Early explorers of Plymouth Harbor, 1525-1619

Transcriber’s Note
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by Henry F. Howe
Published jointly by Plimoth Plantation, Inc. and the Pilgrim Society
Plymouth, 1953
Copyright by Plimoth Plantation, Inc., and the Pilgrim Society , 1953
Henry F. Howe is author of Prologue to New England , New York, 1943, and Salt Rivers of the Massachusetts Shore , New York, 1951, both published by Rinehart & Co., Inc. Much of the material here presented is condensed from these volumes.
The cover decoration, which is reproduced from the London 1614 translation of Bartholomew Pitiscus, Trigonometry: or the doctrine of triangles , shows not only early seventeenth century ships but seamen using a cross-staff and casting a lead.
Printed in offset by The Meriden Gravure Company, Meriden, Connecticut Composition by The Anthoensen Press, Portland, Maine
Visitors to Plymouth are often amazed to learn that the Mayflower was not the first vessel to drop anchor in Plymouth Harbor. The “stern and rock-bound coast” of Massachusetts was in fact explored by more than twenty recorded expeditions before the arrival of the Pilgrims. At least six of these sailed into Plymouth Harbor. Plymouth appeared on five good maps of the Massachusetts coast by 1616, one of them a detailed map of Plymouth Harbor itself, made by Samuel de Champlain in 1605. The Harbor had been successively called Whitson Bay, the Port du Cap St. Louis, and Cranes Bay by English, French and Dutch explorers, but the name Plimouth , bestowed on it by Captain John Smith in 1614, was the one the Pilgrims perpetuated.
The Pilgrim voyage was the successful culmination of a century of maritime efforts along the New England coast by Spanish explorers, Portuguese fishermen, French and Dutch fur traders, and Elizabethan English “sea dogs.” All the western ports of Europe seethed with ambitious shipmasters in search of opportunities for profit in commerce or fishing, free-booting, the slave trade, warfare or piracy. Some, like Henry Hudson, visited New England primarily as geographers looking for a Northwest Passage through North America. A few were probing out possibilities for a colonial beachhead in the New World. One of these, led by French Jesuits, had, like the Pilgrims, a religious motive. Three or four others attempted New England colonies, but failed. Only the Pilgrims succeeded in hanging on, through the inevitable preliminary disasters of the first year or two, to found a permanent colony.