Bradford Helps Us To Little More Than The Statement, That A Vessel, Which
Could Have Been No Other, "Was Hired
At London, being of burden about 9
score" [tons], while the same extraordinary silence, which we have
noticed as to
Her name, exists as to her description, with Smith,
Bradford, Winslow, Morton, and the other contemporaneous or early writers
of Pilgrim history. Her hundred and eighty tons register indicates in
general her size, and to some extent her probable model and rig.
Long search for a reliable, coetaneous picture of one of the larger ships
of the merchant service of England, in the Pilgrim period, has been
rewarded by the discovery of the excel lent "cut" of such a craft, taken
from M. Blundeville's "New and Necessarie Treatise of Navigation,"
published early in the seventeenth century. Appearing in a work of so
high character, published by so competent a navigator and critic, and
(approximately) in the very time of the Pilgrim "exodus," there can be no
doubt that it quite correctly, if roughly and insufficiently, depicts the
outlines, rig, and general cast of a vessel of the MAY-FLOWER type and
time, as she appeared to those of that day, familiar therewith.
It gives us a ship corresponding, in the chief essentials, to that which
careful study of the detail and minutiae of the meagre MAY-FLOWER history
and its collaterals had already permitted the author and others to
construct mentally, and one which confirms in general the conceptions
wrought out by the best artists and students who have attempted to
portray the historic ship herself.
Captain J. W. Collins, whose experience and labors in this relation are
further alluded to, and whose opinion is entitled to respect, writes the
author in this connection, as follows "The cut from Blundeville's
treatise, which was published more or less contemporaneously with the
MAYFLOWER, is, in my judgment, misleading, since it doubtless represents
a ship of an earlier date, and is evidently [sic] reproduced from a
representation on tapestry, of which examples are still to be seen (with
similar ships) in England. The actual builder's plans, reproduced by
Admiral Paris, from drawings still preserved, of ships of the MAYFLOWER'S
time, seem to me to offer more correct and conclusive data for accurately
determining what the famous ship of the Pilgrim Fathers was like."
Decidedly one of the larger and better vessels of the merchant class of
her day, she presumably followed the prevalent lines of that class, no
doubt correctly represented, in the main, by the few coeval pictures of
such craft which have come down to us. No one can state with absolute
authority, her exact rig, model, or dimensions; but there can be no
question that all these are very closely determined from even the meagre
data and the prints we possess, so nearly did the ships of each class
correspond in their respective features in those days. There is a
notable similarity in certain points of the MAY-FLOWER, as she has been
represented by these different artists, which is evidence upon two
points: first, that all delineators have been obliged to study the type
of vessel to which she belonged from such representations of it as each
could find, as neither picture nor description of the vessel herself was
to be had; and second, that as the result of such independent study
nearly all are substantially agreed as to what the salient features of
her type and class were. A model of a ship [3 masts] of the MAY-FLOWER
type, and called in the Society's catalogue "A Model of the MAY FLOWER,
after De Bry," but itself labelled "Model of one of Sir Walter Raleigh's
Ships," is (mistakenly) exhibited by the Pilgrim Society at Plymouth.
It is by no means to be taken as a correct representation of the Pilgrim
bark. Few of the putative pictures of the MAY-FLOWER herself are at all
satisfactory, - apart from the environment or relation in which she is
usually depicted, - whether considered from an historical, a nautical,
or an artistic point of view. The only one of these found by the author
which has commanded (general, if qualified) approval is that entitled
"The MAY-FLOWER at Sea," a reproduction of which, by permission, is the
frontispiece of this volume. It is from an engraving by the master hand
of W. J. Linton, from a drawing by Granville Perkins, and appeared in the
"New England Magazine" for April, 1898, as it has elsewhere. Its
comparative fidelity to fact, and its spirited treatment, alike commend
it to those familiar with the subject, as par excellence the modern
artistic picture of the MAY-FLOWER, although somewhat fanciful, and its
rig, as Captain Collies observes, "is that of a ship a century later than
the MAY-FLOWER; a square topsail on the mizzen," he notes, "being unknown
in the early part of the seventeenth century, and a jib on a ship equally
rare." Halsall's picture of "The Arrival of the MAY-FLOWER in Plymouth
Harbor," owned by the Pilgrim Society, of Plymouth, and hung in the
Society's Hall, while presenting several historical inaccuracies,
undoubtedly more correctly portrays the ship herself, in model, rig,
etc., than do most of the well-known paintings which represent her.
It is much to be regretted that the artist, in woeful ignorance, or
disregard, of the recorded fact that the ship was not troubled with
either ice or snow on her entrance (at her successful second attempt) to
Plymouth harbor, should have covered and environed her with both.
Answering, as the MAY-FLOWER doubtless did, to her type, she was
certainly of rather "blocky," though not unshapely, build, with high poop
and forecastle, broad of beam, short in the waist, low "between decks,"
and modelled far more upon the lines of the great nautical prototype, the
water-fowl, than the requirements of speed have permitted in the carrying
trade of more recent years. That she was of the "square rig" of her
time - when apparently no use was made of the "fore-and-aft" sails which
have so wholly banished the former from all vessels of her size - goes
without saying.
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