The Mayflower and the Pilgrims' New World* Read Online Free PDF

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.
    Â 
    â—†â—†â—† 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