Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick Read Free Book Online Page A

leeward and surrender his 180-ton ship to the elements.
    In 1957, the crew members of the Mayflower II —a replica of the original vessel, built in Brixton, England—became the first mariners of the modern era to experience what it was like to ride out a gale in a Jacobean-era ship. Over the course of the first few weeks of the passage, they had discovered that the Mayflower II ’s boxy hull shape took some getting used to. At times, the motion in the high aft poop cabin became so violent that Captain Alan Villiers—one of the most experienced blue-water sailors in the world—feared that he might be flung out of his bunk. What this ship would do in survival conditions was a matter of deep concern to Villiers and his men.
    Toward the end of the voyage, a storm set in, forcing Villiers to do as Master Jones had done 337 years before. As the motion of the ship in the giant waves became intolerable, he decided he had no option but to lie ahull. The sails were furled, and everything on deck was tied down. Then, with considerable trepidation, Villiers ordered that the helm be secured to leeward. “This was the crucial test,” Villiers wrote. “Would she lie that way, more or less quietly, with the windage of the high poop keeping her shoulder to the sea? Or would she just wallow hopelessly in the great troughs, threatening to roll her masts out? We didn’t know. No one had tried the maneuver in a ship like that for maybe two centuries.”
    As soon as the ship’s bow swung into the wind, a remarkable change came over the Mayflower II. Even though she was under bare poles in a howling gale, her slablike topsides functioned as a kind of wooden storm sail, magically steadying the ship’s motion. Almost perfectly balanced, the Mayflower II sat like a contented duck amid the uproar of the storm. After being pounded unmercifully by the waves, the ship was finally at peace. “I reflected that the Pilgrim Fathers, who tossed through many such a wild night in Atlantic storms, at least knew tranquility in great gales,” Villiers wrote.
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    In the fall of 1620, the Mayflower ’s ability to steady herself in a gale produced a most deceptive tranquillity for a young indentured servant named John Howland. As the Mayflower lay ahull, Howland apparently grew restless down below. He saw no reason why he could not venture out of the fetid depths of the ’tween decks for just a moment. After more than a month as a passenger ship, the Mayflower was no longer a sweet ship, and Howland wanted some air. So he climbed a ladder to one of the hatches and stepped onto the deck.
    Howland was from the inland town of Fenstanton, Huntingdon-shire, and he quickly discovered that the deck of a tempest-tossed ship was no place for a landsman. Even if the ship had found her own still point, the gale continued to rage with astonishing violence around her. The shriek of the wind through the rope rigging was terrifying, as was the sight of all those towering, spume-flecked waves. The Mayflower lurched suddenly to leeward. Howland staggered to the ship’s rail and tumbled into the sea.
    That should have been the end of him. But dangling over the side and trailing behind the ship was the topsail halyard, the rope used to raise and lower the upper sail. Howland was in his midtwenties and strong, and when his hand found the halyard, he gripped the rope with such feral desperation that even though he was pulled down more than ten feet below the ocean’s surface, he never let go. Several sailors took up the halyard and hauled Howland back in, finally snagging him with a boat hook and dragging him up onto the deck.
    When Bradford wrote about this incident more than a decade later, John Howland was not only alive and well, but he and his wife, Elizabeth, were on their way to raising ten children, who would, in turn, produce an astounding eighty-eight grandchildren. A Puritan believed that everything