A FAMOUS VESSEL--THE MAYFLOWER--HER APPEARANCE--THE
SPEEDWELL--DEPARTURE OF THE TWO SHIPS--ALLEGED UNSEAWORTHINESS
OF THE SPEEDWELL--THE MAYFLOWER SAILS ALONE--THE
EQUINOCTIAL--CONSULTATIONS--A REMEDY APPLIED--FIRST VIEW OF THE
LAND--SUBSEQUENT HISTORY AND FATE OF THE MAYFLOWER.
We have now to narrate the incidents of a voyage without precedent, in
one point of view, in maritime annals, and to chronicle the adventures
of a ship which may be safely said to have achieved a fame beyond that
of any other that ever ploughed the ocean. When we mention the name of
the Mayflower, in which the Pilgrim Fathers proceeded from Southampton
Water to Plymouth Rock, we are sure that the distinction which we
claim for this feeble vessel will be contested by none,--not even by
those who would gladly accord the supremacy of the seas to the Nina of
Columbus or the Vittoria of Magellan. The details of the voyage are few
and unsatisfactory; but the vivid imagination of historians and orators
has amply supplied their place.
[Illustration: SPEEDWELL AND MAYFLOWER.]
The Mayflower was built in England, at a time when English commerce
could bear no comparison with that of Holland, and when the trade with
the latter power employed six hundred Dutch ships to one hundred of
English build. They were picturesque in appearance, though tub-like
and clumsy, the hull being broad-bottomed and capacious, while the
lofty cabins, towering high both fore and aft,--a style now obsolete
in Europe, but still prevailing in the Red Sea and the Levant,--caused
them to roll heavily in rough water. The Mayflower was a high-sterned,
quaint, but staunch little vessel of one hundred and eighty tons, and
was built for one of the trading companies lately chartered by the
Government. The Dutch portion of the emigration had already embarked
at Delfthaven in the Speedwell, of sixty tons, and both vessels
were, on the 1st of August, 1620, anchored before the old towers of
Southampton. The pilgrims were then regularly organized for the voyage,
being distributed according to rules laid down and accepted by all.
The larger number were of course received on board the Mayflower. On
the 5th of August, both vessels weighed anchor, and sailed down the
beautiful estuary of Southampton Water: passing the Isle of Wight and
the rocks known as the Needles, they entered the English Channel.
They were no sooner launched upon the fretful waters of this confined
strait than their disasters began. The captain of the Speedwell, who
had engaged to remain a year abroad with the vessel, actuated either by
cowardice or by dissatisfaction with the enterprise, declared that his
ship was leaky, and that she could not proceed to sea. Dartmouth Harbor
offered an opportunity for effecting the necessary repairs, and here a
week was spent: the Speedwell was then pronounced quite sound by the
carpenters and surveyors. They again set sail; but the captain of the
Speedwell soon profited by the vicinity of Plymouth to assert a second
time that he was ready to founder. He ran into port, and the Mayflower
followed. No special cause was discovered for the apprehensions of
the captain; but it was decided that the Speedwell should be sent
back to London as unseaworthy, with such of her passengers as were
disheartened, the remainder being transferred to the larger ship. One
hundred and one persons--some of them aged and infirm, and several of
them women soon to become mothers--were thus imprisoned, as it were,
in a vessel much too small to accommodate them; while the delays
resulting from the treachery or stratagem practised by the captain of
the Speedwell had already proved so serious, that it was the 6th of
September before the Mayflower, with her crowd of suffering passengers,
could continue the voyage thus inauspiciously commenced.
The wind was east by north, blowing, according to the journal, "a fine
small gale," when the Mayflower started from Plymouth upon her lonely
way. The solitude of the ocean--in this latitude almost a trackless
waste--lay stretched out before them. The prosperous gale soon gave way
to the equinoctial storm, and a terrible head-wind from the northwest
compelled the little bark to struggle anxiously with waves which
threatened to engulf her. She was soon sorely shattered: her upper
works were strained, and one of the main beams amidships was bent and
cracked. A consultation was held between the seamen and passengers,
and the question was seriously debated whether it would not be better
to put back. It was fortunately discovered, however, that one of the
Dutch pilgrims had accidentally brought on board a large iron screw,
and this served to rivet the defective beam. The ship proceeded on her
course, struggling with westerly gales and tempestuous seas. For whole
days together she was compelled to lie to, or to scud with bare poles.
"Methinks," says Everett, "I see the adventurous vessel, the Mayflower
of a forlorn hope, freighted with the prospects of a future State and
bound across the unknown sea. I behold it pursuing, with a thousand
misgivings, the uncertain, tedious voyage. Suns rise and set, weeks and
months pass; and winter surprises them on the deep, but brings them not
the sight of the wished-for shore. I see them now, scantily supplied
with provisions, crowded almost to suffocation in their ill-stored
prison, delayed by calms, pursuing a circuitous route, and now driven
in fury before the raging tempest on the high and giddy waves. The
awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging; the laboring masts
seem straining from their base; the dismal sound of the pumps is heard;
the ship leaps, as it were, madly from billow to billow; the ocean
breaks and settles with engulfing floods over the floating deck, and
beats, with deadening, shivering weight, against the staggered vessel."
Only one death occurred during this terrible voyage,--a loss in numbers
which was made good by the birth of a boy, to whom was given the name
of Oceanus Hopkins.
Sixty-four days had passed, and the 9th of November had dawned. Upon
this date the tempest-tossed pilgrims obtained their first view of the
American coast. "To the storm-ridden voyager," writes one of their
descendants, "exhausted by confinement and suffering, the sight of any
shore, however wild, the aromatic fragrance that blows from the land,
are inexpressibly sweet and refreshing:
Lovely seems any object that shall sweep
Away the vast--salt--dread--eternal deep!
And thus we find that the low sand-hills of Cape Cod, covered with
scrubby woods that descended to the margin of the sea, seemed, at the
first glance, a perfect paradise of verdure to the eyes of these poor
sea-beaten wanderers."
The orator and statesman from whom we have already quoted thus
eloquently alludes to the providential circumstances attending the
arrival of the Mayflower upon the American shore:--"Let us go up in
imagination to yonder hill and look out upon the November scene. That
single dark speck, just discernible through the perspective glass on
the waste of waters, is the fated vessel. The storm moans through
her tattered canvas, as she creeps, almost sinking, to her anchorage
in Provincetown Harbor; and there she lies, with all her treasures,
not of silver and gold,--for of them she has none,--but of courage,
of patience, of zeal, of high spiritual daring. So often as I dwell
in imagination on this scene,--when I consider the condition of the
Mayflower, utterly incapable as she was of living through another
gale,--when I survey the terrible front presented by our coast to the
navigator who, unacquainted with its channels and roadsteads, should
approach it in the stormy season,--I dare not call it a mere piece of
good fortune that the general north and south wall of the shore of
New England should be broken by this extraordinary projection of the
Cape, running out into the ocean a hundred miles, as if on purpose to
receive and encircle the precious vessel. As I now see her, freighted
with the destinies of a continent, barely escaped from the perils of
the deep, approaching the shore precisely where the broad sweep of
this most remarkable headland presents almost the only point at which,
for hundreds of miles, she could with any ease have made a harbor,
and this perhaps the very best on the sea-board, I feel my spirit
raised above the sphere of mere natural agencies. I see the mountains
of New England rising from their rocky thrones: they rush forward
into the ocean, settling down as they advance; and there they range
themselves, a mighty bulwark, around the Heaven-directed vessel. Yes!
the everlasting God himself stretches out the arm of his mercy and his
power in substantial manifestations, and gathers the meek company of
his worshippers as in the hollow of his hand."
"I see the pilgrims," he continues, "escaped from their perils,
landed at last, after a two months' passage, on the ice-clad rocks of
Plymouth, weak and weary from the voyage,--without shelter, without
means, surrounded by hostile tribes. Shut now the volume of history,
and tell me, on any principle of human probability, what shall be the
fate of this handful of adventurers. Tell me, man of military science,
in how many months were they all swept off by the thirty savage tribes
enumerated within the early limits of New England? Tell me, politician,
how long did this shadow of a colony, on which your conventions and
treaties had not smiled, languish on the distant coast? Student of
history, compare for me the baffled projects, the deserted settlements,
the abandoned adventures, of other times, and find the parallel of
this. Was it the winter's storm, or disease, or labor and spare meals,
or the tomahawk--that hurried this forsaken company to their melancholy
fate? And is it possible that neither of these causes, that not all
combined, were able to blast this bud of hope? Is it possible that from
a beginning so feeble, so frail, so worthy not so much of admiration
as of pity, there has gone forth a progress so steady, a growth so
wonderful, an expansion so ample, a reality so important, a promise,
yet to be fulfilled, so glorious?"
The Mayflower remained in Plymouth Harbor, and was the home of the
women and children during the severe winter of 1620-21. She rode out
the storm at her anchorage,--though she was placed in great danger by
a gale upon the 4th of February, her want of ballast--unladen as she
was--rendering her light as a cockle-shell. With the opening of spring,
the captain determined to return to England, and offered to carry
back any of the colonists who might be disheartened by the calamities
which had overtaken them,--for they had buried half their number. But
their sufferings had endeared the soil to them, and not one embraced
the opportunity of returning. The Mayflower left Plymouth on the 5th
of April, 1621, and made the run home to London in thirty days. She
seems to have performed several voyages back and forth, and, in 1630,
arrived in the harbor of Charlestown, with a portion of Winthrop's
company of emigrants. Her subsequent history is very uncertain; and all
attempts to ascertain it have been baffled by the circumstance that
several ships bore the name of Mayflower, and no reliable means exist
of distinguishing her of Pilgrim celebrity from others of obscurer fame.
[Illustration: THE COD.]
[Illustration: TASMAN'S VESSEL,--THE ZEEHAAN.]