Mayflower

passengers, cooped up aboard ship for all this time, were in no shape for an extended passage. Jones was within his rights to declare that it was too late to depart on a voyage across the Atlantic.
    But on September 6, 1620, the Mayflower set out from Plymouth with what Bradford called “a prosperous wind.”
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    Robert Cushman had not been the only Leidener to abandon the voyage. His friend William Ring had also opted to remain in England, as had Thomas Blossom. By the time the Mayflower left Plymouth, the group from Leiden had been reduced by more than a quarter. The original plan had been to relocate the entire congregation to the New World. Now there were just 50 or so of them—less than a sixth of their total number, and only about half of the Mayflower ’s 102 passengers.
    John Robinson had no way of knowing their numbers would be so dramatically depleted by the time they left England for the last time, but the Pilgrims’ minister had anticipated many of the difficulties that lay ahead. His selfless yet strong-willed insistence on probity would be dearly missed by the Pilgrims in the months ahead. At least for now, they had the wisdom of his words.
    In a letter written on the eve of their departure from Holland, he urged his followers to do everything they could to avoid conflict with their new compatriots. Even if men such as Christopher Martin pushed them to the edge of their forbearance, they must quell any impulse to judge and condemn others. Robinson exhorted them to “[s]tore up…patience against that evil day, without which we take offense at the Lord Himself in His holy and just works.” For the future welfare of the settlement, it was essential that all the colonists—Leideners and Strangers alike—learn to live together as best they could.
    This nonjudgmental attitude did not come naturally to the Leideners. As Separatists, they considered themselves godly exceptions to the vast, unredeemed majority of humankind. A sense of exclusivity was fundamental to how they perceived themselves in the world. And yet there is evidence that Robinson’s sense of his congregation as an autonomous enclave of righteousness had become considerably less rigid during his twelve years in Holland. By the time the Pilgrims departed for America, he had begun to allow members of his congregation to attend services outside their own church. Robinson’s fierce quest for spiritual purity had been tempered by the realization that little was to be gained by arrogance and anger. “[F]or schism and division,” Edward Winslow later wrote of Robinson, “there was nothing in the world more hateful to him.” This softening of what had once been an inflexible Separatism was essential to the later success of Plymouth Plantation.
    In this regard, the loss of the Speedwell had been a good thing. Prior to their departure from Plymouth, the Leideners had naturally gravitated to their own vessel. But now, like it or not, they were all in the same boat.
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    When he later wrote about the voyage of the Mayflower, Bradford devoted only a few paragraphs to describing a passage that lasted more than two months. The physical and psychological punishment endured by the passengers in the dark and dripping ’tween decks was compounded by the terrifying lack of information they possessed concerning their ultimate destination. All they knew for certain was that if they did somehow succeed in crossing this three-thousand-mile stretch of ocean, no one—except perhaps for some hostile Indians—would be there to greet them.
    Soon after departing from Plymouth, the passengers began to suffer the effects of seasickness. As often happens at sea, the sailors took great delight in mocking the sufferings of their charges. There was one sailor in particular, “a proud and very profane young man,” Bradford remembered, who “would always be contemning the poor people in their sickness and cursing them daily with grievous execrations.” The sailor even had the audacity to say that “he hoped to help to cast half of them overboard before they came to their journey’s end.” As it turned out, however, this strong and arrogant sailor was the first to die. “But it pleased God,” Bradford wrote, “before they came half seas over, to smite this young man with a grievous disease, of which he died in a desperate manner, and so was himself the first that