The Pilgrim Chronicles

by Rod Gragg

  To steady the Mayflower in the Atlantic’s high stormy seas, the Mayflower’s master put the ship “to hull”—an extreme maneuver designed to save a ship in a killer storm.

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  Although spared widespread death on the voyage across the Atlantic, many of the Pilgrims suffered continuously with seasickness, and the many delays had depleted their food supply.

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  If they survived their long voyage across the stormy North Atlantic, the Pilgrims faced other deadly perils en route to America—including deadly shipboard illnesses. Dying aboard ship on a long sea voyage was more than just a possibility in the early seventeenth century; it was a common fate—and the Pilgrims knew it. Passengers on some New World expeditions had died in droves, and so had ships’ crews. Smallpox and tuberculosis killed countless passengers on the high seas, but the most common death-dealing diseases aboard ship were scurvy and the bloody flux. Scurvy was a progressive disease caused by a severe deficiency of vitamin C. By 1620, seasoned ship commanders were learning to avoid the illness among crews by issuing lemons and oranges, but the illness was still a notorious killer. A few decades before the Mayflower’s voyage, another Atlantic traveler—Englishman Thomas Stevens—wrote his father a letter in which he recorded a graphic eyewitness account of how scurvy affected those aboard his ship:

  After most humble commendations to crave your daily blessings, with the commendations unto my mother—

  On the 4th of April, five ships departed, wherein, besides shipmen and soldiers there were a great number of children, which in the seas bear out better than men, and no marvel, many women also pass very well. Notwithstanding when it should please God, it pleased his mercy suddenly to fill our sails with wind. . . .

  “Their legs swell and all the body becomes sore”

  The 29th of July. . . . And by reason of the long navigation, and want of food and water, [our passengers and crew] fall into sundry diseases. Their gums wax great and swell, and they are fain to cut them away.

  Their legs swell and all the body becomes sore and so benumbed that they cannot stir hand nor foot, and so they die of weakness. Others fall into fluxes and agues and die thereby. Yet, though we had more than one hundred and fifty sick, there died not past twenty-seven; which loss they esteemed not much in respect of other voyages.

  Though some of ours were diseased in this sort, yet thanks be to God, I had my health all the way, contrary to the expectation of many.

  Now this shall suffice for the time. If God send me my health, I shall have opportunity to write once again. Now . . . I wish you the most prosperous health.

  Your loving son,

  Thomas Stevens3

  “They cannot stir hand nor foot, and so they die of weakness”

  The bloody flux was severe dysentery caused by an inflammation of the intestines. It was marked by intense intestinal pain—“gripes” in the medical language of the day—along with bloody diarrhea and dehydration. Victims often grew increasingly weak, then died. The deadly malady was described in grim detail by a seventeenth-century English physician:

  In this seventeenth-century engraving, a valiant caregiver tries in vain to save hopeless victims of the bloody flux. On a long ocean voyage, scurvy and the bloody flux could kill off passengers and entire crews.

  RIJKSMUSEUM OF AMSTERDAM

  “There are always great tortures . . . and pain”

  Sometimes it begins with shaking and shivering, and a heat of the whole body follows, as is usual in fevers, and soon after the gripes and stools. But oftentimes there is no appearance of a fetter before the gripes begin, and stools soon follow. There are always great tortures and a depression of the bowels, and pain when the sick goes to stool. The Stools are likewise frequent, with a very troublesome descent, as it were, of the guts; and they are all mucous. . . . These mucous stools are streaked with blood, but sometimes there is no blood at all mixed with them through the whole course of the disease. Yet notwithstanding, if the stools are frequent with gripes and a mucous filth, the disease may as properly be called a dysentery.

  “And if he should escape death at this time, yet many symptoms of a different kind attend the poor man”

  Moreover, the sick, if he is in the flower of his age or has been heated by cordials, has a fever and his tongue is covered thick with a kind of whitish mucilage, and if he is much heated it is black and dry. The strength is much dejected, the spirits are dissipated and all the signs of an ill-fated fever are present. And this disease does not only cause violent pains and sickness, but unless it is skillfully treated, it endangers the patient’s life . . . for when a many of the spirits and a great deal of the vital heat have been exhausted by these frequent stools, he will be in danger of dying.

  Despite stormy seas and recurring seasickness, the Pilgrims managed to endure their long season at sea with the loss of a single life. They may have been spared the common shipboard diseases because of their discipline and careful hygiene.

  RIJKSMUSEUM OF AMSTERDAM

  And if he should escape death at this time, yet many symptoms of a different kind attend the poor man. For instance, sometimes in the progress of the disease. . . . the greater vessels of the intestines are corroded, and so the patient is in danger of death; and sometimes also by reason of the great burning . . . the intestines are gangrened. Moreover, a thirst at the end of this disease does very often affect the mouth and jaws, especially when the body has been a long time heated. . . . But though this disease is very often deadly in the adult, and especially to old people, yet ’tis very gentle in children, who sometimes have it some months without any injury, if it be left to nature.4

  “Many Were Afflicted with Seasickness”

  The Pilgrims Endure a Hard Passage across the Atlantic

  Camped day after day in dim, makeshift quarters between decks aboard the Mayflower, the Pilgrims were ideal targets for the bloody flux, scurvy, and other common shipboard killers. Remarkably, they escaped the widespread death that so often spread through passenger quarters on long voyages. Perhaps they maintained better hygiene in their quarters than typical ships’ passengers, and were more disciplined about emptying their toilets into the sea. Or, as some historians would later speculate, did the Mayflower’s long service as a merchant vessel hauling French wines to England produce enough alcohol-laced spillage to somehow make the ship’s planking antiseptic? Whatever the reasons, their voyage aboard the Mayflower was surprisingly free of death. One passenger died at sea. His name was William Butten, an apprentice, who was believed to have been about fifteen years old.

  The Pilgrims counted 102 passengers aboard the Mayflower, including three pregnant women. They were composed of twenty-four families, which included fifteen families from Holland and the rest from England. Among their ranks were sixty-nine adults—fifty men and nineteen women—along with fourteen teenage youths, and nineteen children aged twelve or younger. Counting the unborn children, there were 105 passengers, including an infant born on the voyage who was appropriately named “Oceanus.” Most of the adults were under age forty.

  Although Christopher Martin was the Mayflower’s “governor” and represented the interests of the Merchant Adventurers, he and the other non-Separatists—the “Strangers”—were not the driving force among the Pilgrims, even though they may have been a numerical majority. The group’s direction and motivation came from the fifteen families from Holland—the Leiden Separatists—along with the other Separatists who had joined the expedition in England. It was their vision and leadership that had launched this daring mission into the American wilderness, and they would continue to set its course even though their numbers were at least equaled by the “Strangers.”

  The occupations represented among the Pilgrims included merchants, textile workers, tailors, servants, seamen, homemakers, and at least one carpenter, printer, physician, blacksmith, tanner, cobbler, hatmaker, cooper, sawyer, and soldier. The soldier was Myles Standish, the Pilgrims’ m
ilitary commander, who had joined the voyage with his wife Rose. In his mid-thirties, red-headed, short in stature, and bold in personality, Standish had fought the Spanish in Holland as a lieutenant with English mercenary troops. When the twelve-year truce brought peace to Holland, Standish reportedly settled in Leiden, where he was befriended by Pastor Robinson’s Separatist congregation, and agreed to make the voyage to America as the colony’s military advisor.

  Three of the passengers aboard the Mayflower were pregnant women. While sailing on the open sea, Elizabeth Hopkins, the wife of Stephen Hopkins, gave birth to a son. Appropriately, the couple named him Oceanus.

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  The printer was, of course, William Brewster, the church elder who would serve as the lay leader and substitute for Pastor Robinson. Brewster was accompanied by his wife Mary and their two sons, who bore the Puritan-style names of Love and Wrestling—the latter presumably named from the Genesis account of Jacob wrestling with an angel. Also aboard was Deacon John Carver, the church leader who had helped arrange the voyage with Robert Cushman in London, although he apparently had been spared the controversy that Cushman experienced. In his mid-forties, Carver made the voyage with his wife Katherine and five servants. The other church leader to whom the Pilgrims looked for guidance was William Bradford, who weathered the stormy voyage with his wife Dorothy, comforted perhaps by the knowledge that their young son was safely back home. Bradford would prove, among many roles, to be the foremost chronicler of the Pilgrim story, but another passenger—Edward Winslow—would also record much of the Pilgrim experience. About twenty-five years old at the time of the voyage, Winslow was the son of an English salt merchant, and worked in William Brewster’s printing firm in Holland. There he had joined Pastor Robinson’s church, where he married his wife Elizabeth, who accompanied him on the voyage.

  Notable among the “Strangers” aboard the Mayflower was Stephen Hopkins, who had been shipwrecked in Bermuda en route to the colony of Virginia in 1609. In Bermuda, he had been caught up in an attempted mutiny and was sentenced to be hanged, then was reprieved and sent on to Jamestown for two years. His adventures reportedly inspired Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, and now he was again sailing to America—this time with the largest family aboard. Accompanying Hopkins were his two daughters, his son, two servants and his wife Elizabeth—who gave birth to baby Oceanus en route. Also on the voyage was the quarrelsome John Billington along with his family, who had joined the group in England. Described by Bradford as a “knave,” Billington would be hanged for murder a decade later. Aboard the Mayflower, he and his family—“one of the profanest families amongst them,” in Bradford’s opinion—were apparently a cantankerous lot. Another unusual family was composed of the four More children—Mary, Richard, Jasper, and Ellen—whose aristocratic father, Samuel More, had discovered that the four children were the result of a secret adulterous relationship conducted by his wife. To give the children a new and less scandalous start in life, he sent them to America aboard the Mayflower in the care of John Carver. To see that the children received adequate attention, Carver and his wife cared for one, and placed the others with the Brewsters and Winslows. Also aboard the Mayflower were two dogs the Pilgrims had brought along—a spaniel and a huge mastiff.

  Englishman Myles Standish was recruited by the Pilgrims to serve as their military commander. A former officer in the English army, he had battled the Spanish in Holland, and traveled aboard the Mayflower with his wife Rose.

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  Although spared widespread death aboard the Mayflower, the Pilgrims undoubtedly suffered aboard ship. Seriously behind schedule, they were low on rations, and in the cramped, dark quarters between decks, many of them were severely stricken by bouts of seasickness. Adding to their misery, they were mercilessly taunted as people of faith by a mean-spirited member of the Mayflower’s crew. The sailor—“a proud and very profane young man” in Bradford’s words—tormented the Separatists day after day, repeatedly mocking and cursing them, and declaring that he hoped to see them die and cast overboard. Instead, he was struck down by “a grievous disease” halfway across the Atlantic, and—to the sobering astonishment of the crew—it was his body that was “thrown overboard.” A near-death drama did befall one of John Carver’s servants, a young man named John Howland, who was swept overboard in a storm. Miraculously, he managed to grasp a loose line trailing the ship and was hauled ashore by crewmen using a boat hook.

  Years later, William Bradford would pen a brief but memorable recollection of the Mayflower’s stormy passage to America.

  These troubles being blown over, and now being all compact together in one ship, they put to sea again with a prosperous wind, which continued for divers days together, which was some encouragement to them; yet according to the usual manner, many were afflicted with seasickness. And I may not omit here a special work of God’s providence. There was a proud and very profane young man, one of the seamen, of a lusty, able body, which made him the more haughty; he would always be condemning the poor people in their sickness, and cursing them daily with grievous execrations, and did not let to tell them that he hoped to help cast half of them overboard before they came to their journey’s end, and to make merry with what they had; and if he were gently reproved by any one, he would curse and swear most bitterly. But it pleased God, before they came half [the] seas over, to smite the young man with a grievous disease, of which he died in a desperate manner, and so was himself the first that was thrown overboard. Thus his curses fell 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.

  After they had enjoyed fair winds and weather for some time, they were encountered many times with cross winds and many fierce storms by which the ship was severely shaken, and her upper works made very leaky. One of the main beams amidships was bowed and cracked, which put them in some fear that the ship might not be able to perform the voyage. So some of the chief of the company, perceiving the mariners to fear the sufficiency of the ship, as appeared by their mutterings, they entered into serious consultation with the master and other officers of the ship to consider the danger and to return rather than to cast themselves into desperate and inevitable peril. And truly there was great distraction and difference of opinion among the mariners themselves. . . .

  “He hoped to help cast half of them overboard”

  But in examining all opinions, the master and others affirmed they knew the ship to be strong and firm [under the water-line], and for the buckling of the main beam, there was a great iron screw the passengers brought out of Holland, which would raise the beam into his place; the which being done, the carpenter and master affirmed that with a post put under it, set firm in the lower deck and otherwise bound, he would make it sufficient. And as for the decks and upper works, they would caulk them as well as they could, and though with the working of the ship they would not long keep staunch, yet there would otherwise be no great danger, if they did not overpress her with sails. So they committed themselves to the will of God and resolved to proceed.

  In several of these storms the winds were so fierce and the seas so high, as they could not bear a knot of sail, but were forced to hull for divers days together. And in one of them, as they thus lay at hull in a mighty storm, a lusty young man called John Howland, coming upon some occasion above the gratings was, with a roll of the ship, thrown into the sea; but it pleased God that he caught hold of the topsail halyards which hung overboard and ran out at length. Yet he held his hold (though he was several fathoms under water) till he was hauled up by the same rope to the brim of the water, and then with a boat hook and other means got into the ship again and his life was saved. And though he was something ill with it, yet he lived many years after and became a profitable member both in church and commonwealth. In all this voyage there died but one of the passengers, which was William Butten, a youth, [and a] servant to Samuel Fuller. . . .5

  “The winds wer
e so fierce and the seas so high”

  It was every sailor’s fear in the seventeenth century—being washed overboard in a stormy sea. It happened aboard the Mayflower—but with an unlikely rescue.

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  “Lions and Tigers as well as Unicorns”

  The Pilgrims Ponder What Awaits Them in the Wilderness

  What awaited them in the wilderness of America? Surely that question was repeated day after day among the Pilgrims, and it no doubt tormented some. In their quest for freedom of faith, they had turned away from all that was familiar to them and had abandoned the comforts as well as the challenges of European civilization. Would their new lives in the wilderness be marked by joys and success? Or would they die of illness or starvation and, like so many others, be swallowed up by the New World? As Bradford would repeatedly observe, they trusted in the sovereignty of God, had “committed themselves to the will of God and resolved to proceed,” and although at times fearful, they were undoubtedly curious about what they would discover in America when their difficult voyage finally ended. They had unquestionably been exposed to reports from decades of American explorations, including some that were dependable—and others that were not. As the Pilgrims prepared for their voyage to America, published reports of English explorer John Hawkins’s adventures in America were circulating in England. According to the accounts of Hawkins’s 1565 visit to an ill-fated French Huguenot colony in Florida, the American wilderness contained tigers, three-headed snakes, and unicorns: