The Ship Voyage


I suppose that most of us have wondered what it was like for the elderly Rev. Bachiler, his wife Helen and the rest of the passengers who endured the 81 day voyage on the William and Francis as it meandered across the Atlantic Ocean in search of it's port on the New England shores. And our matriarch, Deborah Bachiler Wing, how did she and her sons fare on the journey that took them farther and farther away from their roots, the soil that held the remains of their husband and father? What follows is my humble attempt at some sort of idea of what their voyage might have been like.

The Sparrow Hawk is a notable example of fortitude. The Sparrow Hawk sailed from London in 1626 for Virginia and having been blown off her course was wrecked on Cape Cod.

She was only forty feet in length, had a breadth of beam of twelve feet and ten inches, and a depth of nine feet, seven and one-half inches. Bradford in his History records that she carried "many passengers in her and sundrie goods...the cheefe amongst these people was one Mr. Fells and Mr. Sibsie, which had many servants belonging unto them, many of them being Irish. Some others ther were that had a servante or 2 a piece; but the most were servants, and as such were ingaged to the former persons, who also had the most goods...they had been 6 weeks at sea, and had no water, nor beere, nor any woode center, but had burnt up all their emptie caske." AND THIS HAPPENED IN THE MONTH OF DECEMBER.

In those days cooking on shore was done in an open fireplace. On shipboard, the larger vessels were provided with an open "hearth" made of cast iron sometimes weighing five hundred pounds and over. More commonly a hearth of bricks was laid on deck, over which stood an iron tripod from which the kettles hung. More crudely still a bed of sand filled a wooden frame and on this the fire was built, commonly of charcoal.

On the ship ARBELLA, in which came Governor John Winthrop and his company, in 1630, the "cookroom" was near a hatchway opening into the hold. The captain, his officers and the principal men among the passenger dined in the "round house,"a cabin in the stern over the high quarter-deck. Lady Arbella Johnson and the gentlewomen aboard dined in the great cabin on the quarter-deck. The passengers ate their food wherever convenient on the main deck or in good weather, on the spar deck above. Years later, a new ship lying at anchor in Boston harbor was struck by lightning which "melted the top of the iron spindle of the vane of the mainmast" and passing through the long boat, which lay on the deck, killed two men and injured two others as "they were eating together off the Hen-Coop, near the Main Mast.

The ship supplied each passenger with a simple ration of food distributed by the quartermasters, which each family or self arranged group of passengers cooked at a common hearth as opportunity and the weather permitted. Of necessity much food was served cold and beer was the principal drink. John Josselyn, Gent., who visited New England in 1638, records "the common prroportion of Cictualls for the sea to a Mess, being 4 men is as followeth:

"Two pieces of Beef, of 3 pound and 1/4 per piece,
"Four pound of Bread,
"One pint 1/4 of pease,
"Four Gallons of Bear, with Mustard and Vinegar for three flesh dayes in the week,
"For four fish dayes, to each Mess per day, two pieces of Codd or Habberdine, making three pieces of fish.
"One quarter pound of Butter.
"Four pound of Bread.
"Three quarters of a pound of Cheese.
"Bear is before.
"Oatmeal per day, for 50 mean, Gallon 1. and so proportionable for more or fewer.

"Thus you see the ship's provision, is Beef or Porke, Fish, Butter, Cheese, Pease, Pottage, Water gruel, Bisket, and six-shilling Bear.
"For private fresh provision, you may carry with you (in case you, or any of yours should be sick at Sea) Conserves of Roses, Clove-Gilliflowes, Wormwood, Green-Ginger, Burnt-Wine, English Spirits, Prunes to stew, Raisons of the Sun, Currence, Sugar, Nutmeg, Mace, Cinnamon, Pepper and Ginger, White Bisket, or Spanish Rusk, Eggs, Rice, Juice of Lemmons, well put up to cure, or prevent the Scurvy. Small Skillets, Pipkins, Porrengers, and small Frying pans.
"To prevent or take away sea sickness, Conserve of Wormwood is very proper.

The Ship TALBOT....on Which Mr. Higginson sailed, brought over one hundred passengers and thirty seamen. She measured nearly eighty-six feet in length and had a depth of hold of eleven feet. By present day standards she was about two hundred tons burden.  The space between the decks, where the passengers slept and spent much time during the dreary voyage, was so low that a tall man could not stand erect, and whenever a severe storm arose, so that the ports and hatches must be kept closed, the air below deck in time must have become intolerable. Such a storm arose when the TALBOT was thrity-three days out and "Ye wind blew mightily, ye sea roared and ye waves tossed us horribly; besides it was fearfull darke and ye mariners made us afraid with their running her and there and lowd crying one to another to pull at this and that rope." The vessels which carried the great emigration to New England between 1630 and 1640 were of small tonnage and the passenger accommodations on board were limited in space and barren of creature comforts. Small wonder that the health of many of the first settlers, shaken by the passage at sea, paid toll to the severity of the New England climate...the biting cold of the winter and the heat of the summer days to which they were unaccustomed. "It was not because the Country was unhealthful, but because their bodies were corrupted with sea-diet, which was naught, their Befe and Porke were tainted, their Butter and Cheese corrupted, their fish rotten, and voyage long, by reason of crosse Windes, so that winter approaching before they could get warme houses, and the searching sharpnes of that purer Climate, creeping in at the crannies of their crazed bodies, caused death and sickness."