"For private fresh provision, you may carry with you (in case you, or any of yours should be sick at Sea) Conserves of Roses, Clove-Gilliflowers, Wormwood, Green-Ginger, Burnt-Wine, English Spirits, Prunes to stew, Raisons of the Sun, Currence, Sugar, Nutmeg, Mace, Cinnamon, Pepper and Ginger, White Bisket, or Spanish Rusk, Eggs, Rice, Juice of Lemmons, well put up to cure, or prevent the Scurvy. Small Skillets, Pipkins, Porrengers, and small Frying pans.
"To prevent or take away Sea sickness, Conserve of Wormwood is very proper."[8]
The settler also must take with him a supply of food to answer his needs on reaching Massachusetts, and it was advised that enough for the space of a year might be required in which case each person should be certain to have in store 8 bushels of meal, 2 bushels pease, 2 bushels oatmeal, 1 gallon brandy, 1 gallon oil and 2 gallons vinegar. Sugar could be had in New England as the Colonial vessels were bringing it from the West Indies in the way of trade, but spices, necessary to the English diet, must be brought from England.
John Josselyn, writing in 1638, listed the following articles as necessary equipment for every family coming to New England, viz.:
Household implements for a family of six persons, viz.:
| 1 iron pot | 0 | 7 | 0 |
| 1 great copper kettle | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| 1 small kettle | 10 | 0 | |
| 1 lesser kettle | 6 | 0 | |
| 1 large frying pan | 2 | 6 | |
| 1 small frying pan | 1 | 8 | |
| 1 brass mortar | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| 1 spit | 2 | 0 | |
| 1 grid iron | 1 | 0 | |
| 2 skillets | 5 | 0 | |
| Platters, dishes and spoons of wood | 4 | 0 |
The above prices are estimated costs in England and the freight on the same would be reckoned at the rate of half a ton per person.
The vessels which carried the great emigration to New England between 1630 and 1640 were of small tonnage and the passenger accommodations on board were limited in space and barren of creature comforts. Small wonder that the health of many of the first settlers, shaken by the passage at sea, paid toll to the severity of the New England climate—the biting cold of the winter and the heat of the summer days to which they were unaccustomed.
"It was not because the Country was unhealthful, but because their bodies were corrupted with sea-diet, which was naught, their Beefe and Porke being tainted, their Butter and Cheese corrupted, their Fish rotten, and voyage long, by reason of crosse Windes, so that winter approaching before they could get warme houses, and the searching sharpnes of that purer Climate, creeping in at the crannies of their crazed bodies, caused death and sickness."[9]