_The Voyage._
The Departure from Southampton.--Hindrances.--Delay at Dartmouth
and Plymouth.--Abandonment of the Speedwell.--Sketch of Miles
Standish.--Death at Sea.--Perils and Threatened Mutiny.--
Narrow Escape of John Howland.--Arrival at Cape Cod.--Testimony
of Governor Bradford.--The Civil Contract.--John Carver Chosen
Governor.--The First Exploring Tour.--The Sabbath.
On the 22d of July, 1620, the Speedwell, with its little band of
Christian heroes, left the haven of Delft for England.
Rev. Mr. Robinson and his friends returned sadly to Leyden. A
prosperous wind rapidly bore the vessel across the channel to the
British coast, and they entered the port of Southampton. Here they
found a party of English emigrants who had chartered a vessel, the
Mayflower, of one hundred and twenty tons. They were awaiting the
arrival of the Speedwell, intending to unite with the Leyden band and
sail in its company for the organization of a Christian colony in the
New World.
Here, disappointed in some of their financial plans, it was found that
they needed four hundred dollars to pay up sundry bills, before they
could sail. To raise this money they were compelled to sell some of
their provisions, including many firkins of butter, which luxury they
thought they could best spare.
At length, all things being ready, both vessels weighed anchor and put
to sea, from Southampton, on the 5th of August. In the two vessels
there were about one hundred and twenty passengers. They had gone
but about one hundred miles when Captain Reynolds, of the Speedwell,
announced that his ship had sprung a leak, and that he did not dare
to continue the voyage without having her examined and repaired. Both
vessels, therefore, put into Dartmouth, losing a fair wind, and time
which, with the rapidly passing summer weather, was invaluable to them.
They were detained for more than a week, searching out the leaks and
mending them. One of their number, Mr. Cushman, wrote from Dartmouth a
doleful letter, full of anticipations of evil.
“We put in here,” he wrote, “to trim our vessel; and I think, as do
others, also, that if we had stayed at sea for three or four hours
more she would have sunk right down. And, though she was twice trimmed
at Southampton, yet now she is open and leaky as a sieve. We lay at
Southampton seven days in fair weather waiting for her; and now we lie
here in as fair a wind as can blow, and so have done these four days,
and are like to do four days more; and by that time the wind will
probably turn, as it did at Southampton. Our victuals will be half
eaten up, I think, before we go from the coast of England. And if our
voyage last long we shall not have a month’s victuals when we come into
the country.
“If I should write to you all things which promiscuously forebode our
ruin, I should overcharge my weak head and grieve your tender heart.
Only this I pray you, prepare for evil tidings of us every day. I see
not in reason how we shall escape even the gaspings of hunger-starved
persons. But God can do much, and His will be done.”
Again the two vessels set sail, probably about the 21st of August.
They had been out but a day or two, having made about three hundred
miles from Land’s End, keeping close company, when the commander of
the Speedwell hung out a signal of distress. Both vessels hove to and
it appeared that the Speedwell had sprung a leak, of so serious a
character that, though diligently plying the pumps, they could scarcely
keep her afloat.
Nothing was to be done but to put back again to Plymouth, the nearest
English port. Here the Speedwell was carefully examined, and pronounced
to be, from general weakness, unseaworthy. The disappointment was very
great. The vessel was abandoned; twenty passengers were left behind,
who could not be received in the already crowded Mayflower.
“It was resolved,” writes Governor Bradford, “to dismiss the Speedwell
and part of the company, and proceed with the other ship. The which,
though it was grievous and caused great discouragement, was put in
execution. So, after they had taken out such provisions as the other
ship could well stow, and concluded what number and what persons to
send back, they made another sad parting, the one ship going back to
London, the other proceeding on her voyage. Those who went back were,
for the most part, those who were willing so to do, either out of
some discontent, or from fear they conceived of the ill success of
the voyage, seeing so many crosses befal, and the time of the year so
far spent. But others, in regard to their weakness and charge of many
young children, were thought least useful, and most unfit to bear the
brunt of this hard adventure; unto which work of God and judgment of
their brethren they were contented to submit. And thus, like Gideon’s
army, this small number was divided, as if the Lord, by this work of
His providence, thought these few too many for the great work He had
to do. But here, by the way, let me show, how afterwards it was found
that the leakiness of this ship was partly caused by being overmasted
and too much pressed with sails; for after she was sold and put into
her old trim, she made many voyages and performed her service very
sufficiently, to the great profit of her owners. But more especially
by the cunning and deceit of the master and his company, who were
hired to remain a whole year in America; and now, fancying dislike,
and fearing want of victuals, they plotted this stratagem to free
themselves, as afterwards was known, and by some of them confessed.”
Mr. Cushman, who wrote the doleful letter, was left behind at his own
request. There was some excuse for his evil forebodings, for he was in
a wretched state of health. He had written,
“Besides the imminent dangers of this voyage, which are no less than
deadly, an infirmity of body hath seized me which will not, in all
likelihood, leave me until death. What to call it I know not. But it
is a bundle of lead, as it were, crushing my heart more and more these
fourteen days; and, though I do the actions of a living man, yet I am
but as dead.”
The whole number of persons who took their departure from Dartmouth, in
the one solitary vessel, the Mayflower, for the New World, amounted to
one hundred and two.
Among these passengers there was a marked man, to whom we have already
alluded, Captain Miles Standish. He was a native of Lancashire,
England, a gentleman born, and the legitimate heir to a large estate.
He had been for some time an officer in one of the British regiments,
which had garrisoned a town in the Netherlands. He was not a church
member, and we know not what induced him to unite with the pilgrims
in their perilous enterprise. Probably love of adventure, sympathy
with them in their cruel persecution, and attachment to some of the
emigrants, were the motives which influenced him. It is certain that he
was very highly esteemed, and very cordially welcomed by the pilgrims.
His military skill might prove of great value to the infant colony.
It is but little that we know of the early life of this remarkable
man. He was born about the year 1584, and was, consequently, at this
time, about thirty-six years of age. The family could boast of a long
and illustrious line of ancestors. In the great controversy between
the Catholics and the Protestants there was a division in the family,
part adhering to the ancient faith, and part accepting the Protestant
religion. Thus there arose, as it were, two families; the Catholics,
who were of “Standish Hall,” and the Protestants, who were of “Duxbury
Hall.” Both of these family seats are situated near the village of
Chorley, in the county of Lancashire. The income of the whole property
was large, being estimated at about five hundred thousand dollars a
year.
It is probable that Miles Standish was the legal heir to all this
property, and that, by gross injustice, he was defrauded of it. A few
years ago the heirs of Miles Standish, in this country, sent out an
agent, Mr. Bromley, to examine into the title. He thoroughly searched
the records of the parish for more than a hundred years, embracing the
period between 1549 and 1652. The result of this investigation was
fully convincing, to the mind of Mr. Bromley, that Miles Standish was
the rightful heir to the property, but that the legal evidence had been
fraudulently destroyed. In reference to this investigation, Mr. Justin
Winsor, in his History of Duxbury, writes:
“The records were all readily deciphered, with the exception of the
years 1584 and 1585; the very dates about which time Standish is
supposed to have been born. The parchment leaf, which contained the
registers of the births of these years was wholly illegible; and their
appearance was such that the conclusion was at once established that it
had been purposely done with pumice stone, or otherwise, to destroy the
legal evidence of the parentage of Standish, and his consequent title
to the estates thereabout. The mutilation of these pages is supposed
to have been accomplished when, about twenty years before, similar
enquiries were made by the family in America.”
Young Miles was educated to the military profession. England was
then in alliance with the Dutch, in one of those wars with which the
continent of Europe has ever been desolated. Miles was sent to the
Netherlands, commissioned as a lieutenant in Queen Elizabeth’s forces.
After peace was declared he remained in the country and attached
himself to the English exiles, who, in Leyden, had found refuge from
ecclesiastical oppression. He joined the first company of Pilgrims for
America, and by his bravery and sagacity, contributed greatly to the
success of their heroic enterprise.
Nothing of special moment occurred during the voyage, which was
tedious, occupying sixty-four days. One event is recorded by Bradford
as a special providence. One of the seamen, a young man of vigorous
health and lusty frame, was a very vile fellow. As he went swaggering
about the decks he lost no opportunity to insult the Pilgrims, ever
treating their religious faith with contempt. When he saw any suffering
from the awful depression of sea sickness, he would openly curse them,
and express the wish that he might have the pleasure of throwing their
bodies overboard, before they should reach the end of the voyage.
The slightest reproof would only cause him to curse and swear more
bitterly. Why the captain of the Mayflower allowed this conduct, we
are not informed. But there are other indications that he was not very
cordially in sympathy with his persecuted, comparatively friendless,
but illustrious passengers. When about half way across the Atlantic,
the dissolute young man was seized with sudden and painful sickness.
Several days of severe suffering passed, as his ribald songs and oaths
were hushed in the languor of approaching death. He died miserably, and
his body, wrapped in a tarred sheet, was cast into the sea. “Thus,”
writes Bradford, “did his curses light upon his own head. And it was an
astonishment to all his fellows, for they noted it to be the just hand
of God upon him.”
Very rough storms were encountered, often with head winds, and
the frail Mayflower was sorely strained and wrenched by gale and
surge. The shrouds were broken, the sails were rent, and seams were
opened, through the oaken ribs, which threatened the engulfing of
the ship in the yawning waves. Almost a mutiny was excited, as some,
deeming the shattered bark incapable of performing the voyage, urged
the abandonment of the expedition, and a return. After a careful
examination, by the captain and the officers, of the injury the
vessel had received, it was decided that the hull of the ship, under
water, was still strong; that, to tighten the seam opened by the main
beam, they had on board an immense iron screw, which the passengers
had brought from Holland, which would raise the beam to its place;
and that, by carefully calking the decks and upper works, and by the
cautious avoidance of spreading too much sail, they might still, in
safety, brave the perils of a stormy sea.
But we are told that many gales arose so fierce, and the sea ran so
high, that for days together they could not spread an inch of canvass,
but, in nautical phrase, were compelled to scud under bare poles. In
one of these terrific storms a young man, John Howland, who ventured
upon deck, was, by the sudden lurching of the vessel and the breaking
of a wave, swept into the sea. He seemed to have been carried down
fathoms deep under the raging billows. But, providentially, he caught
hold of the topsail halyards, which happened to hang overboard. Though
they ran out to full length, still, with a death gripe, he kept his
hold until he was drawn up to the surface of the water, when, with boat
hooks and other means, he was rescued.
The first land they made was Cape Cod. But it had been their intention
to seek a settlement somewhere near the mouth of Hudson river. They
therefore tacked about and stood for the southward. But after sailing
with a fair wind for half a day, they found themselves becalmed in the
midst of dangerous shoals and wild breakers. Alarmed by the perils
which surrounded them in such unknown seas, they resolved to make their
way back and seek the protection of the cape. A gentle breeze rose in
their favor, and swept them away from the shoals before night came on.
The next morning they anchored their storm-shattered vessel in a safe
harbor at the extremity of Cape Cod.
Governor Bradford writes feelingly: “Being thus arrived in a good
harbor, and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and
blessed the God of Heaven, who had brought them over the vast and
furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries
thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stable earth, their
proper element.”
He continues in language which we slightly modernize: “But here I
cannot but stay and make a pause, and stand half amazed at this poor
people’s present condition. And so I think will the reader too, when
he well considers the same. Being thus past the vast ocean, and a sea
of troubles before in their preparation, they had now no friends to
welcome them, nor inns to entertain or refresh their weather-beaten
bodies,--no houses, or much less, towns to repair to, to seek for
succor.
“It is recorded in Scripture, as a mercy to the apostle and his
shipwrecked company, that the barbarians showed them no small kindness
in refreshing them; but these savage barbarians, when they met with
them, as after will appear, were readier to fill their sides full of
arrows than otherwise. And for the season, it was winter; and they that
know the winters of this country, know them to be sharp and violent,
and subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known
places, much more to search an unknown coast. Besides, what could they
see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild
men? And what multitudes there might be of them they knew not. Neither
could they, as it were, go up to the top of Pisgah to view, from this
wilderness, a more goodly country to feed their hopes.
“For, which way soever they turned their eyes, save upward to the
heavens, they could have little solace or content in respect of any
outward objects. For, summer being done, all things stand upon them
with a weather-beaten face, and the whole country, full of woods and
thickets, presented a wild and savage view. If they looked behind them
there was the mighty ocean, which they had passed, and which was now as
a main bar and gulf to separate them from all the civil parts of the
world. If it be said they had a ship to succor them, it is true; but
what heard they daily from the master and company, but that with speed
they should look out a place with their shallop, where they would be at
some near distance; for the season was such that he would not stir from
thence till a safe harbor was discovered by them, where they would be
left, and where he might go without danger; and that victuals consumed
apace, but that he must and he would keep sufficient for the crew and
their return. Yea, it was muttered by some, that if the Pilgrims got
not a place soon, they would turn them and their goods ashore and leave
them.”
It was in the morning of Saturday, November 11th, that the Mayflower,
rounding the white sand cliffs of what is now Provincetown, on the
extremity of Cape Cod, entered the bay on the western side of the Cape,
where they cast anchor. Just before entering this harbor the Pilgrims
had drawn up a brief constitution of civil government, upon the basis
of republicanism, by which they mutually bound themselves to be
governed. This was the germ of the American Constitution. John Carver
they had unanimously chosen as their Governor for one year.
That afternoon a party of sixteen men, well armed, under Captain Miles
Standish, was sent on shore to explore the country in their immediate
vicinity. They returned in the early evening with rather a discouraging
report. The land was sandy and poor, but covered with quite a dense
forest of evergreens, dwarf oaks and other deciduous trees. They
could find no fresh water, and met with no signs of inhabitants. The
peninsula there seemed to be a mere sand bank, a tongue of barren land,
about a mile in breadth. The water in the bay, however, abounded with
fish and sea fowl. They brought on board much-needed fuel of the red
cedar, which emitted, in burning, a grateful fragrance.
The next day was Sunday. These devout men, who had left their native
land to encounter all the hardships and perils of the wilderness, that
they might worship God freely, according to their own sense of duty,
kept the day holy to the Lord. They had brought with them, as their
pastor, as we have mentioned, the Rev. William Brewster. He was a
gentleman by birth and in all his habits; a man of fervent piety and of
highly cultivated mind, having graduated at Cambridge University, and
having already filled several responsible stations in church and state.
Mr. Brewster preached from the deck of the Mayflower. In their temple,
whose majestic dome was the overarching skies, their hymns blended
with the moan of the wintry wind, and the dash of the surge on the
rock-bound shore.
“Amidst the storm they sang,
And the stars heard, and the sea,
And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang,
To the anthems of the free.”