The Mayflower and Her Log | Page 7

Leyden, and others)
that the Leyden leaders should buy and refit the consort, and in so
doing might expend the funds which certain of the Leyden Pilgrims
were to pay into the enterprise, which it appears they did,--and for
which they would receive, as shown, extra shares in the Planters'
half-interest. It was very possibly further permitted by the Adventurers,
that Mr. Pickering's and his partners' subscriptions to their capital stock
should be applied to the purchase of the SPEEDWELL, as they were
collected by the Leyden leaders, as Pastor Robinson's letter of June
14/24 to John Carver, previously noted, clearly shows.
She was obviously bought some little time before May 31,
1620,--probably in the early part of the month,--from the fact that in
their letter of May 31st to Carver and Cushman, then in London,
Messrs. Fuller, Winslow, Bradford, and Allerton state that "we received
divers letters at the coming of Master Nash and our Pilott," etc. From
this it is clear that time enough had elapsed, since their purchase of the
pinnace, for their messenger (Master Nash) to go to London,--evidently
with a request to Carver and Cushman that they would send over a
competent "pilott" to refit her, and for Nash to return with him, while
the letter announcing their arrival does not seem to have been
immediately written.
The writers of the above-mentioned letter use the words "we received,"
--using the past tense, as if some days before, instead of "we have your
letters," or "we have just received your letters," which would rather
indicate present, or recent, time. Probably some days elapsed after the
"pilott's" arrival, before this letter of acknowledgment was sent. It is
hence fair to assume that the pinnace was bought early in May, and that
no time was lost by the Leyden party in preparing for the exodus, after
their negotiations with the Dutch were "broken off" and they had
"struck hands" with Weston, sometime between February 2/12,
1619/20, and April 1/11, 1620,--probably in March.
The consort was a pinnace--as vessels of her class were then and for

many years called--of sixty tons burden, as already stated, having two
masts, which were put in--as we are informed by Bradford, and are not
allowed by Professor Arber to forget--as apart of her refitting in
Holland. That she was "square-rigged," and generally of the then
prevalent style of vessels of her size and class, is altogether probable.
The name pinnace was applied to vessels having a wide range in
tonnage, etc., from a craft of hardly more than ten or fifteen tons to one
of sixty or eighty. It was a term of pretty loose and indefinite adaptation
and covered most of the smaller craft above a shallop or ketch, from
such as could be propelled by oars, and were so fitted, to a small ship
of the SPEEDWELL'S class, carrying an armament.
None of the many representations of the SPEEDWELL which appear in
historical pictures are authentic, though some doubtless give correct
ideas of her type. Weir's painting of the "Embarkation of the Pilgrims,"
in the Capitol at Washington (and Parker's copy of the same in Pilgrim
Hall, Plymouth); Lucy's painting of the "Departure of the Pilgrims," in
Pilgrim Hall; Copes great painting in the corridor of the British Houses
of Parliament, and others of lesser note, all depict the vessel on much
the same lines, but nothing can be claimed for any of them, except
fidelity to a type of vessel of that day and class. Perhaps the best
illustration now known of a craft of this type is given in the painting by
the Cuyps, father and son, of the "Departure of the Pilgrims from
Delfshaven," as reproduced by Dr. W. E. Griffis, as the frontispiece to
his little monograph, "The Pilgrims in their Three Homes." No reliable
description of the pinnace herself is known to exist, and but few facts
concerning her have been gleaned. That she was fairly "roomy" for a
small number of passengers, and had decent accommodations, is
inferable from the fact that so many as thirty were assigned to her at
Southampton, for the Atlantic voyage (while the MAY-FLOWER,
three times her tonnage, but of greater proportionate capacity, had but
ninety), as also from the fact that "the chief [i.e. principal people] of
them that came from Leyden went in this ship, to give Master Reynolds
content." That she mounted at least "three pieces of ordnance" appears
by the testimony of Edward Winslow, and they probably comprised her
armament.

We have seen that Bradford notes the purchase and refitting of this
"smale ship of 60 tune" in Holland. The story of her several sailings,
her "leakiness," her final return, and her abandonment as unseaworthy,
is familiar. We find, too, that Bradford also states in his "Historie," that