There Is Little
Doubt That The Good Elder (William Brewster) Was Also Transferred To The
Larger Ship At Southampton, While
It would not be a very wild guess - in
the light of Bradford's statement - to place Carver, Winslow, Bradford,
Standish,
Cooke, Howland, and Edward Tilley, and their families, among
the passengers on the consort. Just how many passengers each vessel
carried when they sailed from Southampton will probably never be
positively known. Approximately, it may be said, on the authority of
such contemporaneous evidence as is available, and such calculations as
are possible from the data we have, that the SPEEDWELL had thirty (30),
and the MAY-FLOWER her proportionate number, ninety (90) - a total of one
hundred and twenty (120).
Captain John Smith says,
[Smith, New England's Trials, ed. 1622, London, p. 259. It is a
singular error of the celebrated navigator that he makes the ships
to have, in less than a day's sail, got outside of Plymouth, as he
indicates by his words, "the next day," and "forced their return to
Plymouth." He evidently intends to speak only in general terms, as
he entirely omits the (first) return to Dartmouth, and numbers the
passengers on the MAY-FLOWER, on her final departure, at but "one
hundred." He also says they "discharged twenty passengers."]
apparently without pretending to be exact, "They left the coast of
England the 23 of August, with about 120 persons, but the next day [sic]
the lesser ship sprung a leak that forced their return to Plymouth; where
discharging her [the ship] and twenty passengers, with the great ship and
a hundred persons, besides sailors, they set sail again on the 6th of
September."
[Dr. Ames, so stringent in his requirements of other authors, for
example Jane Austin, has to this point been pathetically naive as to
the opinions of Captain John Smith.
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