He is not mentioned, in connection with the affairs of the Pilgrims, after he was hired as “pilot,”—on Saturday afternoon the 10th of June, 1620, at London,—until after the arrival at Cape Cod, and evidently was steadily occupied during all the experience of “getting away” and of the voyage, in the faithful performance of his duty as first mate (or “pilot”) of the MAY-FLOWER. It was not until the “third party” of exploration from Cape Cod harbor was organized and set out, on Wednesday, December 6, that he appeared as one of the company who put out in the shallop, to seek the harbor which had been commended by Coppin, “the second mate.” On this eventful voyage—when the party narrowly escaped shipwreck at the mouth of Plymouth harbor—they found shelter under the lee of an island, which (it being claimed traditionally that he was first to land there on) was called, in his honor, “Clarke’s Island,” which name it retains to this day. No other mention of him is made by name, in the affairs of ship or shore, though it is known inferentially that he survived the general illness which attacked and carried off half of the ship’s company. In November, 1621,—the autumn following his return from the Pilgrim voyage,—he seems to have gone to Virginia as “pilot” (or “mate”) of the FLYING HART, with cattle of Daniel Gookin, and in 1623 to have attained command of a ship, the PROVIDENCE, belonging to Mr. Gookin, on a voyage to Virginia where he arrived April 10, 1623, but died in that colony soon after his arrival. He seems to have been a competent and faithful man, who filled well his part in life. He will always have honorable mention as the first officer of the historic MAY-FLOWER, and as sponsor at the English christening of the smiling islet in Plymouth harbor which bears his name.
Of ROBERT COPPIN, the “second mate” (or “pilot”) of the MAY-FLOWER, nothing is known before his voyage in the Pilgrim ship, except that he seems to have made a former to the coast of New England and the vicinity of Cape Cod, though under what auspices, or in what ship, does not transpire. Bradford says: “Their Pilotte, one Mr. Coppin, who had been in the countrie before.” Dr. Young a suggests that Coppin was perhaps on the coast with Smith or Hunt. Mrs. Austin imaginatively makes him, of “the whaling bark SCOTSMAN of Glasgow,” but no warrant whatever for such a conception appears.
Dr. Dexter, as elsewhere noted, has said: “My impression is that Coppin was originally hired to go in the SPEEDWELL, . . . that he sailed with them [the Pilgrims] in the SPEED WELL, but on her final putting back was transferred to the MAY-FLOWER.” As we have seen in another relation, Dr. Dexter also believed Coppin to have been the “pilot” sent over by Cushman to Leyden, in May, 1620, and we have found both views to be untenable. It was doubtless because of this mistaken view that Dr. Dexter believed that Coppin was “hired to go in the SPEEDWELL,” and, the premise being wrong, the conclusion is sequentially incorrect. But there are abundant reasons for thinking that Dexter’s “impression” is wholly mistaken. It would be unreasonable to suppose (as both vessels were expected to cross the ocean), that each had not—certainly on leaving Southampton her full complement of officers. If so, each undoubtedly had her second mate. The MAY-FLOWER’S officers and crew were, as we know, hired for the voyage, and there is no good reason to suppose that the second mate of the MAY-FLOWER was dismissed at Plymouth and Coppin put in his place which would not be equally potent for such an exchange between the first mate of the SPEEDWELL and Clarke of the MAY-FLOWER. The assumption presumes too much. In fact, there can be no doubt that Dexter’s misconception was enbased upon, and arose from, the unwarranted impression that Coppin was the “pilot” sent over to Leyden. It is not likely that, when the SPEEDWELL’S officers were so evidently anxious to escape the voyage, they would seek transfer to the MAY-FLOWER.
Charles Deane, the editor of Bradford’s “Historie” (ed.1865), makes, in indexing, the clerical error of referring to Coppin as the “master-gunner,” an error doubtless occasioned by the fact that in the text referred to, the words, “two of the masters-mates, Master Clarke and Master Coppin, the master-gunner,” etc., were run so near together that the mistake was readily made.
In “Mourt’s Relation” it appears that in the conferences that were held aboard the ship in Cape Cod harbor, as to the most desirable place for the colonists to locate, “Robert Coppin our pilot, made relation of a great navigable river and great harbor in the headland of the Bay, almost right over against Cape Cod, being a right line not much above eight leagues distant,” etc. Mrs. Jane G. Austin asserts, though absolutely without warrant of any reliable authority, known tradition, or probability, that “Coppin’s harbor . . . afterward proved to be Cut River and the site of Marshfield,” but in another place she contradicts this by stating that it was “Jones River, Duxbury.” As Coppin described his putative harbor, called “Thievish Harbor,” a “great navigable river and good harbor” were in close relation, which was never true of either the Jones River or “Cut River” localities, while any one familiar with the region knows that what Mrs. Austin knew as “Cut River” had no existence in the Pilgrims’ early days, but was the work of man, superseding a small river-mouth (Green Harbor River), which was so shallow as to have its exit closed by the sand-shift of a single storm.
Young, with almost equal recklessness, says: “The other headland of the bay,” alluded to by Coppin, was Manomet Point, and the river was probably the North River in Scituate; but there are no “great navigable river and good harbor” in conjunction in the neighborhood of Manomet, or of the North River,—the former having no river and the latter no harbor. If Coppin had not declared that he had never seen the mouth of Plymouth harbor before (“mine eyes never saw this place before”), it might readily have been believed that Plymouth harbor was the “Thievish Harbor” of his description, so well do they correspond.
Goodwin, the brother of Mrs. Austin, quite at variance with his sister’s conclusions, states, with every probability confirming him, that the harbor Coppin sought “may have been Boston, Ipswich, Newburyport, or Portsmouth.”
As a result of his “relation” as to a desirable harbor, Coppin was made the “pilot” of the “third expedition,” which left the ship in the shallop, Wednesday, December 6, and, after varying disasters and a narrow escape from shipwreck—through Coppin’s mistake—landed Friday night after dark, in the storm, on the island previously mentioned, ever since called “Clarke’s Island,” at the mouth of Plymouth harbor.
Nothing further is known of Coppin except that he returned to England with the ship. He has passed into history only as Robert Coppin, “the second mate” (or “pilot”) of the MAY-FLOWER.
But one other officer in merchant ships of the MAY-FLOWER class in her day was dignified by the address of “Master” (or Mister), or had rank with the Captain and Mates as a quarter-deck officer,—except in those instances where a surgeon or a chaplain was carried. That the MAY-FLOWER carried no special ship’s-surgeon has been supposed from the fact of Dr. Fuller’s attendance alike on her passengers and crew, and the increased mortality of the seamen—after his removal on shore.