"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.
That she was somewhat "blocky" above water was doubtless true of her, as
of most of her class; but that she was not unshapely below the water-line
is quite certain, for the re markable return passage she made to England
(in ballast) shows that her lower lines must have been good. She made
the run from Plymouth to London on her return voyage in just thirty-one
days, a passage that even with the "clipper ships" of later days would
have been respectable, and for a vessel of her model and rig was
exceptionally good.
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