It Was Early The Habit To Keep Certain Of The Live-Stock, Poultry, Rabbits, Etc., In The Unused Boats Upon Deck, And It Is Possible That In The Crowded State Of The MAY-FLOWER This Custom Was Followed.

Bradford remarks that their "goods or common store .

. . Were long in unlading [at New Plimoth] for want of boats." It seems hardly possible that the Admiralty authorities, - though navigation laws were then few, crude, and poorly enforced, - or that the Adventurers and Pilgrim chiefs themselves, would permit a ship carrying some 130 souls to cross the Atlantic in the stormy season, without a reasonable boat provision. The capacity of the "long-boat" we know to have been about twenty persons, as nearly that number is shown by Bradford and Winslow to have gone in her on the early expeditions from the ship, at Cape Cod. She would therefore accommodate only about one sixth of the ship's company. As the "gig" would carry only five or six persons, - while the shallop was stowed between decks and could be of no service in case of need upon the voyage, - the inference is warranted that other boats were carried, which fail of specific mention, or that she was wofully lacking. The want of boats for unlading, mentioned by Bradford, suggests the possibility that some of the ship's quota may have been lost or destroyed on her boisterous voyage, though no such event appears of record, or is suggested by any one. In the event of wreck, the Pilgrims must have trusted, like the Apostle Paul and his associates when cast away on the island of Melita, to get to shore, "some on boards and some on broken pieces of the ship." Her steering-gear, rigging, and the mechanism for "getting her anchors," "slinging," "squaring," and "cockbilling" her yards; for "making" and "shortening" sail; "heaving out" her boats and "handling" her cargo, were of course all of the crude and simple patterns and construction of the time, usually so well illustrating the ancient axiom in physics, that "what is lost [spent] in power is gained in time."

The compass-box and hanging-compass, invented by the English cleric, William Barlow, but twelve years before the Pilgrim voyage, was almost the only nautical appliance possessed by Captain Jones, of the MAY-FLOWER, in which no radical improvement has since been made. Few charts of much value - especially of western waters - had yet been drafted, but the rough maps and diagrams of Cabot, Smith, Gosnold, Pring, Champlain and Dermer, Jones was too good a navigator not to have had.

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