The Mayflower and the Pilgrims' New World* (5 page)

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A steeple-crowned beaver hat attributed to Constance Hopkins.

In the meantime, matters were coming to a head between the Leideners and Thomas Weston. Robert Cushman had signed the revised agreement to work full-time with the merchants in London, but the Leideners refused to honor it. Weston stalked off in a huff, insisting that “they must then look to stand on their own legs.” As Cushman knew better than anyone, this was not in their best interests. They didn't have enough provisions to last a year. Without Weston to provide them with the necessary funds, they were forced to sell off some of their precious provisions, including more than two tons of butter, before they could sail from southampton.

Adding to the turmoil and confusion was the behavior of Christopher Martin. The
Mayflower
's governor was, according to Cushman, a monster. “[H]e insulteth over our poor people, with such scorn and contempt,” Cushman wrote, “as if they were not good enough to wipe his shoes.... If I speak to him, he flies in my face as mutinous, and saith no complaints shall be heard or received but by himself.” In a letter hastily written to a friend in London, Cushman saw only doom and disaster ahead. “Friend, if ever we make a plantation God works a miracle, especially considering how scant we shall be of victuals, and most of all un-united amongst ourselves and devoid of good tutors and regiment. Violence will break all. Where is the meek and humble spirit of Moses?”

When it finally came time to leave southampton, Cushman made sure he was with his friends aboard the
Speedwell.
He was now free of Martin but soon found that the
Speedwell
was anything but speedy. “[s]he is as open and leaky as a sieve,” he wrote. several days after clearing the Isle of Wight off England's southern coast, it was decided the
Speedwell
needed repairs, and both vessels sailed for Dartmouth, a port only seventy-five miles to the west of southampton.

It was now August 17. The repairs were quickly completed, but this time the wind refused to cooperate. People were beginning to panic—and with good reason. “Our victuals will be half eaten up, I think, before we go from the coast of England,” Cushman wrote.

The months of tension had caught up with Cushman. For the last two weeks he had felt a searing pain in his chest—“a bundle of lead as it were, crushing my heart.” He was sure this would be his last good-bye: “[A]lthough I do the actions of a living man yet I am but as dead.... I pray you prepare for evil tidings of us every day.... I see not in reason how we shall escape even the passing of hunger-starved persons; but God can do much, and His will be done.”

They finally departed from Dartmouth and were more than two hundred miles beyond the southwestern tip of England at Land's End when the
Speedwell
sprang another leak. It was now early september, and they had no choice but to give up on the
Speedwell.
It was a devastating turn of events. Not only had the vessel cost them a lot of money, but she had been considered vital to the future success of the settlement.

They stopped at Plymouth, about fifty miles to the west of Dartmouth. If they were to continue, they had to crowd as many passengers as would fit into the
Mayflower
and sail on alone. To no one's surprise, Cushman gave up his place to someone else. And despite his fear of imminent death, he lived another five years.

It was later learned that the
Speedwell
's master, Mr. Reynolds, had been secretly working against them. In Holland, the vessel had been fitted with new and larger masts and—as any sailor knew, when a ship's masts were too tall, the added strain opened up the seams between the planks, causing the hull to leak. By overmasting the
Speedwell,
Reynolds had provided himself with an easy way to deceive the Pilgrims. He might shrug his shoulders and scratch his head when the vessel began to take on water, but all he had to do was reduce sail and the
Speedwell
would stop leaking. soon after the
Mayflower s
et out across the Atlantic, the
Speedwell
was sold, refitted, and, according to Bradford, “made many voyages ... to the great profit of her owners.”

In early september, the wind began to blow west across the North Atlantic. The provisions, already low when they first set out from southampton, had shrunk even further by more than a month of delays. The passengers, cooped up aboard ship for all this time, were in no shape for a long journey. But on september 6, 1620, the
Mayflower
set out from Plymouth with what Bradford called “a prosperous wind.”

 

◆◆◆ By the time the
Mayflower
left Plymouth, the group from Leiden had been reduced by more than a quarter. The original plan had been to relocate the entire congregation to the New World. Now there were just 50 or so of them, making up only about half of the
Mayflower
's 102 passengers.

In a letter written on the eve of their departure from Holland, Minister John Robinson, who was staying behind, urged his followers to do everything they could to avoid conflict with their new shipmates. Even if men such as Christopher Martin pushed them to the edge, they must control any impulse to judge and condemn others. For the future of the settlement, it was essential that all the colonists—Leideners and strangers alike—learn to live together as best they could.

This nonjudgmental attitude did not come naturally to the Leideners. As separatists, a sense of exclusivity was fundamental to how they saw themselves in the world. But, by the time the Pilgrims departed for America, Robinson had begun to allow members of his congregation to attend services outside their own church. This softening of what had once been an inflexible separatist ideal was essential to the later success of Plymouth Plantation.

In this regard, the loss of the
Speedwell
had been a good thing. Prior to their departure from Plymouth, the Leideners had naturally stuck to their own vessel. But now, like it or not, they were all in the same boat.

 

◆◆◆ When he later wrote about the voyage of the
Mayflower,
Bradford devoted only a few paragraphs to describing an ocean journey that lasted more than two months. The physical and psychological torture that the passengers experienced on the sea was made worse by the terrifying lack of information they possessed about America. All they knew for certain was that if they did somehow succeed in crossing this three-thousand-mile stretch of ocean, no one—except perhaps for some hostile Indians—would be there to greet them.

Most of their provisions and equipment were kept in the hold in the lower part of the ship. The passengers were in the between (or 'tween) decks—a dank, airless space about seventy-five feet long and not even five feet high that separated the hold from the upper deck. The 'tween decks was more of a crawl space than a place to live, made even more claustrophobic by the passengers' attempts to provide themselves with some privacy. They built a number of thin-walled cabins, creating a crowded series of rooms that overflowed with people and their possessions: chests of clothing, casks of food, chairs, pillows, rugs, and omnipresent chamber pots. There was even a small boat—cut into pieces for later assembly—that some passengers used as a bed. soon after departing from Plymouth, the passengers began to suffer the effects of seasickness. As often happens at sea, the sailors took great delight in mocking the Pilgrims' sufferings. There was one sailor in particular, “a proud and very profane young man,” Bradford remembered, who “would always be contemning the poor people in their sickness and cursing them daily with grievous execrations.” The sailor even had the nerve to say that “he hoped to help to cast half of them overboard before they came to their journey's end.”

As it turned out, however, this strong and arrogant sailor was the first to die. “But it pleased God,” Bradford wrote, “before they came half seas over, 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.” Bradford claimed “it was an astonishment to all his fellows for they noted it to be the just hand of God upon him.”

Throughout the voyage, there were terrible storms, and in midocean an especially large wave exploded against the old ship's side, cracking a large wooden beam like a chicken bone. Master Jones considered turning back to England. But Jones had to give his passengers credit. Despite all they had so far suffered—agonizing delays, seasickness, cold, and the scorn and ridicule of the sailors—they did everything in their power to help the carpenter repair the fractured beam. They had brought along a screw jack—a mechanical device used to lift heavy objects—to assist them in constructing houses in the New World. With the help of the screw jack, they lifted the beam into place, and once the carpenter had hammered in a post for support, the
Mayflower
was able to continue on.

several times during the passage, the conditions grew so bad that even though it meant he would lose many hard-won miles, Jones was forced to “lie ahull”—to roll up the sails, and let the waves take his 180-ton ship. At one point, as the
Mayflower
lay ahull, a young servant named John Howland grew restless down below. He saw no reason why he could not venture out of the 'tween decks for just a moment. After more than a month as a passenger ship, the
Mayflower
was no longer a “sweet ship,” and Howland wanted some air. so he climbed a ladder to one of the hatches and stepped onto the deck.

Howland quickly discovered that the deck of a storm-tossed ship was no place for a landsman. Even if the ship rode the waves with ease, the gale continued to rage with astonishing violence around her. The shriek of the wind through the rope rigging was terrifying, as was the sight of all those towering waves. The
Mayflower
lurched suddenly, Howland staggered to the ship's rail and tumbled into the sea.