This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of thefile for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making anentire meal of them. D.W.]
July 15, 1620—May 6, 1621
Chiefly from Original Sources
By AZEL AMES, M.D.
Member of Pilgrim Society, etc.
"Next to the fugitives whom Moses led out of Egypt, the little
shipload of outcasts who landed at Plymouth are destined to
influence the future of the world."
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
O civilized humanity, world-wide, and especially to the descendants ofthe Pilgrims who, in 1620, laid on New England shores the foundations ofthat civil and religious freedom upon which has been built a refuge forthe oppressed of every land, the story of the Pilgrim "Exodus" has anever-increasing value and zest. The little we know of the inception,development, and vicissitudes of their bold scheme of colonization in theAmerican wilderness only serves to sharpen the appetite for more.
Every detail and circumstance which relates to their preparations; to theships which carried them; to the personnel of the Merchant Adventurersassociated with them, and to that of the colonists themselves; to whatbefell them; to their final embarkation on their lone ship,—the immortalMAY-FLOWER; and to the voyage itself and to its issues, is vested to-daywith, a supreme interest, and over them all rests a glamour peculiarlytheir own.
For every grain of added knowledge that can be gleaned concerning thePilgrim sires from any field, their children are ever grateful, andwhoever can add a well-attested line to their all-too-meagre annals isregarded by them, indeed by all, a benefactor.
Of those all-important factors in the chronicles of the "Exodus,"—thePilgrim ships, of which the MAY-FLOWER alone crossed the seas,—and ofthe voyage itself, there is still but far too little known. Of even thislittle, the larger part has not hitherto been readily accessible, or inform available for ready reference to the many who eagerly seize uponevery crumb of new-found data concerning these pious and intrepidArgonauts.
To such there can be no need to recite here the principal and familiarfacts of the organization of the English "Separatist" congregation underJohn Robinson; of its emigration to Holland under persecution of theBishops; of its residence and unique history at Leyden; of the broadoutlook of its members upon the future, and their resultant determinationto cross the sea to secure larger life and liberty; and of their initiallabors to that end. We find these Leyden Pilgrims in the early summer of1620, their plans fairly matured and their agreements between themselvesand with their merchant associates practically concluded, urging forwardtheir preparations for departure; impatient of the delays anddisappointments which befell, and anxiously seeking shipping for theirlong and hazardous voyage.
It is to what concerns their ships, and especially that one which haspassed into history as "the Pilgrim bark," the MAY-FLOWER, and to herpregnant voyage, that the succeeding chapters chiefly relate. In them theeffort has been made to bring together in sequential relation, from manyand widely scattered sources, everything germane that diligent andfaithful research could discover, or the careful study and re-analysis ofknown