Once Upon a Time in Connecticut

by Caroline Clifford Newton

When the settlers at Quinnipiac, or New Haven, as it was soon called, had been there a little more than a year, they met in Robert Newman’s barn “to consult about settling civil government” and also about establishing a church. Up to this time they had lived under what was known as the “Plantation Covenant,” which was a simple agreement among themselves that they would all “be ordered by those rules which the Scripture holds forth.” At this meeting on June 4, l639, they decided that they would continue to accept the Bible as a code of laws, and that only church members should hold office or have the right to vote for magistrates. They did this under the direction of John Davenport, who in one of his writings had described this colony as “a new Plantation whose design is religion.” This agreement, made in Robert Newman’s barn, was known as the “Fundamental Agreement.” Twelve men were appointed on that day who chose seven from among themselves to found a church. These seven men were called the “Seven Pillars.” On August 22, the “Seven Pillars” met and established a church, and on the 25th of October they met again and set up the civil government.

Like the Connecticut Colony, the New Haven Colony in setting up its government made no reference to any authority beyond itself; the people elected their own magistrates and made their own laws. But the New Haven Colony was unlike Connecticut in one important respect. In New Haven no man could vote or hold a place in the government unless he was a church member. This led later to much discontent among some of the people, and was one reason, among others, for the failure of New Haven as a separate colony and for its beng absorbed, twenty-five years afterward,—­in 1664,—­into the larger and more liberal Connecticut Colony.

Meanwhile, even before the government was organized, the merchants and shippers of the company had bought or built boats and had begun to trade along the coasts to the north and to the south. During the first winter while some of the people, like the family of Michael Wigglesworth, were still living in cellars dug in the river-banks, Master George Lamberton was sailing in his sloop, the Cock, on a trading voyage to Virginia. Other New Haven ships soon established commercial relations with Boston and New Amsterdam, with Delaware, where beaver skins could be obtained in abundance, with Virginia, whose great staple was tobacco, and with other plantations still farther away, such as Barbados in the West Indies, where sugar was the most important article of exchange. Now and then we hear of a New Haven ship in strange and foreign parts of the world.

There was one which set out in December, 1642, for the Canary Islands, laden with clapboards, and fell in with pirates near the Island of Palma, one of the Canaries. A Turkish pirate ship of three hundred tons with two hundred men on board and twenty-six guns, attacked this small New Haven ship of one hundred and eighty tons, which had only seven guns fit for use and twenty men armed with rusty muskets. The fight lasted for three hours, and Captain Carman, the master of the New Haven ship, and his men succeeded in killing a good many Turks in spite of being taken at a disadvantage. But at last the pirates put their ship alongside and sent one hundred men on board the New Haven ship, When, however, they found that their captain was shot and the rudder of their ship broken, the pirates hauled, down their flag and drew off so quickly that they left fifty of their men behind. “Then the master [Captain Carman] and some of his men came up and fought those fifty hand to hand and slew so many of them that the rest leaped overboard. The master had many wounds on his head and body and divers of his men were wounded, yet but one slain. So with much difficulty he got to the Island [of Palma], where he was very courteously entertained, and supplied with whatever he needed.”

But New Haven ships did not always come off as well as in this encounter with the pirates, and their voyages were not always successful. Some members of the New Haven Colony bought land in Delaware and attempted to establish a trading-post in order to take advantage of the profitable trade in beaver skins. But the Dutch and Swedes, who had settled there, objected to the coming of the English, and once, in 1642, they seized Captain Lamberton, who had come in his ship the Cock, accused him of inciting the Indians against them, and threw him into prison. As the charges against him could not be proved he was soon released, but the hostility of the Dutch and Swedes continued until the New Haven merchants were driven away from that coast and out of the rich fur-trade of Delaware. This was a great blow to the colony. Other losses, too, were met with, and at last the people became greatly discouraged as they saw their hopes of founding a successful commercial colony slowly, but surely, disappearing.

The voyage of the “Great Shippe” which took place about this time is the most tragic adventure in the story of New Haven’s early shipping days. It began in this way. In 1646, as a last resource, the merchants of New Haven decided to fit out a ship with what was left of their “tradeable estate,” and send her to London. Up to this time they had sent goods to England by way of Boston or of the West Indies; there might be more profit, they thought, in a direct trade, cutting out the cost of reshipment. So they bought a ship. We do not know her name, she is always spoken of as the “Great Shippe,” although she was only one hundred tons; perhaps the title was given her because the colonists were staking so much on this venture. If it succeeded, their prosperity might be assured; if it failed, they must give up the sea and commerce as a dependence and turn their energies to agriculture. The “Great Shippe” was a new boat, said to have been built in Rhode Island, and she was loaded principally with wheat and peas shipped in bulk, with West Indies hides, beaver skins, and what silver plate could be spared for exchange in London. Her cargo altogether was worth about twenty-five thousand dollars, which was a large sum in those days, especially in a new and struggling colony.

The master of the ship was the same Captain Lamberton we have heard of before. He was a brave and bold skipper, but it is said that he was not altogether pleased with the ship when he first saw her; that he did not like her lines and thought her not quite seaworthy. Other people, too, besides Captain Lamberton, complained that she was not only badly built, but badly loaded, with the light goods of the cargo below and the heavy above, and some old seamen predicted that the grain would shift in rough weather and make trouble. These were mostly rumors, however, and few paid attention to them at the time; but long afterward, when people talked over the strange fate of the “Great Shippe,” Captain Lamberton’s words, “This ship will be our grave,” were recalled and believed to have been a prophecy.

That winter of 1646 was a bitterly cold one in Connecticut, and New Haven Harbor was frozen over. When the “Great Shippe” was ready to sail, it was necessary to cut a way out for her with handsaws through the thick ice for nearly three miles. A good many people from the town walked out on the harbor ice beside the ship to see her begin her voyage, and to bid good-bye to a number of their friends who were going home to England on business of one kind or another. Seventy people had taken passage in the “Great Shippe,” and among them were some who were very prominent in the colony, as, for instance, Captain Nathaniel Turner, who, having had experience in the war with the Pequot Indians, had been given “the command and ordering of all martial affairs” in the plantation, and Thomas Gregson, one of the magistrates, who was charged by the colony to obtain a charter for them, if possible, from the English Parliament, then in control in England.

Reverend John Davenport, the minister, stood in the crowd of people on the ice that winter day and offered a prayer to God for the protection of the travelers. “Lord,” he said, “if it be thy will to bury these our friends in the bottom of the sea, they are thine, save them.” This does not sound like a very cheerful send-off, but we must remember that a long voyage was a serious undertaking in those days and that people sometimes made their wills even before sailing from New Haven for Boston.