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Plymouth Colony

The Wreck of the Little James, Plymouth Colony’s Snakebit Ship

A young British aristocrat, Capt. Emmanual Altham, lost his ship and nearly lost his life off the coast of Maine in the early 17th century. But this wasn’t the first crisis for the 44-ton Little James, nor would it be the last.

A few years after the Mayflower’s arrival, the Plymouth Colony still relied on support from English ships, and the spring of 1623 the Merchant Adventurers company sent two: the Little James and the Anne.

Arms of the Merchant Adventurers.

The Little James‘ crew agreed to spend six years in Plymouth Colony. They expected a share of profit from fishing and trading.

Little James

The Little James, though small compared to the 140-ton Anne, carried supplies, livestock and 90 fresh immigrants for the struggling settlement. Many were wives or children of the colonists, desperate to see their loved ones, yet apprehensive about what awaited them on the other side of the ocean.

Commanded by Emmanuel Altham, the James operated under the practical control of shipmaster John Bridges. Though the Anne and the James left at the same time, the James languished in the fog for a week on England’s Isle of Wight.

After restocking their supplies during the delay, they soon faced shortages as their supplies spoiled. The blame fell on passenger John Jenney, a barrel maker apparently in charge of the food stores. One sailor explained Jenney’s pregnant wife distracted him from his ship duties. In fact, Sarah Jenney had a child on board a month short of their arrival in Plymouth.

Tensions among crewmembers simmered further when the captain refused to plunder a nearby French vessel. For Altham, conflicts between European nations did not justify piracy, but apparently it did for the crew.

The Little James Arrives

Though the Anne arrived at Plymouth on July 10, the lagging Little James didn’t pull into shore until August 5, spending over 14 weeks crossing the Atlantic. It took five more weeks than the Mayflower, which was blown off course and beaten by a storm.

The Mayflower

Shortly after unloading the Little James, crewmembers began protesting their contract. They claimed they were tricked into accepting work arrangements. They refused to cooperate with the shipmasters and they demanded advance payment.

Plymouth’s governor, William Bradford, stepped in to keep the peace, promising them their pay.

The harsh living conditions in Plymouth caused anguish among the passengers, many of whom belonged to the Pilgrims’ community in Holland. Bradford wrote, “some wished themselves in England again.” They “pitied the distress they saw their friends had been long in,” wrote Bradford.

More Trouble

While on coastal trading missions, the crew had to disassemble the mast of the Little James and replace it. In early April, Captain Altham took the ship and crew to Maine on a fishing assignment. After experiencing a New England winter, the hungry and disgruntled crew was even more unmanageable. Just off the shore of Bristol, Maine, far from any Plymouth leaders, the crew mutinied, They threatened to destroy both the ship and its captain. Then they reconsidered. The frustrated mutineers forced Captain Altham onto a small boat, demanding he bring back food from Plymouth.

On April 10, 1624, as Altham and Edward Winslow sailed north with food, a severe storm slammed into the James. The gale blew the vessel against the coast, battering it against boulders. It smashed holes in the ship so big that “a horse and carte might have gone in.” John Bridges, the ship’s pilot, drowned. Two crewmembers were killed when the sails and their wooden booms were blown off the ship.

Edward Winslow

Those crewmen who managed to escape to shore merely watched the Little James sink. They did nothing to spare the ship or its cargo. The crew’s negligence had caused the total loss of the James, along with the small fishing boats used for trading on the coast. Plymouth also lost trade goods and a load of fish. Captain Altham lost his books and most of his personal belongings on board.

Altham and Plymouth leaders pooled their meager funds to hire local mariners to salvage the ship. It was eventually towed to shore, and repairs took six weeks. But by then, the ship had eaten so much of the colony’s financial resources the leaders thought it best to send the ship home for whatever they could make from it once it returned.

After the long and costly repairs, the James sailed back safely, and the two chief mutineers went quickly to court to sue the Plymouth Colony and their investors for unpaid wages. That was just a portion of the litigation, finger-pointing, and court hearings that occurred in the aftermath.

Still More Trouble

But the drama of the Little James still didn’t end. Surprisingly it sailed more missions back and forth across the Atlantic. In 1627, it returned to England towed by the ship White Angel, and filled with a profitable cargo of fish and beaver skin. When they reached the English Channel near Plymouth of Devonshire, the James’ towline was cut free from the White Angel. However, it was then immediately overtaken by a Turkish warship. Pirates sold off the cargo of fish and beaver skin, and the shipmaster and men were sold into slavery.

William Bradford

Nothing is heard of the Little James after that. Looking back on the story of the James, William Bradford wrote, “I fear the Adventurers did over-pride themselves in her, for she had ill success.”

Donald W. White is an Oregon writer, artist and minister, with graduate degrees from Pepperdine and Abilene Christian Universities. His book A Plymouth Pilgrim is a fully modernized version of William Bradford’s personal account of the roots of Plymouth Colony, and he is currently at work on A Pilgrim Almanac.

Images: Map of New England By http://maps.bpl.org – A mapp of New England /, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27807455. Merchant Adventurers arms By (Lobsterthermidor (talk) 23:58, 12 April 2016 (UTC)) – Own work using lion element from commons File:Blason ville fr Andernos-les-Bains (Gironde).svg by User:Henrysalome; rose element from commons Blason_famille_fr_de_Cacqueray by User:Tretinville, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48159571

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The Straight Story of Thanksgiving

The fourth Thursday in November celebrates a group of immigrants called the Pilgrims. Their story has been told and retold with many errors of omission and commission. Here is the straight story of Thanksgiving, as best as I know it.

The Straight Story of Thanksgiving

When Queen Elizabeth I, known as the Virgin Queen, died in 1603, her nephew, James of Scotland, ascended the English throne. In 1606, James authorized two joint stock companies with a royal charter. A charter is a partnership of the Crown and private investors, a forerunner of the modern corporation. It included a mix of knights, merchants, planters and Adventurers i.e., investors.

King James I.

James issued the charters to promote English settlement in North America. The Virginia Company of London settled Jamestown in 1608. The other, the Virginia Company of Plymouth, included investors primarily from southwest England: Exeter, Plymouth and Bristol. By 1606, 10 English joint stock companies promoted settlements and trade across the globe. They competed with France, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands.

England had an official church, the Church of England, also known as the Anglican Church. (In the United States the Episcopal Church belongs to what is now called the Anglican Communion.) All English adult men had to pay a tithe or ten percent of their income or property value in goods in kind or currency to support the church of England whether they were members or not. In effect, this was a church and state monopoly.

The Puritans wanted changes, believing the Anglicans corrupted by Church of Rome influence. The Anglican hierarchy considered them nonconformists, accused them of treason and forced them to worship in secrecy in their homes. While the Puritans believed they could purify the Church of England, the Separatists felt otherwise.

The Netherlands and Back

In 1607, the Rev. John Robinson illegally led 100 Separatists to the Netherlands. The Dutch were fighting Catholic Spain in the Eighty Years’ War for independence and religious tolerance. The war culminated in 1648 with an interregnum of a 12-year truce (1609-1621). The Pilgrims migrated to Leiden, 25 miles south of Amsterdam. They chose that city, the second largest in Holland, because it did not require workers to speak Dutch.

The Battle of Gibralter, which took place during the Eighty Years’ War

The Separatists in Leiden grew to 300, but they earned meager wages. Their children also began to adopt too many Dutch customs. Around 1619, some Separatists began a movement to return to England and secure financial backing to emigrate to America. But Robinson and most of the Pilgrims did not go. Only 100 left for England with Elder William Brewster, a layman assistant minister.

The Plymouth Company, sometimes referred to as the Adventurers, financed the Pilgrims. Initially, the contract required the Pilgrims to work four days for the company and two days for themselves. In return, they received transportation and necessary supplies.

The original plans had several modifications. Two vessels were originally chartered, the Mayflower and the Speedwell. But the Speedwell proved unseaworthy, despite two repairs. The delays caused expenses to increase, forcing the Pilgrims to agree to work six days a week. They would deliver furs and timber for the Plymouth Company for a typical seven-year indenture.

To America

The Pilgrims originally planned to settle the northern boundary of the Virginia Company — the mouth of the North River, now known as the Hudson at New York City. But the prevailing northern current of the Gulf Stream pushed the Mayflower off course. After a short stay in Provincetown Harbor on Cape Cod, the Mayflower set sail again for their original destination. But dangerous shoals off Monomoy Point, Cape Cod, forces Capt. Christopher Jones to retreat. He then found anchorage in December 1620 in the shallows of what is now Plymouth, Mass.

Notably, the Pilgrims passed over John Smith, an able leader for the Jamestown settlement, because he was not a Puritan Separatist but a “Stranger.” Smith had given the Pilgrims maps highlighting areas like the deep Charles River in Boston. The Charles was ideal since the river provided both essential freshwater and the Mayflower could navigate it. Why the Pilgrims chose Plymouth is unclear; perhaps the lack of food, scurvy and the winter weather forced the choice. Later Boston became the epicenter for the Great Migration of Puritans from 1630-1640. More than 20,000 people, primarily Puritans from England, migrated to New England. Some also came from Scotland and Ireland, but fewer than 2 percent of the United Kingdom population migrated.

The Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor by William Halsall.

The Mayflower, a wine merchant ship, carried the Separatists, the crew and others they called Strangers. That amounted to a total of 102 people, 42 tons of beer and 10,000 gallons of wine! The term Pilgrims was not coined until the 1800s.

Despite friendly relations with the native Wampanoag Indians during the first two years, many Pilgrims died from starvation and disease. Initially, a communal property agreement gave everyone an equal, but inadequate share, of food. By 1623, a system of free enterprise reigned. Families kept what they grew and women helped in the fields.

The Rest of the Straight Story of Thanksgiving

In 1621, the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags celebrated the first Harvest Fest, common across Europe. Their meal included venison, duck, lobster, clams, eels, turkey, corn and nuts.

“The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth” (1914) By Jennie A. Brownscombe

Presidents Washington, Madison, Monroe and the two Adams proclaimed Thanksgiving a holiday. But after Monroe, only the six New England states celebrated the holiday until Sarah Josepha Hale from New Hampshire came along. She wrote many editorials urging President Lincoln to proclaim Thanksgiving a national holiday. In 1863, Lincoln made it our third national holiday along with Independence Day and Washington’s Birthday.

The Mayflower Society estimates over 10 million people in America are direct lineal descendants from the Plymouth colonists. You or someone in your family may be one of them!

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Now available in paperback and as an ebook. Click here to order from Amazon.

Dan Hazard grew up in Rhode Island and is an avid colonial historian and genealogist. Dan has fond memories of watching the Mayflower II sail serenely into Plymouth Harbor in June 1957 and recently discovered his family connection to Pilgrim Elder Brewster.

Primary Sources: ‘Mayflower,’ Nathanial Philbrick, 2006. The Great Migration Directory, Anderson FASG

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Warwick, the Puritan Pirate King Who Colonized New England

Puritanism and piracy together helped colonize New England with the zealous oversight of Robert Rich, 1^st Earl of Warwick.

Known as the “Pious Pyrate” in his day, Warwick sponsored half the pirates in the Atlantic between 1626 and 1630. His proceeds from the plunder allowed him to invest in the various companies that sponsored colonists.

Robert Rich (1587-1658), 2nd Earl of Warwick

In her new book, Jamie L. H. Goodall explains how piracy was as important as Puritanism in colonizing North America. The Daring Exploits of Pirate Black Sam Bellamy From Cape Cod to the Caribbean is less about Bellamy and more about the conditions that created pirates in the first place. Those conditions were in large part created by the man New England knew as Warwick. He “epitomized the intimate connection between piracy, colonization and intense religious devotion,” wrote Goodall.

Why Pirates? Why Bellamy?

The short version: Heads of state needed money to wage their wars, so they enlisted privateers to attack and loot enemy vessels. Then, when wars ended, unemployed privateers turned to piracy.

Privateer Boscawen engaging a Fleet of French Ships in 1745

Little is actually known about Black Sam Bellamy. He fell in love with a beautiful girl from Eastham, Mass., named Maria Hallett. He plundered the Caribbean and then sailed north, only to sink with his ship. The Whydah Gally wrecked in a hurricane off Wellfleet on April 26, 1717.

Bellamy became one of the better known pirates in 1984 when underwater explorer Barry Clifford discovered the Whydah Gally.Clifford has recovered several hundred thousand artifacts, including cannon, precious stones and pieces of silver. He also found pirate bones, though he has not identified Bellamy.

Without Warwick, Black Sam Bellamy may not have pursued his plunder. We know a lot about Warwick.

Warwick

Robert Rich was the first son and third child of Penelope Devereaux and the 1st Earl of Warwick. Penelope, famously unhappy, bore the first earl seven children, then lived as the mistress of Charles Blount, 8^th Baron Mountjoy. she bore him five children.

Warwick was born in 1587 during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a time when piracy flourished. His rich and powerful family raised him as a devout Puritan. Warwick’s father, Robert Rich, 1st Earl of Warwick, maintained a privateering fleet. In 1618 he paid King James I £10,000 for the title of Warwick.

James I didn’t feel as comfortable with the Puritan pirates as his predecessor had. He tried to pushing them away toward the Americas.

In the early years of colonization, most colonial ventures were undertaken by private investors with the permission or charter from the crown. Warwick made investments in the colonies, financed by the proceeds from his personal pirate navy. One Spanish politician said the only reason for the British colonies was that they were “good for pirates.” Boston, wrote Goodall, eventually earned a reputation as “the common receptacle for pirates of all nations.”

Warwick used his political clout and money to help Puritans get charters for the colonies of New Plymouth (New Zealand), Providence Island, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay. .

The Pious Plunderer

He also helped radical Puritan ministers, sometimes by hiding them from prosecutors. Mostly, though, he paid for their livings. Helped by his relative Sir Nathaniel Rich, he supported 22 ministers. “Warwick was well placed to support, to influence, and to help organize for various political and religious initiatives an unusually large number of Puritan ministers,” wrote Robert Brenner in Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London’s Overseas Traders, 1550-1653.

Warwick’s religious zeal put him at odds with the English monarchs. When the English Civil War broke out, Parliament named Lord High Admiral of the British Navy in 1642.

Olier-Cromwell

He retired from public life in 1649, but remained close to the Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell. His grandson, also Robert Rich, married Cromwell’s daughter Frances. The marriage didn’t last long, as Rich died shortly afterward in 1658. Warwick died the next year.

Here are some other fun facts about the 1st Earl of Warwick.

1. Warwick’s pirates bailed out Massachusetts.

In 1640, English merchants would only accept hard currency, but the colonists didn’t have much of it. Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop lamented, “scarcity of money made a great change in all commerce.”

Warwick helped them out of their trouble. As Lord High Admiral, he commissioned a pirate named Capt. William Jackson to assemble a small fleet. In 1643, Jackson and his men began plundering Spanish towns throughout the West Indies.

Several times they returned to New England, got drunk and spent lavishly—in hard currency. They sailed to Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1646, where they “spente and scattered a great deale of money,” according to Winthrop. He felt “divine Providence” had brought them to the colony.

John Winthrop. American Antiquarian Society

2. He helped Thomas Hooker hide from his persecutors.

Hooker, credited with founding Connecticut Colony, attracted Puritans with his fiery sermons at what is now Chelmsford Cathedral. Warwick listened to Hooker’s sermons there. Hooker ran afoul of the spiritual authorities, who silenced him and bound him over to appear before the High Commission. Warwick may have paid for his bond, and he certainly hid him away at the family’s private retreat in the Netherlands.

Thomas Hoooker and his people

3. His pirates showed up drunk in Plymouth Colony.

William Bradford described how about 80 unruly “lustie men” came on shore. There they behaved like “madmen,” after they “did so distemper them with drinke.” They grew more moderate and orderly over the next few weeks. Winthrop praised them because they “spent liberally and gave freely to many of the poorer sort [in Plymouth].

Plymouth Colony’s governor William Bradford really couldn’t complain about Warwick. He signed the Peirce Patent, which promised Plymouth Colony 100 acres for everyone who stayed in the settlement for three out of seven years.

4. At least a half dozen places were named after him.

They include Warwick, R.I,. and Warwick, Mass. In Virginia, he inspired the Warwick River, Warwick Towne, Warwick River Shire and Warwick County,.Warwick donated the land on which Bermuda’s oldest school, Warwick Academy, stands.

5. He was “a heroic figure among devout Puritans.”

That’s according to historian Mark Hanna. They had reason to admire him. In 1643, he headed a colonial commission tasked with governing the British colonies in North America and the Caribbean. The next year the commission incorporated Providence Plantations, now Rhode Island. He won a guarantee of religious liberty in the colonies and issued a declaration that established freedom of worship in Bermuda. .

6. He established a Puritan pirates’ nest in the Caribbean.

He started the Providence Company and financed the colonization of Providence, Henrietta and Tortuga islands. Settlers lived under strict rules: no drinking, whoring or gambling. But piracy was encouraged.

“The Earl of Warwick and his friends were sincerely trying to create three nests of pirates with the behaviour and morals of a Calvinist theological seminary,” wrote historian C.V. Woodward.

In the end, Providence Island failed when the Spanish massacred most of the inhabitants.

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8 Fun Facts About the Striped Bass, the Fish That Fed Plymouth Colony

When it comes to fish, the striped bass ranks right up there with the cod. It has for centuries. It kept the Pilgrims alive, funded schools and gave wealthy gentlemen an excuse to form posh, men-only fishing clubs.

Striped bass

William Wood, in his 1634 book New England Prospect, called the striped bass “one of the best fishes in the country.”

Fishermen prize them as exciting game fish that generally weigh between 10 and 30 pounds, but can grow as big as 50 or even 100. Stripers never stop growing, and they can live up to 40 years. They also taste good. Some of the best places to fish for stripers include Newport, R.I., and in Massachusetts, Plum Island, Chatham, Bourne and the Cape Cod Canal. In Connecticut, fishermen like Niantic, Waterford and New Haven.

Striper fishing in Rhode Island

Scientists classify the striped bass as anadromous, which means they spawn in fresh water, just like herring and eel, and spend much of their lives in saltwater. Atlantic striped bass begin life in the Hudson, Delaware and Connecticut Rivers and Chesapeake Bay estuaries. They spend their childhood in the lower rivers and bays, then migrate north in the spring to the near-shore ocean from North Carolina to Maine. In the fall, they return to the rivers to begin the cycle all over.

Of course you want to know more. So here are xx fun facts about the striped bass.

1. There used to be lots of striped bass.

They were once amazingly plentiful. Thomas Morton, an early Massachusetts colonist, wrote that the abundant stripers inspired betting.

“Other places have greater quantities in so much, as wagers have bin layed, that one should not throw a stone in the water, but that hee should hit a fish,” he wrote.

2. Natives traded them.

The Wampanoag caught stripers in the first commercial fishery. Well, as far as we can tell they had the first commercial fishery. Plymouth Colony’s second governor, William Bradford, visited a Wampanoag tribe in what is now Raynham, Mass. He saw Native Americans catching striped bass in a fish weir. They’d kill them with arrows and then trade the tasty sea creature with other tribes.

Fishing for stripers is now highly regulated to prevent overfishing. But several state and federal courts have upheld the aboriginal rights of Indian tribes to fish for sustenance. In 1984, a district court judge in Barnstable ruled the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe had the right to fish without a permit.

3. Striped bass fed Plymouth Colony.

For that first Thanksgiving in Plymouth, striped bass was more likely on the menu than turkey. Wood, in his New England’s Prospect, described how the Plymouth colonists had learned to use seines or nets to catch striped bass at high water. When the tide ebbed, they were left on dry ground – sometimes as many as 3,000 at a time. Wood called striped bass “a delicate, fine, fat, taste fish.”

Thanking the lord for ye striper? “The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth” (1914) By Jennie A. Brownscombe

The Pilgrims salted or pickled them for the winter and used them to fertilize their crops. In 1639, the colony banned the use of stripers for fertilizer. The reason? To promote the sale of the fish to the Spanish market. Anyone who fished commercially got a break from duties or taxes for seven years.

Plymouth was trying to compete with the Basque fishermen who caught cod off the North American coast, salted it and sold it in Spain. The settlers pickled striped bass in vinegar for the overseas market — probably because salt was either expensive or scarce. But pickled striper never caught on in Europe. Striped bass did sell in New England, though. In 1670, Plymouth Colony paid for a free school – probably the first public school in America — with lease fees from the striped bass fishery.

4. Fishing for striper was the fashion for rich men.

The pursuit of the striped bass became a thing for exclusive gentlemen’s clubs. To this day, rusted pieces of iron pipe stick out from hand-drilled holes in granite along the shores of Narragansett and Buzzard bays. They are the remnants of fishing stands built right after the Civil War. The iron piping held up long wooden platforms high above the slippery granite rocks from which rich men caught striped bass.

Cuttyhunk in the Elizabeth Islands became the mecca for striper fishermen. It has been described as the Grand Central Station of North Atlantic striped bass fishing. In the 1840s, a fisherman described visiting his bass club on Cuttyhunk: They arrived before lunch and took a couple of striped bass from “that incomparable stand, Bass Rock.” Then they dined on choice viands, wines, and the recital of angling exploits by the members of the club.”

In 1864 a group of millionaires from New York and Philadelphia took a yacht called Theresa to Cuttyhunk. They bought most of the island and had 26 bass stands built. The anglers paid a teenager a dollar to throw lobster tails into the water to attract fish. Members of the club included presidents Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, according to the Oct. 22, 2004 New York Times.

Cuttyhunk Fishing Club today

Another exclusive club, the West Island Club off Fairhaven, had Cornelius Vanderbilt as a member.

Poshest of all was said to be the Pasque Island Club, also in the Elizabeths. John Crosby Brown started it after he grew disenchanted with the Cuttyhunk Bass Club. He bought the entire island in 1869. The island, and the club, stayed in his family until 1923.

5. Striped bass got way too popular.

The striped bass population fell for decades before anyone did anything about it. Sportsmen were catching as many as 87 stripers in one day, but that paled in comparison with the haul from seine nets — according to sportsmen.

In 1921, the son of a wealthy Newport fisherman, George Griswold, mourned the death of striper fishing. “The fishing clubs have been abandoned, the stands have been destroyed by the action of the sea, and the waters are no longer chummed or fished, for the large striped bass have become a tradition of the past,” he wrote. “This has been caused by excessive net fishing.”

6. The government used to listen to fishermen.

In 1870, a Rhode Island legislative committee introduced a bill to outlaw seine and net fishing for fish in Narragansett Bay. Lawmakers asked for actual fishermen’s observations, a practice since abandoned.

“Striped bass have fell off very much,” John D. Swan of Newport, a 62-year-old hook-and-line fisherman, told lawmakers. “There ain’t one-quarter as many as there were twenty years ago. Fifteen years ago it was pretty good fishing. Ten years ago it was less, and has been gradually growing scarcer ever since. Didn’t try for striped bass last year.”

Seventeen years later, George H. Palmer addressed the Committee on Fisheries and Game of the Legislature of Massachusetts.

“He will be a bold fisherman indeed who will dare to come here before you and say that he believes the fish here referred to are as abundant now as formerly, or as they were in 1870,” he said, referring to scup, tautog, striped bass and sea bass. “That such fish have become scarce is notorious,” he said.

But neither legislature did anything to protect the striped bass.

7. But the government didn’t do much for a long time.

Stripers continued to dwindle through the first part of the 20^th century.

Some state and local lawmakers for decades tried to prevent overfishing. As early as 1797, Newbury, Mass., banned winter fishing or sale of striped bass from the Parker and Rowley rivers. (In 1931, Newbury allowed the unemployed to capture and sell overwintering stripers.)

In 1882, the Town of Edgartown banned the use of weirs to catch striped bass. The ban lasted only three years.

Finally in 1941, Massachusetts passed a temporary law only allowing hook and line catching of stripers. The commonwealth made the law permanent in 1945.

Around that same time, the 15 Atlantic states formed the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission to monitor and manage coastal fisheries. The result: a roller coaster ride for the striper population.

8. Up and down with the striper stock.

Striped bass came back strong – for a while. During the golden decade of the 1960s, members of a Cape Cod fishing club called the Salties routinely caught 30-, 40- and 50-pound stripers from the beach at night. When Herbie Dickinson caught a 64-pound, 4-ounce bass off Cuttyhunk in the summer of 1964, the news made the Boston Herald.

In the late 1970s the striper population dropped, falling to 5 million in 1982. In 1984, Congress finally did something. It passed the Atlantic Striped Bass Conservation Law, which set size limits for stripers along the entire East Coast. Two years later, a moratorium was placed on all striped bass fishing in Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York.

Five years after the moratorium was lifted in 1990, the ASMFC declared the striper “fully recovered.” Striped bass stocks reached 65 million in 2005. That didn’t last long, however. Stocks began to decline again, due to overfishing, pollution, disease and the disappearance of menhaden. In 2019, the commission declared the striper “overfished.”

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Now available in paperback. Click here to order your copy from Amazon.

With thanks to Charlie Soares, Striped Bass Stands of New England, On the Water, Jan. 28, 2020; Paul Schneider, The Enduring Shore, and Gary Nelson, Historical Review of Commercial Fishery Regulations for Striped Bass (Morone saxatilis Walbaum) in Massachusetts, Northeastern Naturalist, 2018. This story was updated in 2023.

Images: Striper fishing in Rhode Island By Charlesbuffone – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30657003.

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John Billington Gets Lost: A Window to Plymouth Colony’s Early History

In the summer of 1621, the Plymouth colonists finally had reason for optimism — until 16-year-old John Billington wandered off and got lost in the woods.

While we commemorate 1620 as the year of the Mayflower, in 1621 many of the key events occurred that led to the survival and success of Plymouth Colony. It was the “make or break” year in modern parlance. In March, the colonists made a peace agreement with Massasoit, the sachem and leader of the Wampanoag confederation. Then in June, colonists Edward Winslow and Stephen Hopkins traveled to Pokanoket to solidify the agreement. The harsh winter that had claimed the lives of one-half of the Mayflower passengers had also ended. Work was also well underway to plant crops and build the settlement at Plymouth.

Landing of the Pilgrims by Currier & Ives

Then, the unexpected occurred. At some point in June or July (the primary sources differ on the date), young John Billington got lost.

John Billington, Jr.

Billington wandered for five days before stumbling into the Wampanoag sachemship of Manomet, just south of Plymouth. The sachem Canacum delivered the boy to Aspinet, the sachem at Nauset on the elbow of Cape Cod. Then he notified Massasoit, who notified Gov. William Bradford of John’s whereabouts. Bradford then directed a party of 10 colonists (about one-half of the colony’s adult male population at the time) to travel by boat to Nauset to recover the boy. Squanto joined them as a guide and interpreter. Tokamahamom, who Winslow described as a special friend, came along, too.

After a stop at Cummaquid (present day Barnstable), the recovery party arrived in Nauset. Nauset warriors presented them with the boy “behung with beads.” They returned to Plymouth, mission accomplished.

Edward Winslow

More Than Meets The Eye

The story stands by itself as a tale of the recovery of a lost boy. However, a deeper look reveals several threads of historical significance. Those threads shed considerable light on the events of 1621 so critical to the survival of Plymouth Colony.

When the Pilgrims learned that John had been sent to Nauset, it must have given them great pause. There the Nausets had attacked a Mayflower exploratory party on a beach in present-day Eastham about seven months earlier. Furthermore, Samoset, an emissary sent by Massasoit, advised them of the Nausets’ great animosity toward the English.

The nefarious deeds of Capt, Thomas Hunt in 1614 caused their antipathy. He had kidnapped seven Indians from Nauset along with 20 from Patuxet (Squanto among them) to sell into slavery in Spain. If that weren’t enough, the Pilgrims would have known, or strongly suspected, that their earlier theft of corn had been detected. The recovery party must have felt great trepidation when it set out in the shallop for Nauset.

After departing Plymouth, the recovery party sailed into present day Barnstable Harbor to escape a storm. The next morning, they saw two natives on the beach looking for shellfish. The party sent its two native interpreters ashore to inquire as to the status of the boy, and were told that he was well and at Nauset. The Cummaquid natives then invited the party ashore. They took them to their sachem Iyanough, who they found very friendly and agreeable. In fact, Iyanough joined the recovery party and travelled with them to Nauset to assist.

Statue of Iyanough in Hyannis

History Comes Back to Haunt

While at Cummaquid, the Pilgrims received a poignant reminder of the deep wounds that Capt. Thomas Hunt inflicted with his 1614 kidnappings. In the words of Edward Winslow in Mourt’s Relation:

One thing was very grievous unto us at this place. There was an old woman, whom we judged to be no less than a hundred years old, which came to see us because she never saw English, yet could not behold us without breaking forth into great passion, weeping and crying excessively. We demanding the reason of it, they told us that she had three sons who, when Master Hunt was in these parts, went abroad his ship to trade with him, and he carried them captives into Spain by which means she was deprived of the comfort of her children in her old age.

We told them we were sorry that any Englishman should give them that offense, that Hunt was a bad man, and that all the English that had heard of it condemned him for the same; but for us, we would not offer them any such injury though it would gain us all the skins in the country. So we gave her some small trifles, which somewhat appeased her.

While the receptiveness and hospitality of Iyanough and his tribe was reassuring, this reminder from the old woman of the animosity of the Nausets must have heightened the Pilgrims’ anxiety as they continued on their mission.

Map of Southern New England, 1620-22

John Billington Recovered

Upon their arrival at Nauset, Iyanough and Squanto went ashore to inform Aspinet of the reason for their visit. Then the Indians came to the shore. In Winslow’s words, they were “very thick amongst us, and were earnest with us to bring in our boat.” The Pilgrims hesitated. According to Winslow, “because we had least cause to trust them, being they only had formerly made an assault upon us in the same place, in time of our winter discovery for habitation.”

When their boat came aground on the tidal flats, a large group of Indians approached. The Pilgrims allowed two to board. One was the man who owned the corn that the Pilgrims had taken during their explorations of Cape Cod. The Pilgrims agreed to repay the debt, which ameliorated the Nausets’ animosity over the theft.. Thus, the recovery of John Billington resolved a major point of contention between the Nausets and the colonists.

After sunset, Aspinet appeared with a party of about 100 warriors through the water. One bore the Billington boy “behung with beads.” Aspinet and about half of his party, unarmed, approached the shallop while the remainder stood by with bows ready. John was returned to the Pilgrims, and a peace agreement was made with Aspinet, thus extending the agreement made with Massasoit in March. Notably, relations between the Pilgrims and the Cape Cod tribes remained peaceful, even throughout King Philip’s War later on.

Questions About The Episode

Like many episodes in history, this one has some loose ends. While the story resonates with positive and improving relations between the Wampanoags and the Plymouth colonists, there is also some potentially conflicting evidence. When Billington came into the Indian village at Manomet, why didn’t the sachem Canacum return him directly to Plymouth, or at least to Massasoit? Why send him to Nauset, the site of much animosity toward the colonists? Historians have wrestled with this question.

Perhaps Massasoit’s leadership was not quite as dominant as he had led the Pilgrims to believe. His decision to pursue peaceful relations with the new settlers did not sit well with all of the tribes. The Billington incident may reflect this. Moreover, the great plague had dramatically altered the balance of power among the tribes. The Nausets appear to have survived that ordeal with far fewer losses. The 100 warriors who accompanied Aspinet to greet the recovery party at Nauset was larger than Massasoit’s 60 warriors at Pokanoket. Canacum’s decision to send the boy to the Nausets may have been a deferral to a more powerful neighbor.

forefathers-day-massasoit-statue-plymouth

Statue of Massasoit in Plymouth

Silence on John Billington

The historical record is silent on the kinds of communications, if any, took place between the various tribes on this matter, as well as on the motivations of the various actors. The Indians did not have a written language, and the English accounts that have survived were written from their perspective and from the limited knowledge that they had. Notwithstanding this, it can be reasonably concluded that the end result of this story represents a net positive result on the relations between the Wampanoags and the colonists, particularly on Cape Cod.

No account of the Billington recovery would be complete without some background on the infamous Billington family. Young John travelled on the Mayflower with his father, John Sr., his mother Ellen, and his younger brother Francis. They were not members of the separatist Leiden congregation, but were among the “strangers” placed on the voyage by the backers of the voyage to help insure the financial viability of the endeavor. The family was problematic from the start.

Signing the Mayflower Compact 1620 by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris.

A Troublesome Family

It has been proposed that John Billington, Sr., was one of the “mutinous voices” that Bradford described which led to the Mayflower Compact. In March of 1621, Billington Sr. was tried and convicted for refusing a lawful order from Captain Standish to perform sentry duty. In 1630, he was hanged for murdering a fellow colonist in Plymouth’s first execution. Bradford wrote of him in a 1625 private letter “he is a knave, and will so live and die.”

Bradford also described the Billingtons as “one of the profanest families among them; they came from London and I know not by what friends shuffled into their company.” Young Francis contributed his share to the family’s reputation when he almost ended the Mayflower story before anyone came ashore. He fired a musket in the passenger quarters of the ship, very near the location that the ship’s supply of gunpowder was stored.

Some historians speculate that John Billington, Jr., did not wander off and get lost in the summer of 1621. They suggest he deliberately ran away to escape his family, his father in particular. Instead, he chose to cast his lot with the Indians. While this theory is plausible given what is known, there is no factual support for it in the historical record. Bradford’s account indicates that John, Jr., “lost himself.” As a postscript, John Billington, Jr., died sometime between 1627 and 1630 in his mid-twenties, cause of death unknown.

Thus, the recovery of a lost boy tested the commitment of both sides to the peace treaty that Massasoit and Gov. John Carver agreed on a few months before. In addition, the Pilgrims paid the corn debt. They also addressed the practice of kidnapping American natives by English explorers.

Sometimes, a seemingly small story stands at the crossroads of history.

End Notes

The author of this story, Ron Petersen, is the chair of the Orleans Massachusetts Historical Commission. He has also served on the Orleans Community Preservation Committee, as chair of both the Orleans Historical Markers Committee and the 1918 Attack on Orleans Committee. He is a former board member and officer of the Orleans Historical Society, and is a board member and historian for the Orleans Firebirds of the Cape Cod Baseball League. Ron has written numerous published articles on regional history, and has lectured throughout Cape Cod on various historical topics.

Images: Map of Southern New England By AnthroMimus – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56851919. Statue of Iyanough in Hyannis By Kerowyn – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17797930. Landing of the Pilgrims N. Currier. Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth 11th De. Plymouth Massachusetts, None. [New york: lith. & pub. by n. currier, 2 spruce st., between 1838 and 1856] [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/95503144/.

Bibliography

Bradford, William, Of Plymouth Plantation, (Morison ed.), New York: The Modern Library, 1657, 1952.

Bunker, Nick, Making Haste from Babylon, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2010.

Goodwin, John A., The Pilgrim Republic, Boston, Ticknor and Company 1888

Johnson, Caleb H. The Mayflower and Her Passengers, Xlibris Corp. 2006.

Mack, Jonathan, A Stranger Among Saints, Chicago, Chicago Review Press, 2020.

Morison, Samuel Eliot, The Story of the Old Colony of New Plymouth, New York: Alfred A Knoph,1956

Morton, Nathaniel, The New-England Memorial, Plymouth, MA, Forgotten Books, 1669

Prince, Thomas, A Chronological History of New England, Boston: Cummings, Hilliard, and Company, 1736

Silverman, David, This Land is Their Land, New York, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019.

Stratton, Eugene Aubrey, Plymouth Colony, Its History and People, Salt Lake City: Ancestry Publishing Company, 1986

Vaughn, Alden T. New England Frontier, Puritans and Indians 1620-1675, University of Oklahoma Press, 1995.

Winslow, Edward and Bradford, William, Mourt’s Relation, 1622

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The Four Women Who Cooked the First Thanksgiving

The four women who cooked that first Thanksgiving probably didn’t feel all that thankful when their husbands invited 90 guests, all Wampanoag men, to eat with them.

They were the only women left after the first deadly winter that killed half of Plymouth Colony. They died of exhaustion, starvation, pneumonia, scurvy and cold. By springtime, 14 women had perished. Remarkably, the four women left managed to feed 143 people without kitchens, ovens, wheat, spices or butter.

This 1899 painting, The First Thanksgiving 1621 by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris has a number of inaccuracies. It shows the four women who cooked the first Thanksgiving with smiling faces.

Their dinner guests may have shown up unexpectedly, as the Native people had a tendency to appear when food was served. Or perhaps their menfolk had invited them to seal a peace deal. The meal itself – or rather meals, because they stayed for three days – served as more of a harvest celebration than a Thanksgiving.

The Four Women Who Cooked the First Thanksgiving

The women faced another challenge: getting along with each other. Cooking for so m any people required cooperation among the four, who had different backgrounds and aspirations. They included a Saint, a Goodwife, a Traveler and a Troublemaker.

The colonists referred to themselves as “Saints” and “Strangers” or “Travelers.” The devout Saints wanted to separate from the Church of England and crossed the Atlantic for religious freedom. Strangers came for adventure and opportunity. That both Saints and Strangers signed the Mayflower Compact shows the inclusiveness of the colonists.

Signing the Mayflower Companct 1620 by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris.

That first Thanksgiving was cooked by two Saints, Mary Brewster and Susanna Winslow, and two Strangers, Elizabeth Hopkins and Eleanor Billington.

But they probably all deserved sainthood for cooking all that food. The men just “feasted and entertained,” according to one of their husbands.

Goodwife Susanna Winslow

That husband, Edward Winslow, had married Susanna White in May, about five months earlier. He would serve as Plymouth’s governor and diplomat, and together they would prosper.

Edward Winslow, husband of one of the four women who cooked the first Thanksgiving

So at 29, Susanna Winslow was a rising figure in the little colony, a goodwife who would grow into a mistress.

Historians can’t tell for sure whether Susanna arrived as a Saint or a Stranger. Her first husband had a common name, and women didn’t leave much of a record. So no one seems to really know which Englishman named William White boarded the Mayflower.

Susanna and William brought their young son, Resolved, about five years old. Susanna was pregnant, and gave birth to their second son, Peregrine, below decks on the Mayflower as it lay at anchor in Massachusetts Bay. Odd as “Resolved” and “Peregrine” may seem, their names were typical of the Puritans. They suggest Susanna was a Saint.

William died in February and Elizabeth Winslow in March. Forty-eight days after Elizabeth died, Edward married Susanna. He brought to the union a daughter, Margaret, about three years old.

Edward and Susanna had practical and emotional reasons for marrying so soon after their spouses died. As Martyn Whittock points out in Mayflower Lives, “Shared faith, shared history, mutual respect, and, no doubt, physical as well as emotional attraction drew them together. And there is plenty of evidence for loving physical union enhancing partnership in the godly marriages.”

A portrait of Edward Winslow suggests a happy marriage. In his hand he holds a letter. The last three lines read, “From your loving wife, Susanna.” The portrait was painted in 1651, 30 years after their wedding.

Mary Brewster, Saint

Puritans believed in social hierarchy, so one can easily guess who took charge of the cooking operation:

52-year-old Mary Brewster, wife of the Saints’ spiritual leader, William Brewster.

William Brewster

Mary probably wished she had the help of her two daughters, Patience, 21, and Fear, 15, to cook for all those people. But the Brewsters left their daughters behind. They believed, like many of the colonists, that the weaker sex might not survive the journey. That explains why so few women cooked the first Thanksgiving.

That Mary joined her husband tells us something about her grit, her courage and her deep religious faith.

The Brewsters did bring their two boys with them, Love and Wrestling, about 11 and 7 at the first Thanksgiving. They would have helped prepare the meal, along with little Resolved White and Margaret Winslow. Richard More, their seven-year-old servant, would have helped, too.

Richard had come with three siblings, all dead by the time of the first Thanksgiving. Known as one of the Mayflower Love Children, Richard’s legal father had sent the children to America when he discovered he was not their biological father.

Patience and Fear arrived in Plymouth a few years later, along with older brother Jonathan.

Fear married another saint, Isaac Allerton. Her great-great-great-grandson, Zachary Taylor, served as the 12th president of the United States.

Elizabeth Hopkins, Traveler

Two years before boarding the Mayflower, Elizabeth Hopkins, married one of the most interesting Plymouth colonists, Stephen Hopkins. She was 33, he a 36-year-old widower with three children. He had already survived a shipwreck in the Caribbean and taken part in the settlement of Jamestown before returning to England. His adventure as a castaway on a Caribbean island probably inspired Shakespeare to create the character Stephano in The Tempest.

stephen-hopkins-caliban-stephano-trinculo

Calilban, Stephano and Trinculo from the painting The Tempest by Johann Heinrich Ramberg

Stephen, a rough-and-ready sort, planned to return to Virginia with his family. His family included Constance, 14, and Giles, 12, the two surviving children from his first marriage. Little Damaris, about three, may have been conceived before the marriage. Elizabeth was pregnant at the outset of the voyage.

She probably hoped to have her baby on land, but crosswinds and storms extended the unpleasant Mayflower voyage. She gave birth to Oceanus in a dark, cramped berth below the decks of the gyrating vessel.

Stephen, though a Traveler, held a position of importance in the colony. Because of his time in Jamestown, he could hunt and he knew about Native Americans. When the English-speaking Native American Samoset came to Plymouth, Elizabeth and Stephen put him up that night in their tiny house (the 1749 Court House Museum in downtown Plymouth stands on the site).

The house had at the very most three rooms, cramped quarters four adults, three children and the Hopkins’ two servants, Edward Doty and Edward Leister. The crowding probably didn’t help anyone’s temper. The two servants had fought and wounded each other in a sword-and-dagger duel a few months before that Thanksgiving.

Stephen was not the godly sort, and we can imagine Elizabeth wasn’t, either. They would have five more children, run a tavern and occasionally get into trouble with the authorities. Stephen had to pay fines for allowing drinking and shuffleboard on Sunday, for overserving and for overcharging customers.

But theirs seems to have been a successful partnership. When Stephen died in 1644 his will directed he be buried as close as possible to Elizabeth.

Eleanor Billington, Troublemaker

Eleanor Billington, on the other hand, was a troublemaker from a troublemaking family. The younger of her two sons, Francis, nearly burned down the Mayflower as it lay anchored in Plymouth Harrbor in December of 1620. He’d set off some homemade fireworks with his father’s gunpowder.

Eleanor had a hard time controlling her sons, if she even tried. Both tended to wander off unsupervised. In one case her older son John roamed into a camp of Nausets, who had clashed with the colonists upon their first arrival.

William Bradford

Gov. William Bradford described Eleanor’s husband, John Billington, as “a knave.” Billington contemptuously challenged Capt. Myles Standish’s orders during a militia drill in March 1621.Had he not begged forgiveness, the Plymouth authorities would have punished him. In 1630, he did get punished – hanged for murdering a neighbor.

Bradford then described the Billingtons as one of the “profanest families among them.” He could not understand how the Pilgrims had allowed them to join them from London.

Eleanor Billington also caused trouble. In 1636, she went to the stocks and received a whipping for slandering another Plymouth citizen, John Doane.

But troublemakers have to eat, too, and Eleanor Billington undoubtedly pitched in to make that giant feast.

The Others

Five teenaged girls survived the winter, and they would have worked alongside the four Thanksgiving cooks. Mary Chilton was 14 when she came ashore from the Mayflower, the first woman to set foot on Plymouth soil.

The oldest, Priscilla Mullins, at 19 had lost her mother, father and brother during the winter. She would soon marry John Alden after a courtship immortalized by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, their descendant. Other descendants include John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Marilyn Monroe and Calvin Coolidge.

Illustration of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins

Constance Hopkins (13 or 14), Elizabeth Tilley (14 or 15) and Dorothy, an unnamed maidservant, perhaps 18 or 19, would have helped prepare the meal as well.

They probably also had to keep an eye on the children, who included Bartholomew, Mary and Remember Allerton, Humility Cooper, Samuel Eaton and Desire Minter. The older ones would have helped.

Perhaps they minded fires, turned spits, carried water, plucked wildfowl or shucked shellfish. Maybe the lucky ones got the easy job of setting the tables – rough boards covered with cloth. They had just knives and spoons, as the first fork wouldn’t arrive in America until 1633. Tableware would have included pewter or wooden trenchers, tankards and lots and lots of napkins. Since they ate roast meat with their hands, napkins were a must.

Football, But No Pumpkin Pie

While the women cooked, the men entertained their guests. They showed off their military drills for the Wampanoags. And they probably played a version of football on the beach with the Natives, using a deerskin ball stuffed with deer hair.

At least they’d brought food. Bradford ordered four (probably including Stephen Hopkins) to shoot wildfowl. They blasted their muskets for the benefit of the Wampanoags, who outnumbered them.

The first Thanksgiving — the preferred version for many.

They may have shot some turkey, but they most likely got duck, geese, swans and maybe even carrier pigeon. The women would have plucked, trimmed and trussed them, then spit-roasted the small birds and boiled the larger ones.

They may have stuffed the birds with onions and herbs from their garden, and maybe chestnuts from the woodss. The next day, they would have taken the leftover meat and made a broth or a potage in their Dutch ovens.

The Wampanoags killed five deer and brought them as gifts. The women would have also cooked them on spits outdoors. Vegetables like corn, turnips, cabbages and carrots went into Dutch ovens on the hearths.

They would have eaten lobster, mussels and clams without butter, because cows didn’t arrive until later. Cod, bass and eels likely appeared on the tables.

They probably also served native fruit—cranberries, wild plums, melons and grapes – as well as walnuts, beechnuts and chestnuts.

Pumpkin, called pompion, undoubtedly would have appeared on the menu. The early colonists ate vast quantities of the stuff. In fact, the first American folk song is a lament about how much pumpkin they ate.

The four women who cooked the first Thanksgiving most certainly did not make pumpkin pie. With no flour, sugar or baking ovens, they probably just stewed it.

But at least they had football.

Need some new ideas for your Thanksgiving feast? How about trying something old — and authentic — from the New England Historical Society’s Historic Thanksgiving Foods. Available from Amazon (click here).

With thanks to Mayflower Lives: Pilgrims in a New World and the Early American Experience by Martyn Whittock. This story was updated in 2022.

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