by Rod Gragg
It may have been while docked for repairs in Plymouth that Pilgrim leaders met with English explorer John Smith, who had explored America’s northern coast. Smith later claimed that the Pilgrims had unwisely turned down his offer to accompany them to the New World.
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
About that, the Pilgrims were correct. In another memoir published nine years later, Smith dismissed them as “Brownists” and derided them for what he called their “humorous ignorance.” Obviously ruffled by their rejection of his services, he grumped that the Pilgrims “had to endure a wonderful deal of misery” because they concluded “that my books and maps were much better cheap to teach them, than myself.” Armed with what they believed to be adequate preparation and the “special work of God’s providence,” the Pilgrims again sailed westward into the deep waters of the Atlantic. “These troubles being blown over,” William Bradford wrote, “and now more compact together in one ship, they put to sea again with a prosperous wind. . . .” As the Mayflower passed Lizard’s Point once more, did the Pilgrims go topside and watch England’s receding coast disappear over the horizon? And, as they found themselves surrounded with nothing but the expanse of ocean, did they ponder Captain Smith’s description of Virginia and “the North of America” as recorded in A Description of New England?
“And now more compact together in one ship, they put to sea again with a prosperous wind”
Virginia is no isle, as many do imagine, but part of the continent adjoining to Florida, whose bounds may be stretched to the magnitude thereof without offense to any Notes of Christian inhabitant. For, from the degrees of 30 to 45, his majesty hath granted his letters patent, the coast extending southwest and northeast about fifteen hundred miles, but to follow it aboard the shore may well be two thousand at the least, of which twenty miles is the most gives entrance into the Bay of Chesapeake, where is the London plantation, within which is a country (as you may perceive by the description in a book and map printed in my name of that little I there discovered), may well suffice three hundred thousand people to inhabit. . . .
A few years before the Pilgrims sailed for America, John Smith had published a map of New England based on his exploration. The Pilgrims apparently carried Smith’s book and map with them to America, but their decision not to employ Smith caused him to deride them for what he called “humorous ignorance.”
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The route of the PIlgrims’ voyage from Holland to England and into the Atlantic—with their repeated false starts—placed them in three ports in southern England before their final departure.
MAP BY AMBER COLLERAN
“Not so much as the borders of the sea are yet certainly discovered”
Thus, you may see, of this two thousand miles more than half is yet unknown to any purpose, no, not so much as the borders of the sea are yet certainly discovered. As for the goodness and true substances of the land, we are for most part yet altogether ignorant of them, unless it be those parts about the Bay of Chesapeake and Sagadahoc, but only here and there we touched or have seen a little the edges of those large dominions which do stretch themselves into the main, God doth know how many thousand miles. . . .
That part we call New England is betwixt the degrees of 41 and 45, but that part this discourse speaks of stretches from Penobscot to Cape Cod, some seventy-five leagues by a right line distant each from other, description of within which bounds I have seen at least forty several habitations upon the sea coast, and sounded about twenty-five excellent good harbors, in many whereof there is anchorage for five hundred sail of ships, in some of them for five thousand; and more than two hundred isles overgrown with good timber of divers sorts of wood, which do make so many harbors as requires a longer time than I had to be well discovered. . . .
Betwixt Sagadahoc and Sowocatuc there are but two or three sandy bays, but betwixt that and Cape Cod very many; especially the coast of the Massachusetts is so indifferently mixed with high clayey or sandy cliffs in one place, and then tracts of large, long ledges of divers sorts, and quarries of stone in other places so strangely divided with tinctured veins of divers colors, as freestone for building, slate for tiling, smooth stone to make furnaces and forges for glass or iron, and iron ore sufficient conveniently to melt in them; but the most part so resembles the coast of Devonshire, I think most of the cliffs would make such limestone. . . . And of all the four parts of the world that I have yet seen not inhabited, could I have but means to transport a colony, I would rather live here than anywhere. . . .
“Could I have but means to transport a colony, I would rather live here than anywhere”
This is only as God made it when he created the world. Therefore I conclude, if the heart and entrails of those regions were sought, if their land were cultivated, planted, and manured by men of industry, judgment, and experience, what hope is there, or what need they doubt, having those advantages of the sea, but it might equalize any of those famous kingdoms, in all commodities, pleasures, and conditions; seeing even the very edges do naturally afford us such plenty, as no ship need return away empty, and only use but the season of the sea, fish will return an honest gain, besides all other advantages, her treasures having yet never been opened, nor her originals wasted, consumed, nor abused. . . .4
“Biscuit,” “Thwart Saws,” and “Black Oakum”
The Pilgrims Pack the Mayflower for a One-Way Voyage
Not only did the crowded Mayflower have to transport crew and passengers across the stormy northern Atlantic, it was also loaded with rations for the voyage, the Pilgrims’ carefully selected personal possessions, and a cargo of tools, equipment, and supplies deemed necessary for setting up life in the wilderness and for engaging in a fur and fishing trade. If the Mayflower carried a cargo manifest, it was lost over the passage of time, but a list of tools, equipment, and supplies bound for a colony in Newfoundland a few years later did survive, and it likely lists much of what accompanied the Pilgrims to America. The Pilgrims probably equipped themselves with rations ranging from biscuits (which had a long shelf-life)—to beer (a staple of the English diet due to the lack of safe drinking water), along with butter, peas, cheese, and aqua-vitae (a survival drink made of distilled wine or brandy). The tools needed to hack out a new life in the American wilderness likely would have included hammers, nails, axes, mattocks, and thwart-saws (the period name for a cross-cut saw). Based on the cargo list for the Newfoundland colony, the equipment stowed aboard the Mayflower by the Pilgrims probably included kettles, frying pans, pots, platters, ladles, bread-baskets, and flaskets (a long, shallow clothesbasket). Nautical equipment brought along to be used in the Pilgrims’ fishing trade may have included orlop nails (used in repairing a ship’s lower deck), canvas necessary for repairs, seine nets, fishing hooks and lines, sow lead (a wedge of lead for making weights), and black oakum (ship’s calking made from linen).
Excerpted below is the list from the early seventeenth-century Newfoundland expedition:
A woodcutter at work on a tree. The Pilgrims had to bring tools aboard the Mayflower to make a new life in the wilderness of America.
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Dutch children tote jugs of milk in the wintertime. A variety of containers used in everyday life had to be transported with the passengers aboard the Mayflower.
STORIES OF THE PILGRIMS
10,000 weight of biscuit
2 Hogsheads of English beef
Fat hogs, salted with salt, and casks
2 Firkins of butter
1 Bushel of mustard
15 Wood to dress meat withal
2 Small kettles
34 Platters, ladles, and cans
26 Taps, borers, and funnels
100 Weight of candles
Mats and dunnage
Particulars for the persons aboard
Keep 8 fishing boats at sea with 3 men to boat
Canvas to make boat-fails and small ropes
4000 Nails
500 Weight o
f pitch
Other small necessaries
200 Weight of black oakum
26 Tuns of beer and cider
2 Hogsheads of Irish beef
30 Bushels of peas
200 Weight of cheese
1 Hogshead of vinegar
1 Great copper kettle
2 Frying-pans
A pair of bellows for the cook
Locks for the bread-rooms
130 Quarters of salt
Salt shovels
500 feet of elm boards 1-inch thick
10 Rod ropes
2000 Nails for the 8 boats
2000 orlop nails
Twine for Kipnets and gagging hooks
A barrel of tar
100 Thrums for pitch maps
16 Bowls, buckets, and pumps
12 Dozen fishing hooks
Squid line
Iron works for the boats’ rudders
10 good nets
200 weight of sow-lead
100 Dry-fats to keep them in
Flaskets and bread-baskets
Canvas for boat-fails and small ropes
24 Dozen of fishing hooks
Pots and liver maunds
10 Kipnet irons
2 Seines, a great and a less
Couple of ropes for the seines
Twine for store
Hair cloth
3 Tuns of vinegar cask for water
2 Barrels of oatmeal
2 Good axes
3 Yards of woolen cloth for cuffs
A Grindstone or two
1 Hogshead of aqua-vitæ
4 hand saws
3 augers
3 fledges
2 pick-axes
4 hammers
1 Dozen deal boards
100 Weight of spikes
4 drawers, 2 drawing irons
8 Yards of good canvas
2000 of poor-john to spend in going
4 arm saws
4 thwart saws
2 crows of iron
4 shod shovels
4 mattocks
4 hand-hatchets
An English mother bakes bread in the kitchen of her cottage. Possessions taken to the New World in the 1600s typically included pots, pans, platters, ladles, and bread-baskets.
BRITISH LIBRARY
A cutaway image of a period galley reveals the amount of cargo stored in the ship’s hold. Passenger cargo had to be stowed carefully aboard the Mayflower, which carried a full capacity of passengers.
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
As the Mayflower sailed into open waters and headed westward, the Pilgrims were already in trouble. They were now two months behind schedule, and ahead of them lay two more months on the dangerous north Atlantic.5
CHAPTER SEVEN
“They . . . Encountered . . . Many Fierce Storms”
Ferocious, stormy seas battered the Mayflower with giant waves, sending foaming seawater splashing over its decks, while sheets of wind-driven rain pelted the stricken ship relentlessly. Halfway between England and America, the Mayflower was caught in a deadly North Atlantic gale, which threatened to sink the ship and drown its passengers and crew. Although the voyage had begun with fair weather and “a prosperous wind,” about a thousand miles into its three-thousand-mile voyage the ship was slammed by a series of furious, deadly storms. According to William Bradford, “the ship was [severely] shaken, and her upper works were made very leaky.”
In a violent gale, even a 180-ton vessel like the Mayflower could be rendered helpless by the mighty North Atlantic. Mammoth, billowing waves could hurl a ship upward toward a foamy, watery peak and then send it plunging downward through a chasm of waves to what appeared to be certain destruction. At one point, caught in the violent vortex of gale-force winds and seas, the Mayflower appeared to be facing its end. Waves rolled over the decks, seawater seeped through the vessel’s hull, and then—to the horror of passengers and crew—the massive interior wooden beam supporting the Mayflower’s deck began to crack.1
A thousand miles across the Atlantic, the Mayflower was pummeled by a series of furious storms that threatened to end the Pilgrim colony before it could begin.
AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY
“Swallowed Up by the Sea”
The Fierce Atlantic Demonstrates Its Violent Nature
As the Mayflower was dangerously pounded by wind and waves, the Pilgrims aboard may have thought about the fate of General Humphrey Gilbert, whose ship—the Hind—and all aboard were lost in an Atlantic storm in 1583. Gilbert, half-brother of explorer Sir Walter Raleigh, had led a five-ship flotilla from England to North America, where he had attempted to establish a colony in Newfoundland. On his return voyage, he had rashly sailed his ship into an Atlantic gale. In seas like those that battered the Mayflower, Gilbert and his ship were lost with all aboard.
Details of the general’s death at sea were common knowledge among the English people in 1620, and his story was undoubtedly familiar to the Pilgrims. As the Mayflower was buffeted by the fierce Atlantic, did they think about Gilbert and what befell him in the same ocean? His fate, which easily could have befallen the Pilgrims, was recorded by one of his officers:
I will hasten to the end of this tragedy, which must be knit up in the person of our General. And as it was God’s ordinance upon him, even so the vehement persuasion and entreaty of his friends could nothing avail to divert him from a willful resolution of going through [the storm] in his frigate, which was overcharged upon their decks with fights, nettings, and small artillery, too cumbersome for so small a boat, that was to pass through the ocean sea at that season of the year, when by course we might expect much storm [and] foul weather, whereof indeed we had enough.
“Men which all their lifetime had occupied the sea never saw more outrageous seas”
But when he was entreated by the captain, master and others . . . not to venture out in the frigate, this was his answer: “I will not forsake my little company going homeward, with whom I have passed so many storms and perils.” And in very truth, he was urged on by hard reports given of him that he was afraid of the sea, albeit this was rather rashness . . . to prefer the wind of a vain report to the weight of his own life.
Sir Humphrey Gilbert
TORONTO PUBLIC LIBRARY
Seeing he would not bend to reason, he had provisions out of the Hind such as was wanting aboard his frigate. And so we committed him to God’s protection, and set him aboard his ship, we being more than 300 leagues onward of our way home. By that time we had brought the Islands of Azores south of us, yet we then keeping much to the north, until we had got into the height and elevation of England, we met with very foul weather and terrible seas, breaking short and high . . . as we see hills and dales upon the land. . . .
However it came to pass, men which all their lifetime had occupied the sea never saw more outrageous seas. We had also upon our mainyard, an apparition of a little fire by night, which seamen do call Castor and Pollux. But we had only one, which they take an evil sign of more tempest: the same is usual in storms Monday the ninth of September, in the afternoon, [General Gilbert’s] frigate was near cast away, oppressed by waves, yet at that time it recovered, giving forth signs of joy. The General, sitting [in the stern] with a book in his hand, cried out to us in the Hind, “We are as near to heaven by sea as by land,” [which was] speech well becoming a soldier resolute in Jesus Christ, as I can testify he was.
Period illustration of Humphrey Gilbert’s flagship, the Golden Hind, which sank in an Atlantic storm. As they endured their own stormy ordeal, did the Pilgrims think about Gilbert and his lost ship?
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
“Suddenly her lights were out”
The same Monday night, about twelve of the clock, or not long after, the frigate being ahead of us in the Golden Hind, suddenly her lights were out. Whereof, as it were in a moment, we lost the sight and our watch cried that the General was cast away, which was too true. For in that moment, the frigate was devoured and
swallowed up by the sea.2
“This Disease Is Very Often Deadly”
The Pilgrims Face the Threat of Shipboard Killers
Unlike General Gilbert’s ship, the Mayflower survived its close brush with disaster in the stormy Atlantic—thanks to savvy seamanship, Pilgrim ingenuity, and—in William Bradford’s words—“the will of God.” As the Mayflower’s main beam began to buckle, threatening to disable and perhaps even sink the ship, Captain Jones desperately conferred with key crew members and the Pilgrim leaders. Together, they conceived an ingenious plan to keep the main beam from buckling. The Pilgrims had stowed a peculiar device aboard the Mayflower—something Bradford would later describe as “a great iron screw.” Historians would later ponder its purpose. Was it part of a printing press, brought to America to print Separatist literature or Bibles? Or was it a simple house jack, prudently hauled to the New World to help the Pilgrims build homes in the wilderness? Whatever its purpose, the “great iron screw” was wedged under the long interior beam where it was splitting and was secured by the ship’s carpenter, preventing the beam from buckling.
At one point in the voyage, when high seas and strong winds made sailing impossible, Captain Jones decided to put the Mayflower “to hull”—furling the ship’s sails, tying down everything on deck and then securing the ship’s helm leeward or downwind. The nautical maneuver, skillfully executed by Jones, steadied the ship amid the violent, rolling seas. Although the ship had been “shrewdly shaken, and her upper works made very leaky,” the tactic allowed the Mayflower to easily ride out the storm. “So they committed themselves to the will of God. . .,” Bradford observed.
