Chapter VIII

After 65 days at sea, a cry of 'Land ho!'

The Pilgrims anchor off the tip of Cape Cod, grateful to God
to have survived dreadful overcrowding,
fearsome gales and a near wreck.

A canny old seadog like Master Christopher Jones could quickly catch reassuring signs that the Mayflower was approaching land.

The crude instruments of his era left annoyingly uncertain the distance that the ship traveled each day. But near journey's end--when the leadsman's line, plunging fathoms below, touched seabed--he knew the coastline could not be many miles away. Then the ocean color turned from sea blue to green, and there were old hands who even claimed they could smell the still unseen land.

It was daybreak, Nov. 9--the 65th day since the Mayflower had left Plymouth, England, and more than three anxious months since the Pilgrims had bidden farewell at Delftshaven.

Suddenly there came a shout from the lookout: "Land ho!"

For those rushing on deck, the lookout stretched his arm toward the bluff above the shoreline that he had glimpsed over the ship's starboard bow.

The Pilgrim leaders described the scene most simply in Mourt's Relation, their first published account:

"By break of the day we espied land..." Tears of relief, joy and wonder came to many eyes as they looked toward the northwest--or gratefully to Heaven.

"The appearance of it much comforted us, especially seeing so goodly a land, and wooded to the brink of the sea. It caused us to rejoice together, and praise God that had given us once again to see land."

Jones held a conference with the Pilgrim leaders. He had been roughly following the 42nd parallel toward land and felt certain that he was off Cape Cod. Explorers and skippers had been this way and he knew some of their tales. The highlands of the future Truro, 10 miles to the northwestward, were visible--an unmistakable Cape Cod landmark. The Mayflower was moving a safe distance off the beach along what is called the back side of the Cape.

This landfall, most significantly, was quite a bit to the northward of the area in which the Pilgrims were entitled to settle under the patent in their possession. So, after consultation, Jones tacked about and headed Mayflower southward for the intended destination of Northern Virginia--or, as Bradford related it, "to find some place about Hudson's River for their habitation." Both wind and weather were fair.

As the excited passengers saw the land and were assured that it was without doubt Cape Cod, "They were not a little joyful," as Bradford observed.

They surely had reasons in abundance.

Bradford, in all the wonderful history he would write years later from his eyewitness notes, did not mention the name of the vessel of which Jones was master. Still, in relating the emotion-filled departure of the Pilgrims from Leyden on the Speedwell, Bradford did say that another vessel had been hired at London "of burthen about nine score." The records of Plymouth colony leave no doubt that this was the Mayflower of London, of 180 tons.

No plan and no picture of the Mayflower exist. Still, London Port books and Admiralty Court records of the period provide facts about the ship and her master.

A typical three-masted, square-rigged merchantman of the Mayflower's time and tonnage would be roughly 90 feet overall, with a beam of 26 feet.

Jones, who was part owner, had been the ship's skipper as far back as at least a dozen years, hauling cargo between England and the Baltic Sea and the Bay of Biscay. Often this cargo was wine.

Besides the 102 passengers who crowded together on the Mayflower after the leaky Speedwell turned back, Jones had a crew of some 20 to 30 men. Their quarters would have been on the main deck, or top deck--the officers on the quarterdeck aft and the crew forward in the forecastle.

Unless Jones, who was a considerate man, and his officers had extra tiers of bunks put in part of the steerage and poop house--quarters which these officers would normally use--all 102 passengers would have had to squeeze themselves into the gun deck below, just over the vessel's hold.

We do know that there was crowding. The Pilgrim's shallop or small sailing craft, had been broken down so that it could be carried on the gun deck. We know the shallop was used as emergency bunk space, possibly by as many as two dozen passengers--an unusual usage that would shortly force loss of precious time when the boat had to be put back into repair.

Even a brief visit to Plimoth Plantation's Mayflower replica, the Mayflower II, most often docked in Plymouth Harbor close by Plymouth Rock, will vividly demonstrate how crowded the passage must have been--with the passengers and their two dogs, a large mastiff and small spaniel, packed into the gun deck with its very low overhead.

Privacy, if possible at all, was minimal. Three of the women were pregnant and certainly, at the time of departure from Plymouth, England, had some reason to feel that they might encounter childbirth at sea. Thirty-two of the passengers were children, some of them babes in arms. There were eighteen couples, some of whom had left children in Holland or England; eight other married men had left behind their wives. The passengers also included single men, mostly hired hands and servants, and eleven unmarried women.

Comforts aboard were few. There was no plumbing; the Mayflower's nettings, or buckets which were emptied overboard, had to serve. Water for washing--save seawater--was extremely limited. Changes of clothing were rare even when clothes were wet, as they often must have been. Heat was scanty, even in the crew's galley. Food was chiefly hardtack (a hard biscuit), salted pork and beef, cheese, dried beans and peas. For drink there were chiefly water, even if a bit slimy, and beer. [Back in Europe and on board ship, beer was a safe substitute for water, which was often unsafe to drink.]

When storms with howling winds were raging across the Atlantic, as often they did, and the hatches were covered and the gunports closed, the atmosphere on the lantern-lighted, heaving gun deck of even a ship called "sweet"--a legacy of its wine-carrying career--must have been odiferous as well as terrifying.

No Mayflower log exists, and Bradford, who said he was seeking to be brief, told of only a few happenings on the voyage.

Soon after the departure from Plymouth, he reported, "many were afflicted with seasickness." But of more interest to Bradford was a "special work of God's Providence" in solving another affliction the Pilgrims early encounter on shipboard; scorn and abuse from some of the crew toward these humble passengers who were given to praying and psalm-singing."

A proud and very profane young man, one of the seamen, of a lusty, able body...would always be contemning the poor people in their sickness and cursing them daily with grievous execrations." He never let up telling them that "he hoped to help to cast half of them overboard before they came to their journey's end...and if he were by any gently reproved, he would curse and swear bitterly.

"But it pleased God before they came half seas over," said Bradford, "to smite this 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 light on 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."

The most shocking moments came in mid-Atlantic. The Pilgrims had enjoyed "fair winds and weather for a season," but then many times there came "cross winds and...many fierce storms with which the ship was shroudly (severely) shaken, and the upper works made very leaky; and one of the main beams in the midships was bowed and cracked, which put them in some fear that the ship could not be able to perform the voyage."

Jones, his officers and the Pilgrims gathered in "serious consultation." Should they turn back? The sailors were divided; some were "loath to hazard their lives too desperately." But Jones knew that his ship had weathered many a crisis. He was positive that the Mayflower, despite its being leaky above, was "strong and firm under water."

The Pilgrims on leaving Holland had brought along "a great iron screw" intended for help in raising pioneer dwellings. The broken beam was braced. The leaky deck was caulked. [Or was the "great iron screw" part of Brewster's printing press?]

The travelers were confronted, though, with more loss of precious time. Jones well knew there would be danger if he tried to hoist too much sail. And so, said Bradford, "they committed themselves to the will of God and resolved to proceed."

They encountered several more storms, some with winds, "so fierce and the seas so high as they could not bear a knot of sail, but were forced to hull (drift) for divers days together." Indeed, this would bring Mayflower's overall speed for the passage down to less than two nautical miles per hour.

On the voyage across the Atlantic one birth and one death occurred among the passengers. A son, aptly called Oceanus, became the fourth child of the largest family aboard, that of Elizabeth and Stephen Hopkins, recruited from London. The passenger who died was a 22-year-old indentured servant of Samuel Fuller, William Butten, who hailed from Bradford's village of Austerfield. Butten died Nov. 6, less than a week before the Pilgrims caught sight of Cape Cod.

The Mayflower, in the passage south along the back side of the Cape toward the Hudson River, had proceeded "about half a day" when suddenly, despite the weather's being fair, "they fell amongst dangerous shoals and roaring breakers."

Once again, as when the beam cracked in mid-ocean, the Mayflower was in deadly peril. The ship had come to the shoals of Pollock rip off Monomy Point, southernmost part of Cape Cod and one of the Atlantic coast's most dangerous sections, then uncharted and unmarked.

Even the great skill of a seasoned skipper such as Jones would have been inadequate to save the courageous Pilgrims from shipwreck had not the wind turned "contrary" with the coming of night. Jones was able to bring Mayflower about, take her off the shoals back into deep water, and head back north.

The Pilgrims, as Bradford recounted, had "resolved to bear up again for Cape Cod and thought themselves happy to get out of those dangers before night overtook them, as by God's good Providence they did.

The Cape Cod harbor, now Provincetown Harbor, toward which Jones maneuvered for hopefully safe anchorage was up the 50-mile length of the back side of the Cape. But arrival there would confront the Pilgrims with a profound legal problem. The harbor, as Bradford noted, was not the permitted destination covered by their patent, for the Mayflower's heading would bring them to Capt. John Smith's "New England."

As the Mayflower sailed steadily northward on Nov. 10, some of the Strangers began making "discontented and mutinous speeches...that when they came ashore they would use their own liberty, for none had power to command them." The Pilgrim leaders promptly moved to quell this danger by drawing upon their own church experience in self-government and the drafting of covenants.

WE DO NOT KNOW WHO WROTE THE MAYFLOWER Compact. Only Elder Brewster, among all the Pilgrim leaders, was a university man. The Pilgrim writers best known to us are William Bradford and Edward Winslow, whose writings, first combined from their journals in Mourt's Relation, are the chief source of Pilgrim history.

In any case, much of Nov. 10's sail must have been devoted to discussion and preparation of the compact. The Pilgrims, after the sacrifices they had already made, wanted to be certain beyond all doubt that law and order--"unity and concord"-- would prevail once they reached shore. To assure this, the compact was signed on shipboard before anyone disembarked. This was on the morning of Nov. 11, the morning the Mayflower came around Long Point and Master Jones ordered the anchor dropped "lesse than a furlong"--an eighth of a mile--from the point.

The compact declared that they were forming "a civil body politic" to which all signers promised "due submission and obedience" while carrying out the purpose of their "voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia"--an objective they had undertaken "for the Glory of God and advancement of the Christian Faith and Honor and our King and Country."

Until such time as they could get another patent, which John Peirce would obtain on June 1, 1621, from Sir Fernando Gorges and the Council for New England--the organization that was being formed as the Mayflower was leaving England--the compact would be the only source of authority. Indeed, said Bradford, it was "the first foundation of their government" in the New World. Under it they pledged to enact and frame:

"Such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony."

Forty-one of the passengers signed the compact that morning, including all thirty-four men among both the Pilgrims and Strangers, three of the five hired hands and four adult indentured servants. That done, they confirmed that John Carver, who had replaced Christopher Martin as governor of the Mayflower for the voyage, would be their governor until next New Year's Day, which under the old-style calender then in use would be March 25, 1621. Carver, 55, had been a deacon of the Leyden church since 1617.

How eagerly and anxiously Pilgrim eyes must have scanned the harbor setting and the shore as Jones brought the Mayflower to anchor. In one of the most emotion-filled passages of all his writings, Bradford told how he could not but "stand half amazed at this poor people's condition..."

"Being thus passed 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 weatherbeaten bodies; no houses or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succour...

"And for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of that 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 beasts and wild men--and what multitudes there might be of them they knew not...

"For summer being done, all things stand upon them with a weatherbeaten face, and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hue. If they looked behind them, there was the mighty ocean which they had passed and was now as a main bar and gulf to separate them from all the civil parts of the world...

"What could now sustain them but the spirit of God and His grace?"

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