and
still there was no word from the fated ship. Few vessels put into
New England harbors during the winter, and, as the chance of news
grew less and less, the anxiety of the people gradually changed
to despair. They recalled the sacrifices they had made to fit out
that ship, the precious cargo she carried, all the things that
could not be replaced (such as the sermons and other writings of
Mr. Davenport which he had sent to England for publication); and
in the loss of the ship on which they had set all their hopes
they saw the final blow to the prosperity of New Haven. No one
now had the courage or the money for another venture of that
kind. Slowly and reluctantly the people turned to agriculture
instead of trade, and the days of New Haven as a commercial
colony were numbered.
But far worse to them than any material loss was the loss of the
dear friends and relatives who had sailed with the "Great Shippe"
for England. No compensation could come to those who had loved
them. In November, 1647, the passengers on the ship were finally
given up as lost and counted among the dead and their estates
settled.
Yet many to whom they were dear could not rest satisfied. They
remembered all the perils of the sea, the dangers of shipwreck on
some barren coast, of possible capture by pirates, such as those
who had attacked Captain Carman off the Canary Islands not many
years before, and they came to feel at last that they would be
thankful to learn that the ship had foundered at sea and that
their friends had gone down with her to a natural death in the
waters.
Two years and a half after the sailing of the "Great; Shippe" (so
the story stands in a strange old book called the _Magnolia
Christi_, by the Reverend Cotton Mather), a wonderful vision
came to the people of New Haven. On that June afternoon in the
year 1648, a great thunderstorm came up from the northwest. The
sky grew black and threatening, there was vivid lightning, and a
cold wind swept over the harbor. Before the rain had ceased and
calm had come again, it was nearly sunset.
Then, against the clear evening light, a strange ship sailed into
New Haven Harbor. Around the point she came with her sails full
set and her colors flying. "There's a brave ship," cried the
children, and they left their play to stand and gaze at her. Men
and women gathered on the water-front and the same startled hope
thrilled every heart: "It may be the 'Great Shippe' come home
again!" For there was the old familiar outline, there were her
three masts, her tackling, and her sails. And yet there was
something new and mysterious, something awe-inspiring about her,
and the watchers held their breath as they realized that she was
sailing toward them straight against the wind that blew strong
off the north shore. For a full half-hour they stood and gazed,
until they could distinguish the different parts of her rigging,
until they could see, standing high on her poop, the figure of a
man with "one hand akimbo under his left side and in his right
hand a sword stretched out toward the sea." Then, all at once, a
mist rose out of the sea behind her and covered her like smoke,
and through the mist and smoke men saw dimly her shrouds give
way, and her masts break and fall, as though a hurricane had
struck her, and slowly she careened and plunged beneath the
surface of the water.
The people turned to their pastor. "What does it mean?" they
asked. "It was the form of Master Lamberton. Why is this vision
sent us?" And he replied that doubtless God had sent it in answer
to their prayers, to show them the fate of their friends and to
set their hearts at rest, for "this was the mould of their ship,
and thus her tragic end."