THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 47 



double purpose of promoting colonization and engaging 

 in the fisheries. They conceived the idea that, when the 

 fishing season was over, the spare men above those actually 

 required to navigate the vessel home again might be left 

 behind in the region of the fishing grounds ; when the ship 

 should return they would be there to assist in fishing as 

 in the previous year, and in the meantime be employed 

 in constructing buildings and in planting corn for another 

 year. With this purpose in mind the Dorchester Company 

 sent out, in the year of its organization, a small ship of 

 fifty tons. She arrived late on the coast of Maine and 

 for that reason did not secure a full fare in those waters. 

 The vessel later sailed to Massachusetts Bay where more 

 fish were caught. The return voyage was made by way 

 of Spain, where a bad market caused a loss of six hundred 

 pounds for the venture. 



Before setting sail for Europe the vessel left fourteen 

 of her spare men behind at Cape Ann, in accordance with 

 the instructions of the company. It is difficult to estimate 

 accurately what influence this fact had on the colonization 

 side of the company's project, for history fails to give 

 further details of how the winter of 1623-24 was passed on 

 Cape Ann by this plantation of fishermen. Doubtless some 

 of them survived, if not all of them, and were found the 

 following year when the vessel returned, else there would 

 have been more difficulty encountered in finding men with 

 courage to face a second attempt the next winter. The 

 desolate experience of the fourteen men, shut off from 

 the rest of the civilized world, can only be imagined. 

 'The only other persons of the English race then in New 

 England besides the people of Plymouth were a few at 

 Nantasket; the remnant of Gorges' plantation at Wey- 

 mouth; the settlers at Piscataqua River and Saco, who be- 

 gan these places the same year; a company at Monhegan, 

 and perhaps one or two other residents on the coast of 



