The Mayflower and Her Log | Page 4

will
be thirteen (13) days. All the Dutch dates were New Style, while
English dates were yet of the Old Style.

There are three editions of Bradford's "History of Plimoth Plantation"
referred to herein; each duly specified, as occasion requires. (There is,
beside, a magnificent edition in photo-facsimile.) They are:--
(a) The original manuscript itself, now in possession of the State of
Massachusetts, having been returned from England in 1897, called
herein "orig. MS."
(b) The Deane Edition (so-called) of 1856, being that edited by the late
Charles Deane for the Massachusetts Historical Society and published
in "Massachusetts Historical Collections," vol. iii.; called herein
"Deane's ed."
(c) The Edition recently published by the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts, and designated as the "Mass. ed."
Of "Mourt's Relation" there are several editions, but the one usually
referred to herein is that edited by Rev. Henry M. Dexter, D. D., by far
the best. Where reference is made to any other edition, it is indicated,
and "Dexter's ed." is sometimes named.
AZEL AMES.
WAKEFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS, March 1, 1901.

THE MAYFLOWER AND HER LOG

"Hail to thee, poor little ship MAY-FLOWER--of Delft Haven --poor,
common-looking ship, hired by common charter-party for coined
dollars,--caulked with mere oakum and tar, provisioned with vulgarest
biscuit and bacon,--yet what ship Argo or miraculous epic ship, built by
the sea gods, was other than a foolish bumbarge in comparison!"
THOMAS CARLYLE

CHAPTER I
THE NAME--"MAY-FLOWER"
"Curiously enough," observes Professor Arber, "these names
[MAY-FLOWER and SPEEDWELL] do not occur either in the
Bradford manuscript or in 'Mourt's Relation.'"
[A Relation, or Journal, of the Beginning and Proceedings of the
English Plantation settled at Plymouth in New England, etc. G. Mourt,
London, 1622. Undoubtedly the joint product of Bradford and Winslow,
and sent to George Morton at London for publication. Bradford says
(op, cit. p. 120): "Many other smaler maters I omite, sundrie of them
having been already published, in a Jurnall made by one of ye
company," etc. From this it would appear that Mourt's Relation was his
work, which it doubtless principally was, though Winslow performed
an honorable part, as "Mourt's" introduction and other data prove.]
He might have truthfully added that they nowhere appear in any of the
letters of the "exodus" period, whether from Carver, Robinson,
Cushman, or Weston; or in the later publications of Window; or in fact
of any contemporaneous writer. It is not strange, therefore, that the Rev.
Mr. Blaxland, the able author of the "Mayflower Essays," should have
asked for the authority for the names assigned to the two Pilgrim ships
of 1620.
It seems to be the fact, as noted by Arber, that the earliest authentic
evidence that the bark which bore the Pilgrims across the North
Atlantic in the late autumn of 1620 was the MAY-FLOWER, is the
"heading" of the "Allotment of Lands"--happily an "official"
document--made at New Plymouth, New England, in March, 1623--It
is not a little remarkable that, with the constantly recurring references
to "the ship,"--the all-important factor in Pilgrim history,--her name
should nowhere have found mention in the earliest Pilgrim literature.
Bradford uses the terms, the "biger ship," or the "larger ship," and
Winslow, Cushman, Captain John Smith, and others mention simply
the "vessel," or the "ship," when speaking of the MAY-FLOWER, but

in no case give her a name.
It is somewhat startling to find so thorough-paced an Englishman as
Thomas Carlyle calling her the MAY-FLOWER "of Delft-Haven," as
in the quotation from him on a preceding page. That he knew better
cannot be doubted, and it must be accounted one of those 'lapsus
calami' readily forgiven to genius,--proverbially indifferent to detail.
Sir Ferdinando Gorges makes the curious misstatement that the
Pilgrims had three ships, and says of them: "Of the three ships (such as
their weak fortunes were able to provide), whereof two proved
unserviceable and so were left behind, the third with great difficulty
reached the coast of New England," etc.
CHAPTER II
THE MAY-FLOWER'S CONSORT THE SPEEDWELL
The SPEEDWELL was the first vessel procured by the Leyden
Pilgrims for the emigration, and was bought by themselves; as she was
the ship of their historic embarkation at Delfshaven, and that which
carried the originators of the enterprise to Southampton, to join the
MAY-FLOWER, --whose consort she was to be; and as she became a
determining factor in the latter's belated departure for New England,
she may justly claim mention here as indeed an inseparable "part and
parcel" of the MAY-FLOWER'S voyage.
The name of this vessel of associate historic renown with the
MAY-FLOWER was even longer in finding record in the early
literature of the Pilgrim hegira than that of the larger It first appeared,
so far as discovered, in 1669--nearly fifty years after her memorable
service to the Pilgrims on the fifth page of Nathaniel