|
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?"
|
