Despite difficulties and controversy, the colonists set sail
The preparation of the voyage presented practical problems the Pilgrims were ill equipped to solve. The small number who sold their Leyden property to convert it into shipping and stores, had no experience along this line, and their ineptitude made Mr. Weston “merry with our endeavours about buying a ship....” Edward Pickering was the most knowledgeable of them in trade, but his money was not forthcoming, even though Cushman and Weston had expected him to furnish “many hundred pounds.” Pastor Robinson gave voice to pained surprise when he discovered that at the time his flock had turned over the money raised from their scanty possessions, Weston still withheld his own money and had taken absolutely no steps to provide shipping.
The preparations in England bogged down while three purchasing agents scattered their efforts to round up supplies, Cushman in London and Kent, and Carver and Christopher Martin at Southampton. Martin was an Essex man, a newcomer chosen to represent the “strangers” from Essex and London whom the adventurers had recruited to swell the ranks of the planters. He had taken part in settling the terms and was charged with keeping track of matters at Southampton. This was a poor choice, for Martin insulted the Leyden people, whose ways he probably despised. When Cushman later called for an accounting and took up cudgels for the complainers, Martin called them “froward and waspish, discontented people.”[7]
In spite of all the “clamours and jangling” about the business end of the voyage, there was one important accomplishment during the few anxious months before the Mayflower (180 tons) and the Speedwell (60 tons) sailed from Southampton on August 5, 1620. Between £1200 and £1600 was raised to cover the expedition’s costs. Carver spent £700 of this at Southampton. Unfortunately we do not know how much was supplied by any particular investor. The £50 put in by Martin, Cushman considered insignificant. £500 which the Ferrars, probably John and Nicholas, prominent in the Virginia Company, had promised and then, for some reason, withdrawn, is the only single large investment mentioned. The amount John Carver furnished is not specified, but he was credited by a later writer with having put in most of his considerable substance. With seventy-odd “Gentlemen ... Merchants ... [and] handy craftsmen” subscribing to the partnership, most investments are likely to have been small. At the last minute the party had to sell butter worth £60 to pay off a debt of £100. They left port dangerously short of supplies, a fact which, as Cushman predicted, added to their hardships in the New World.
Their financial difficulties also caused a fateful delay in beginning their voyage. The August departure date was already too late to allow time for crossing the Atlantic and building shelter in mild weather. When the Speedwell, leaky and overmasted, forced the ships to put back to land, a score of discouraged passengers withdrew from the voyage. The Mayflower, now crowded with the entire group, departed from Plymouth, leaving Robert Cushman behind to serve as chief agent with the adventurers.
Contrary to their patent, the Pilgrims settle at Plymouth
The location where the Pilgrims planned to settle, and their rights to it, were directly related to their future livelihood. Bradford says that when they first made a landfall at Cape Cod they “resolved to stand for the southward ... to find some place about Hudson’s River for their habitation.” One of the earliest visitors to New Plymouth, John Pory, wrote they had set out for Virginia with letters for the Governor to “give them the best advise he could for trading in Hudson’s river.” He blamed the master’s faulty navigation for bringing them to Cape Cod, where the rough weather of early December forced them to decide not to go southward, but to select a sheltered site nearby.[8] This turned out to be New Plymouth.
The Pilgrims carried with them the patent John Peirce, an adventurer we shall meet again, had taken out from the Virginia Company in February 1620. Realizing that it did not apply as far north as New England, the chief colonists drafted the “Mayflower Compact” to avoid disputes over the colony’s powers of government. The leaders probably knew before they sailed that the old North Virginia Company had been revived under Sir Ferdinando Gorges as the Council for New England. His grant had been authorized in July 1620 but was not sealed until the Mayflower was at sea. If before its departure there was any discussion of heading north, Weston and his associates may have pointed out that later they could solicit a grant from the Council in the Pilgrims’ behalf. When the letters with the news of planting at Plymouth reached England the next spring, they promptly secured such a grant. John Peirce was again named as grantee in the indenture, dated June 1, 1621. Its terms permitted Peirce and his associates to lay out 100 acres of land for every person shipped over, and 1500 for public purposes. Besides giving freedom to fish and trade along the coast, it underwrote the colony’s authority to make laws. No boundaries were mentioned; a formal patent was expected to specify them at a later date.[9]
New Plymouth struggles with hardship and debt
A successful relationship with the partners in England now lay at the heart of the welfare of the infant colony. Even though some of the London businessmen sympathized with the religious aims of the Pilgrims, they expected the investment of their capital to yield a return, and that rather quickly. Promotion of colonial ventures was new and risky. Weston and the later leaders of the merchant adventurers had not learned from the bitter experience of the large, incorporated Virginia Company that a long time must elapse before any profit could be expected from a colonial undertaking. They failed to calculate that even if the colonists engaged promptly in trading furs or catching fish, their initial task must be to build permanent dwellings and to feed themselves and a fair number of women and children. They knew that ships set forth annually by merchants had fished along the New England coast for several years. These usually erected fishing stages and sometimes traded for furs. They required only a modest outlay by the investors in them and wound up their accounts at the end of each voyage. It was much more costly, on the other hand, to uphold a permanent settlement until it was self-sustaining. When even the wealthy backers of Virginia and Bermuda complained about delayed profits, the small group of capitalists supporting the Pilgrims certainly could not afford to sink large funds for supplies year after year without receiving goods in return. At the beginning they apparently underestimated the extent of their task and seem to have neglected consistently the necessary provision for the Plymouth colony.