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 Morton's "New England's Memorial."
Davis, in his "Ancient Landmarks of Plymouth," makes a singular error for
so competent a writer, when he says:
