Goodwin, usually so accurate, stumbles unaccountably in
this matter - which has been so strangely misleading to other competent
men
- And makes the sadly perverted statement that, "In June, John Turner
was sent, and he soon returned with a petulant (sic) letter from Cushman,
which, however, announced that the ship MAYFLOWER had been selected and
in two weeks would probably leave London for Southampton." He adds, with
inexcusable carelessness in the presence of the words "sixty last" (which
his dictionary would have told him, at a glance, was 120 tons), that:
"This vessel (Thomas Jones, master) was rated at a hundred and eighty
tons . . . . Yet she was called a fine ship," etc. It is evident
that, like Brown, he confused the two vessels, with Cushman's letter
before his eyes, from failure to compute the "sixty last." He moreover
quotes Cushman incorrectly. The great disparity in size, however, should
alone render this confusion impossible, and Cushman is clear as to the
tonnage ("sixty last"), regretting that the ship found is not larger,
while Bradford and all other chroniclers agree that the MAY-FLOWER was of
"9 score" tons burden.
It is also evident that for some reason this smaller ship (found on
Saturday afternoon) was not taken, probably because the larger one, the
MAY-FLOWER, was immediately offered to and secured by Masters Weston and
Cushman, and very probably with general approval. Just how the
MAY-FLOWER was obtained may never be certainly known.
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