THE VOYAGE OF THE MAYFLOWER. 363: 



Water : passing the Isle of Wight and the rocks known as the 

 Needles, they entered the English Channel. 



They were no sooner launched upon the fretful waters of this 

 confined strait than their disasters began. The captain of the 

 Speedwell, who had engaged to remain a year abroad with the 

 vessel, actuated either by cowardice or by dissatisfaction with the 

 enterprise, declared that his ship was leaky, and that she could 

 not proceed to sea. Dartmouth Harbor offered an opportunity 

 for effecting the necessary repairs, and here a week was spent : 

 the Speedwell was then pronounced quite sound by the carpen- 

 ters and surveyors. They again set sail ; but the captain of the 

 Speedwell soon profited by the vicinity of Plymouth to assert 

 a second time that he was ready to founder. He ran into 

 port, and the Mayflower followed. No special cause was dis- 

 covered for the apprehensions of the captain ; but it was decided 

 that the Speedwell should be sent back to London as unsea- 

 worthy, with such of her passengers as were disheartened, the 

 remainder being transferred to the larger ship. One hundred 

 and one persons — some of them aged and infirm, and several of 

 them women soon to become mothers — -were thus imprisoned, as 

 it were, in a vessel much too small to accommodate them ; while 

 the delays resulting from the treachery or stratagem practised 

 by the captain of the Speedwell had already proved so serious, 

 that it was the 6th of September before the Mayflower, with her 

 crowd of suffering passengers, could continue the voyage thus 

 inauspiciously commenced. 



The wind was east by north, blowing, according to the jour- 

 nal, "a fine small gale," when the Mayflower started from Ply- 

 mouth upon her lonely way. The solitude of the ocean — in this 

 latitude almost a trackless waste — lay stretched out before them. 

 The prosperous gale soon gave way to the equinoctial storm, 

 and a terrible head- wind from the northwest Compelled the little 

 bark to struggle anxiously with waves which threatened to 

 engulf her. She was soon sorely shattered: her upper works 



