A FAMOUS VESSEL—THE MAYFLOWER—HER APPEARANCE—THE SPEEDWELL—DEPARTURE OF THE TWO SHIPS—ALLEGED UNSEAWORTHINESS OF THE SPEEDWELL—THE MAYFLOWER SAILS ALONE—THE EQUINOCTIAL—CONSULTATIONS—A REMEDY APPLIED—FIRST VIEW OF THE LAND—SUBSEQUENT HISTORY AND FATE OF THE MAYFLOWER.

We have now to narrate the incidents of a voyage without precedent, in one point of view, in maritime annals, and to chronicle the adventures of a ship which may be safely said to have achieved a fame beyond that of any other that ever ploughed the ocean. When we mention the name of the Mayflower, in which the Pilgrim Fathers proceeded from Southampton Water to Plymouth Rock, we are sure that the distinction which we claim for this feeble vessel will be contested by none,—not even by those who would gladly accord the supremacy of the seas to the Nina of Columbus or the Vittoria of Magellan. The details of the voyage are few and unsatisfactory; but the vivid imagination of historians and orators has amply supplied their place.

The Mayflower was built in England, at a time when English commerce could bear no comparison with that of Holland, and when the trade with the latter power employed six hundred Dutch ships to one hundred of English build. They were picturesque in appearance, though tub-like and clumsy, the hull being broad-bottomed and capacious, while the lofty cabins, towering high both fore and aft,—a style now obsolete in Europe, but still prevailing in the Red Sea and the Levant,—caused them to roll heavily in rough water. The Mayflower was a high-sterned, quaint, but staunch little vessel of one hundred and eighty tons, and was built for one of the trading companies lately chartered by the Government. The Dutch portion of the emigration had already embarked at Delfthaven in the Speedwell, of sixty tons, and both vessels were, on the 1st of August, 1620, anchored before the old towers of Southampton. The pilgrims were then regularly organized for the voyage, being distributed according to rules laid down and accepted by all. The larger number were of course received on board the Mayflower. On the 5th of August, both vessels weighed anchor, and sailed down the beautiful estuary of Southampton Water: passing the Isle of Wight and the rocks known as the Needles, they entered the English Channel.

They were no sooner launched upon the fretful waters of this confined strait than their disasters began. The captain of the Speedwell, who had engaged to remain a year abroad with the vessel, actuated either by cowardice or by dissatisfaction with the enterprise, declared that his ship was leaky, and that she could not proceed to sea. Dartmouth Harbor offered an opportunity for effecting the necessary repairs, and here a week was spent: the Speedwell was then pronounced quite sound by the carpenters and surveyors. They again set sail; but the captain of the Speedwell soon profited by the vicinity of Plymouth to assert a second time that he was ready to founder. He ran into port, and the Mayflower followed. No special cause was discovered for the apprehensions of the captain; but it was decided that the Speedwell should be sent back to London as unseaworthy, with such of her passengers as were disheartened, the remainder being transferred to the larger ship. One hundred and one persons—some of them aged and infirm, and several of them women soon to become mothers—were thus imprisoned, as it were, in a vessel much too small to accommodate them; while the delays resulting from the treachery or stratagem practised by the captain of the Speedwell had already proved so serious, that it was the 6th of September before the Mayflower, with her crowd of suffering passengers, could continue the voyage thus inauspiciously commenced.

The wind was east by north, blowing, according to the journal, "a fine small gale," when the Mayflower started from Plymouth upon her lonely way. The solitude of the ocean—in this latitude almost a trackless waste—lay stretched out before them. The prosperous gale soon gave way to the equinoctial storm, and a terrible head-wind from the northwest compelled the little bark to struggle anxiously with waves which threatened to engulf her. She was soon sorely shattered: her upper works were strained, and one of the main beams amidships was bent and cracked. A consultation was held between the seamen and passengers, and the question was seriously debated whether it would not be better to put back. It was fortunately discovered, however, that one of the Dutch pilgrims had accidentally brought on board a large iron screw, and this served to rivet the defective beam. The ship proceeded on her course, struggling with westerly gales and tempestuous seas. For whole days together she was compelled to lie to, or to scud with bare poles. "Methinks," says Everett, "I see the adventurous vessel, the Mayflower of a forlorn hope, freighted with the prospects of a future State and bound across the unknown sea. I behold it pursuing, with a thousand misgivings, the uncertain, tedious voyage. Suns rise and set, weeks and months pass; and winter surprises them on the deep, but brings them not the sight of the wished-for shore. I see them now, scantily supplied with provisions, crowded almost to suffocation in their ill-stored prison, delayed by calms, pursuing a circuitous route, and now driven in fury before the raging tempest on the high and giddy waves. The awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging; the laboring masts seem straining from their base; the dismal sound of the pumps is heard; the ship leaps, as it were, madly from billow to billow; the ocean breaks and settles with engulfing floods over the floating deck, and beats, with deadening, shivering weight, against the staggered vessel." Only one death occurred during this terrible voyage,—a loss in numbers which was made good by the birth of a boy, to whom was given the name of Oceanus Hopkins.

Sixty-four days had passed, and the 9th of November had dawned. Upon this date the tempest-tossed pilgrims obtained their first view of the American coast. "To the storm-ridden voyager," writes one of their descendants, "exhausted by confinement and suffering, the sight of any shore, however wild, the aromatic fragrance that blows from the land, are inexpressibly sweet and refreshing:

Lovely seems any object that shall sweep
Away the vast—salt—dread—eternal deep!

And thus we find that the low sand-hills of Cape Cod, covered with scrubby woods that descended to the margin of the sea, seemed, at the first glance, a perfect paradise of verdure to the eyes of these poor sea-beaten wanderers."

The orator and statesman from whom we have already quoted thus eloquently alludes to the providential circumstances attending the arrival of the Mayflower upon the American shore:—"Let us go up in imagination to yonder hill and look out upon the November scene. That single dark speck, just discernible through the perspective glass on the waste of waters, is the fated vessel. The storm moans through her tattered canvas, as she creeps, almost sinking, to her anchorage in Provincetown Harbor; and there she lies, with all her treasures, not of silver and gold,—for of them she has none,—but of courage, of patience, of zeal, of high spiritual daring. So often as I dwell in imagination on this scene,—when I consider the condition of the Mayflower, utterly incapable as she was of living through another gale,—when I survey the terrible front presented by our coast to the navigator who, unacquainted with its channels and roadsteads, should approach it in the stormy season,—I dare not call it a mere piece of good fortune that the general north and south wall of the shore of New England should be broken by this extraordinary projection of the Cape, running out into the ocean a hundred miles, as if on purpose to receive and encircle the precious vessel. As I now see her, freighted with the destinies of a continent, barely escaped from the perils of the deep, approaching the shore precisely where the broad sweep of this most remarkable headland presents almost the only point at which, for hundreds of miles, she could with any ease have made a harbor, and this perhaps the very best on the sea-board, I feel my spirit raised above the sphere of mere natural agencies. I see the mountains of New England rising from their rocky thrones: they rush forward into the ocean, settling down as they advance; and there they range themselves, a mighty bulwark, around the Heaven-directed vessel. Yes! the everlasting God himself stretches out the arm of his mercy and his power in substantial manifestations, and gathers the meek company of his worshippers as in the hollow of his hand."

"I see the pilgrims," he continues, "escaped from their perils, landed at last, after a two months' passage, on the ice-clad rocks of Plymouth, weak and weary from the voyage,—without shelter, without means, surrounded by hostile tribes. Shut now the volume of history, and tell me, on any principle of human probability, what shall be the fate of this handful of adventurers. Tell me, man of military science, in how many months were they all swept off by the thirty savage tribes enumerated within the early limits of New England? Tell me, politician, how long did this shadow of a colony, on which your conventions and treaties had not smiled, languish on the distant coast? Student of history, compare for me the baffled projects, the deserted settlements, the abandoned adventures, of other times, and find the parallel of this. Was it the winter's storm, or disease, or labor and spare meals, or the tomahawk—that hurried this forsaken company to their melancholy fate? And is it possible that neither of these causes, that not all combined, were able to blast this bud of hope? Is it possible that from a beginning so feeble, so frail, so worthy not so much of admiration as of pity, there has gone forth a progress so steady, a growth so wonderful, an expansion so ample, a reality so important, a promise, yet to be fulfilled, so glorious?"

The Mayflower remained in Plymouth Harbor, and was the home of the women and children during the severe winter of 1620-21. She rode out the storm at her anchorage,—though she was placed in great danger by a gale upon the 4th of February, her want of ballast—unladen as she was—rendering her light as a cockle-shell. With the opening of spring, the captain determined to return to England, and offered to carry back any of the colonists who might be disheartened by the calamities which had overtaken them,—for they had buried half their number. But their sufferings had endeared the soil to them, and not one embraced the opportunity of returning. The Mayflower left Plymouth on the 5th of April, 1621, and made the run home to London in thirty days. She seems to have performed several voyages back and forth, and, in 1630, arrived in the harbor of Charlestown, with a portion of Winthrop's company of emigrants. Her subsequent history is very uncertain; and all attempts to ascertain it have been baffled by the circumstance that several ships bore the name of Mayflower, and no reliable means exist of distinguishing her of Pilgrim celebrity from others of obscurer fame.