One Small Candle: The Pilgrim's First Year in America (The Thomas Fleming Library)

by Thomas Fleming

  Jones told them he had confidence in his ship, his crew, and himself. As for crossing alone, dozens of ships had done it.

  True enough, but the loners were largely fishermen, with no one aboard to feed but their crews. The other colonizing expeditions had all sailed in groups of two and three ships or more. Being blown a thousand miles off course or drifting for days in a dead calm were constant possibilities. With a hundred passengers to feed, supplies could vanish. For the landsman, the presence of other ships was a small reassurance that if the one he was aboard got in trouble, it did not mean the end.

  Christopher Jones’s calm confidence was born of thousands of hours at sea. For those to whom the land was more familiar, facing the Atlantic in a single ship could not have been a pleasant thought. But after more prayer and meditation, the voyagers found their courage was “answerable.” They decided, in William Bradford’s words, to “proceed with the other ship. The which (though it was grievous and caused great discouragement) was put into execution.”

  Supplies were lugged from the Speedwell to the Mayflower. Captain Jones meanwhile worked out the maximum number he could take aboard without unnecessary danger. They were not going to repeat Blackwell’s fatal overcrowding. About twenty passengers would have to be sent back.

  With what had already happened, it was not especially difficult to find twenty more than willing to turn around. “Those that went back were for the most part such as were willing so to do, either out of some discontent or fear they conceived of the ill success of the voyage,” William Bradford says, “seeing so many crosses befall, and the year time so far spent. But others in regard of their own 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.” Among those who were most willing to stay home was Robert Cushman and his family. Seasickness and forebodings of disaster had taken their toll. “Heart and courage was gone from them,” Bradford says.

  The Speedwell returned to London with the twenty dischargees. There, she would be taken over by Weston and his fellow merchants, sold at a loss, and, as Bradford writes with chagrin, “put into her old trim, she made many voyages and performed her service very sufficiently to the great profit of her owners.” Bradford casts some severe aspersions on the character of Captain Reynolds, accusing him of deliberately piling sail on the Speedwell to make her seams open, because he and his crew wanted to escape their contract to stay a year in the New World. “They plotted this stratagem, to free themselves; as afterwards was known and by some of them confessed,” Bradford says. It is possible, but it is equally possible that Reynolds wanted to make sure he had a sound ship before he got too far out on the Atlantic.

  Whatever the truth of the Speedwell’s collapse, she was lost. The exiles faced the Atlantic, and the wilderness, without her. “Like Gideon’s army,” Bradford writes, “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.” Only such profound faith could find optimism in what had befallen the expedition thus far. By now it was September 6. They could look forward to arriving on a savage coast at the beginning of winter. It was over seven weeks since the Mayflower had sailed from London, six since the Speedwell had left Delftshaven. They had already consumed all the provisions they had calculated for their voyage. Now they were eating food that they might need to stay alive after they landed.

  Their only consolation was the friendly treatment they had received from the Plymouth shipwrights and other citizens who had offered them the hospitality of the town. They had also had some interesting conversations with Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the governor of Plymouth and head of the Council for New England. He had assured them that the company expected to receive its royal charter any day now, and urged them to give up their plans for the mouth of Hudson’s River and select any place they chose in New England. He would confirm their rights instantly, and back them up with all the resources his company could muster. The colonists had listened politely and said they would give the matter further consideration on their voyage. But privately they still preferred to trust the patent they had in hand rather than one that might or might not be lurking in the royal bush.

  So “all being compact together in one ship,” Bradford says, “they put to sea again with a prosperous wind.” This time there were no loving tears or well-wishing prayers to see them on their way. One writer has imagined a conversation between a townsman and one of the Mayflower’s crew a few days before they sailed:

  “Who are they folk? What seek they?”

  “Mark ye, I know only they be in part puke stocking louts, for to dig in the ground, and part psalmsingers, what pray day and night.”

  “Ye go on wages, or shares?”

  “By Gys, on wages, man! There’ll be no shares, ha! ha!”

  It may well have happened. By now the superstitious sailors must have been convinced that these “psalmsingers” were hopelessly hexed. As for the rest of England, they did not even give them a passing thought. In London they were talking about King James’s deplorable weakness in dealing with Spain. The Thirty Years’ War, which was to reduce Germany’s population by one-third before it was over, had begun in Bohemia, and now Spain had entered the conflict on the side of the Catholics, sending an army rampaging through the Palatinate of the Rhine, which was ruled by James’s Protestant son-in-law Frederick. The English court was in an uproar, with the king hysterically denouncing Spain and vowing that the long-talked-of marriage between the Spanish infanta and Charles, the Prince of Wales, was forever canceled. Along Holland’s borders, Spain was readying more legions for another assault on the Dutch Republic. With Europe about to go up in flames, who could stop to notice a handful of tattered exiles sailing west in a weather-beaten freighter, under the absurd delusion that God would somehow protect them in their amateur assault on a wilderness that had already defeated thousands of tougher, better equipped pioneers?

  A “fine small gale” blowing east by northeast sent the Mayflower bounding out upon the North Atlantic at a six- or seven-knot pace. It was a welcome gift, but it had its dark side. Almost everyone promptly became seasick as the old ship pitched and rolled through the swells. With sanitation facilities limited to buckets and 102 passengers, including some thirty-four children aboard, life below deck must have been anything but pleasant.

  No one knows exactly how the voyagers arranged themselves on the Mayflower, but there have been some good educated guesses. To get an adequate picture, we must first take another look at the ship herself. As a freighter, she was built for roominess and carrying capacity. From the center of her taffrail on the stern to the end of the “beak” under the bowsprit forward, she measured about 113 feet. Between the deep hold and the upper deck was a gun deck about twenty-six feet wide and seventy-eight feet long. It was here that most of the passengers were settled. From the gun deck the Mayflower’s sides “tumbled” in until she was only nineteen feet wide on her upper deck.

  Forward on the upper deck was the forecastle, where the thirty-man crew lived. A good portion of it was taken up by the galley, and the foremast was stepped through the forward end of it, not leaving much space for thirty men in a compartment that was only fourteen feet long and thirteen feet wide at one end and about seventeen feet wide at the other. But the average sailor traveled light, and at sea half the men were always on duty.

  Next came the ship’s waist, the lowest part of the upper deck, where even in mild weather the spray would come gushing over. Then came the half deck, some six feet higher, and finally, up another four feet, the lofty poop deck, where the captain surveyed his domain. The house created by the half deck was called the steerage, and it was here that the helmsman stood, guiding his ship with a whipstaff, a huge lever attached to the tiller head beneath his feet. A tiny hatch above him cast light on the “bittacle” in front of him, containing the ship’s two compa
sses. He took his orders from above, where the officer of the deck could see how the ship was heading.

  Below the poop deck was the poop house, a moderately roomy cabin perhaps thirteen by seventeen, where the master’s mates dined and otherwise relaxed. Directly below this was the Great Cabin, where the captain slept and ate in lonely splendor. Some writers have conjectured that the Mayflower’s poop house was divided in half and that about eighteen passengers were accommodated here. We also suspect that Captain Jones gave up his cabin and joined his mates in the crowded quarters of the divided poop house, giving bunk room to another thirty-six adults. There were eighteen married couples and eleven unmarried girls, many in their early teens, as well as eight or ten very young children aboard. Most of these probably went into the after-house cabins, where there was some small degree of privacy. This would leave about fifty-four people to be taken care of on the gun deck, where measurements indicate there was bunk room enough for around seventy-five. These were married men without wives, bachelors, and grown boys. Some slept in the shallop, which had been divided into four parts and stowed here. Others may have had crude bunks built into the ship’s sides, or imitated the sailors in their hammocks.

  This may have disposed the passengers for the night, but no one sleeps twenty-four hours a day, especially children. From the first day at sea, there was friction between crew and passengers. No doubt many of them got in the way while the sailors were trying to work the ship. A square-rigger like the Mayflower had (to the landsman’s eye) an incredible tangle of yards and lines to manipulate. As they leaped to obey a mate’s order to trim a mainsail or alter a yard, the sailors did not relish tripping over children or brushing aside a gaping female. Men who had the detested graveyard watch, midnight to 4 A.M., were infuriated by the shouts and laughter of playing children during the day while they were trying to sleep.

  To add to the bedlam, there were two dogs aboard, a husky mastiff belonging to Peter Brown and a small spaniel owned by John Goodman. The mastiff would be useful as a watchdog. Previous explorers had found that the Indians were easily frightened by this fierce English breed. The spaniel would seem to have been tolerated as a consolation for Goodman, who had left his bride of two months behind.

  Even without the minor irritations created by dogs and children, the passengers and the crew were poorly matched. The average seaman of 1620 was an illiterate, profane brawler with nothing but contempt for landlubbers. Watching their seasick passengers staggering about the ship for the first few days hardly increased the crew’s admiration, and when the passengers gathered in the Mayflower’s waist each morning for psalms and prayers, their contempt became monumental.

  Religion was synonymous with the droning sermons of the village parson and the humdrum life of the family man which they had gone to sea to escape. It was a positive affront to find piety pursuing them here on the ocean.

  Muttered complaints about “glib-gabbety puke-stockings” quickly grew into outspoken mockery. The sailors took special pleasure in bawling oaths and profanities at the top of their lungs, and the ship’s officers apparently made no effort to restrain them. The boatswain’s mate, the man who would be closest to the able seamen and in the best position to stop them, was one of the ringleaders, taking delight in adding to the oaths a few choice selections of his own.

  One sailor, described by William Bradford as a “proud and very profane young man, of a lusty able body, which made him the more haughty,” was particularly nasty. “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 to cast half of them overboard before they came to their journey’s end, and make merry with what they had.” The mild, peace-loving exiles simply did not know how to cope with such a character. The leaders, such as John Carver and William Brewster, “gently” reproached him. But this only made him curse and swear and taunt the passengers even more “bitterly.”

  They were at sea a little more than two weeks – “before they came half seas over,” in William Bradford’s phrase - when this proud and profane young man was inexplicably stricken with a sudden disease. In the space of a few days, perhaps even hours, he died “in a desperate manner,” raving and cursing to his last breath. One doctor who has studied the story suspects that the man succumbed to delirium tremens. He may well have broken into the ship’s ample liquor supply and drunk himself to death. The other possibilities - scurvy or typhus - are ruled out because no one else was reported ill, and these two common killers of 1620 always struck in plague proportions.

  The other seamen were more than a little appalled by the sudden demise of their champion. Superstitious to a man, they could not help wondering if these humble singers of psalms had some special powers or favored position with God. “It was an astonishment to all his fellows,” Bradford notes with quiet satisfaction, and for the rest of the voyage no one in the crew was inclined to taunt or torment the passengers with such uninhibited malice.

  By now most of the company had gotten their sea legs and were beginning to create a routine out of the cramped monotony of shipboard life. To our eyes, used to ocean liners as tall as skyscrapers, the Mayflower would be little more than an oversized rowboat. But there was room enough on board for children to play such mild games as skipping rope, and a fair number of adults could enjoy the sea air on the upper decks without dangerously crowding them.

  But for young married couples, such as the Bradfords, the lack of privacy must have been painful. Numerous inaccurate paintings and poems have left us with the general impression that most of these people were middle-aged or older. Actually, only four had reached their fifties - John Carver, Mr. and Mrs. Brewster, and James Chilton, the Canterbury tailor, who was the oldest at fifty-seven. Four others were in their forties, and the rest were in their thirties and twenties.

  But the problem of privacy was overshadowed in these first weeks by the food - once their stomachs had settled enough to taste it. The range of what was available for a long voyage was not wide. The only way they could preserve meat was to pickle it in brine. Beef, pork, and fish, thus treated, were on the menu, along with biscuits made of wheat flour and dried pea flour cooked into saucer-sized discs. These were the two perennials; most ships alternated between “fish days” and “meat days.” Dried ground peas were also available, as well as Holland cheese. Mush, oatmeal, and pease pudding were also occasionally included.

  The opportunity to do any genuine cooking was practically nonexistent. The galley was barred to the passengers; with one cook to feed officers and crew - perhaps forty men - it was impossible to undertake feeding a hundred passengers. Most of this unpalatable menu was therefore served cold, with a minimum of cooking allowed over a little “hearth-box” filled with sand, probably on a rotating-family basis.

  The women may well have taken a cue from the ship’s cook and served an occasional pea soup or a lobscouse, a thick soup or stew containing chunks of salt meat. Soup was always welcome aboard because it gave the diners something to soften their biscuits in - after a few weeks they became as hard as cannon balls. For a treat there may have been burgoo, oatmeal sweetened with molasses, or doughboys, dumplings of wet flour boiled in pork fat, or best of all, plum duff, a suet pudding containing raisins or prunes.

  All this was washed down with quantities of beer. The crew’s daily ration was a quart per man, and the voyagers probably drank that much too. No one in 1620 would drink water except as a last desperate recourse. The best medical opinion held that it was injurious to health and often fatal. Aboard ship, the opinion was well founded. Water was carried in charred casks. For the first few weeks at sea, it would stink so foully that no one could gag down a mouthful. But after another week or two it cleared and became relatively odorless, though somewhat slimy.

  If the food was typical of other sailing ships, its taste and variety were not the only threats to the appetite. There were always a multitude of insects burrowing through it -
brown grubs, weevils, and maggots. Bats, too, were certain to be prevalent, especially on an old ship such as the Mayflower, and they would also leave their unpleasant deposits in the food. Witnesses from other voyages have described sailors skimming off as many floating insects, rat offal, and maggots as they could from their lobscouse and then gratefully slurping it down.

  Fortunately, there were other things to do besides lament the awful food. As soon as everyone recovered from their initial bouts of seasickness, Miles Standish began drilling squads of men in handling the guns and swords on which the colony’s survival might well depend. The captain himself had a fine rapier, which he had personally shortened some six inches so that a man his size could wear it without difficulty. Most of the other swords were of the cutting type, and there was not much need to instruct anyone in their use, especially against Indians who would be without armor or swords of their own.

  Far more important was instruction in handling the cumbersome matchlock muskets of 1620. These primitive weapons were over five feet long and so heavy that they were usually fired from a forked rest thrust into the ground before the gunner. The mechanism was as complicated as it was uncertain. The “match” was made of lightly woven rope soaked in niter. It was attached to a holder on the outside of the lock, known as the serpentine, which functioned as the hammer in the modern gun. When the trigger was pulled, the serpentine swung the match into the priming pan, and the gun theoretically went off.