The Length Of The Vessel As Given
By Captain Collins, As Well As Her Beam, Being Based On A Measurement
Of
but 120 tons, are both doubtless less than they should be, the depth
probably also varying slightly, though there
Would very likely be but few
and slight departures otherwise from his proximate figures. The
long-boat would be more likely to be lashed across the hatch amidships
than stowed on the port side of the deck, unless in use for stowage
purposes, as previously suggested. Captain Collins very interestingly
notes in a letter to the author, concerning the measurements indicated
by his model: "Here we meet with a difficulty, even if it is not
insurmountable. This is found in the discrepancy which exists between
the dimensions - length, breadth, and depth - requisite to produce a
certain tonnage, as given by Admiral Paris and the British Admiralty.
Whether this is due to a difference in estimating tonnage between France
(or other countries) and Great Britain, I am unable to say, but it is a
somewhat remarkable fact that the National Museum model, which was made
for a vessel of 120 tons, as given by Admiral Paris who was a Frenchman,
has almost exactly the proportions of length, depth, and breadth that an
English ship of 180 tons would have, if we can accept as correct the
lists of measurements from the Admiralty records published by Charnock
. . . In the third volume of Charnock's 'History of Marine
Architecture,' p. 274., I find that a supply transport of 175 tons,
built in 1759, and evidently a merchant ship originally, or at least a
vessel of that class, was 79.4 feet long (tonnage measure), 22.6 feet
beam, and 11.61 feet deep." The correspondence is noticeable and of
much interest, but as the writer comments, all depends upon whether or
not "the measurement of the middle of the eighteenth century materially
differed in Great Britain from what it was in the early part of the
previous century."
Like all vessels having high stems and sterns, she was unquestionably "a
wet ship," - upon this voyage especially so, as Bradford shows, from being
overloaded, and hence lower than usual in the water. Captain John Smith
says: "But being pestered [vexed] nine weeks in this leaking,
unwholesome ship, lying wet in their cabins; most of them grew very weak
and weary of the sea." Bradford says, quoting the master of the
MAY-FLOWER and others: "As for the decks and upper works they would caulk
them as well as they could, . . . though with the working of the ship,
they would not long keep staunch." She was probably not an old craft, as
her captain and others declared they "knew her to be strong and firm
under water;" and the weakness of her upper works was doubtless due to
the strain of her overload, in the heavy weather of the autumnal gales.
Bradford says: "They met with many contrary winds and fierce storms with
which their ship was shrewdly shaken and her upper works made very
leaky." That the confidence of her master in her soundness below the
water-line was well placed, is additionally proven by her excellent
voyages to America, already noted, in 1629, and 1630, when she was ten
years older.
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