SATURDAY, Sept. 9/Sept. 19
Comes in with wind E.N E. Gale holds.
Ship well off the land.
SUNDAY, Sept. 10/Sept. 20
Comes in with wind E.N.E. Gale holds.
Distance lost, when ship bore up for
Plymouth, more than regained.
MONDAY, Sept. 11/Sept. 21
Same; and so without material change, the
daily record of wind, weather, and the
ship's general course—the repetition of
which would be both useless and wearisome—
continued through the month and until the
vessel was near half the seas over. Fine
warm weather and the "harvest-moon." The
usual equinoctial weather deferred.
SATURDAY, Sept. 23/Oct. 3
One of the seamen, some time sick with a
grievous disease, died in a desperate manner.
The first death and burial at sea of the
voyage.
[We can readily imagine this first burial at sea on the MAY FLOWER, and its impressiveness. Doubtless the good Elder "committed the body to the deep" with fitting ceremonial, for though the young man was of the crew, and not of the Pilgrim company, his reverence for death and the last rites of Christian burial would as surely impel him to offer such services, as the rough, buccaneering Master (Jones would surely be glad to evade them).
Dr. Griffis (The Pilgrims in their Three Homes, p. 176) says "The Puritans [does this mean Pilgrims ?] cared next to nothing about ceremonies over a corpse, whether at wave or grave." This will hardly bear examination, though Bradford's phraseology in this case would seem to support it, as he speaks of the body as "thrown overboard;" yet it is not to be supposed that it was treated quite so indecorously as the words would imply. It was but a few years after, certainly, that we find both Pilgrim and Puritan making much ceremony at burials. We find considerable ceremony at Carver's burial only a few months later. Choate, in his masterly oration at New York, December 22, 1863, pictures Brewster's service at the open grave of one of the Pilgrims in March, 1621.]
A sharp change. Equinoctial weather, followed by stormy westerly gales; encountered cross winds and continued fierce storms. Ship shrewdly shaken and her upper works made very leaky. One of the main beams in the midships was bowed and cracked. Some fear that the ship could not be able to perform the voyage. The chief of the company perceiving the mariners to fear the sufficiency of the ship (as appeared by their mutterings) they entered into serious consultation with the Master and other officers of the ship, to consider, in time, of the danger, and rather to return than to cast themselves into a desperate and inevitable peril.
There was great distraction and difference of opinion amongst the mariners themselves. Fain would they do what would be done for their wages' sake, being now near half the seas over; on the other hand, they were loath to hazard their lives too desperately. In examining of all opinions, the Master and others affirmed they knew the ship to be strong and firm under water, and for the buckling bending or bowing of the main beam, there was a great iron scrue the passengers brought out of Holland which would raise the beam into its place. The which being done, the carpenter and Master affirmed that a post put under it, set firm in the lower deck, and otherwise bound, would make it sufficient. As for the decks and upper works, they would caulk them as well as they could; and though with the working of the ship they would not long keep staunch, yet there would otherwise be no great danger if they did not overpress her with sails. So they resolved to proceed.
In sundry of these stormes, the winds were so fierce and the seas so high, as the ship could not bear a knot of sail, but was forced to hull drift under bare poles for divers days together. A succession of strong westerly gales. In one of the heaviest storms, while lying at hull, [hove to D.W.] a lusty young man, one of the passengers, John Howland by name, coming upon some occasion above the gratings latticed covers to the hatches, was with the seel [roll] of the ship thrown into the sea, but caught hold of the topsail halliards, which hung overboard and ran out at length; yet he held his hold, though he was sundry fathoms under water, till he was hauled up by the same rope to the brim of the water, and then with a boathook and other means got into the ship again and his life saved. He was something ill with it.
The equinoctial disturbances over and the strong October gales, the milder, warmer weather of late October followed.