To Accept, As Beyond Serious Doubt, Mr. Goffe's Ownership Of The
MAY-FLOWER, When She Made Her Memorable Voyage To
New Plimoth, one need
only to compare, and to interpret logically, the significant facts;
- that he was a ship-owner
Of London and one of the body of Merchant
Adventurers who set her forth on her Pilgrim voyage in 1620; and that he
stood, as her evident owner, in similar relation to the Puritan company
which chartered her for New England, similarly carrying colonists,
self-exiled for religion's sake, in 1629 and again in 1630. This
conviction is greatly strengthened by the fact that Mr. Goffe continued
one of the Pilgrim Merchant Adventurers, until their interests were
transferred to the colonists by the "Composition" of 1626, and three
years later (1629) sent by the MAY-FLOWER, on her second New England
voyage, although under a Puritan charter, another company from the
Leyden congregation. The (cipher) letter of the "Governor and deputies
of the New-England Company for a plantation in Massachusetts Bay" to
Captain John Endicott, written at Gravesend, England, the 17th of April,
1629, says: "If you want any Swyne wee have agreed with those of Ne[w]
Plimouth that they deliver you six Sowes with pigg for which they a[re]
to bee allowed 9 lb. in accompt of what they the Plymouth people owe
unto Mr. Goffe [our] deputie [Governor]." It appears from the foregoing
that the Pilgrims at New Plymouth were in debt to Mr. Goffe in 1629,
presumably for advances and passage money on account of the contingent
of the Leyden congregation, brought over with Higginson's company to
Salem, on the second trip of the MAY-FLOWER. Mr. Goffe's intimate
connection with the Pilgrims was certainly unbroken from the
organization of their Merchant Adventurers in 1619/20, through the
entire period of ten years, to 1630. There is every reason to believe,
and none to doubt, that his ownership of the MAY-FLOWER of imperishable
renown remained equally unbroken throughout these years, and that his
signature as her owner was appended to her Pilgrim charter-party in
1620. Whoever the signatories of her charter-party may have been, there
can be no doubt that the good ship MAY-FLOWER, in charge of her
competent, if treacherous, Master, Captain Thomas Jones, and her first
"pilot," John Clarke, lay in the Thames near London through the latter
part of June and the early part of July, in the summer of
1620, undergoing a thorough overhauling, under contract as a
colonist-transport, for a voyage to the far-off shores of "the
northern parts of Virginia."
In whatever of old English verbiage, with quaint terms and cumbersome
repetition, the stipulations of this contract of were concealed, there
can be no doubt that they purported and designed to "ingage" that "the
Good ship MAY-FLOWER of Yarmouth, of 9 score tuns burthen, whereof for
the present viage Thomas Joanes is Master," should make the "viage" as a
colonist-transport, "from the city of London in His Majesty's Kingdom of
Great Britain," etc., "to the neighborhood of the mouth of Hudson's
River, in the northern parts of Virginia and return, calling at the Port
of Southampton, outward bound, to complete her lading, the same of all
kinds, to convey to, and well and safely deliver at, such port or place,
at or about the mouth of Hudson's River, so-called, in Virginia
aforesaid, as those in authority of her passengers shall direct," etc.,
with provision as to her return lading, through her supercargo, etc.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 43 of 178
Words from 22323 to 22916
of 94513
