On Friday, March 26, 1602, Bartholomew Gosnold stood on the high poop of the Concord in the harbor of Flamouth, Cornwall, ready to start for America. Eighteen and a half years before, Edward Hayes had limped into port there, bringing sorrowful news of the defeat of Sir Humphrey Gilbert's colonial plans. Younger by a decade than Sir Humphrey had been when he set out, Gosnold also thought to plant a colony, where Hayes had laid the plans. He was part of the development of England's colonial planning, and he too suffered a kind of defeat. Yet Gosnold, sailing westward, did show the way to the unknown "North part of Virginia." The voyage on which he was about to embark, alsmost surreptitiously, and from an inconspicuous port, proved to be the turning point in the planting of Anglo-Saxon America.
It would be idle to guess what thoughts ran through Gosnold's mind as he stood there -- they might have been of the fabulous fortunes of old Sir Andrew Judde and Thomas Smythe; or of his father and uncle, three hundred miles away in Suffolk, with his brothers and sisters and cousins; or of the handsome Earl of Southampton, whose fire was all but out, smothered by the ashes of the Queen's scorn, yet kept aglow by that difficult little man, Sir Robert Cecil; or of Master Hakluyt and Captain Edward Hayes, most responsible of all, perhaps, for the very planks on which he stood. Certainly, Gosnold must have thought of Mary, his wife, and of Robert, his son, and Martha, his daughter. But this is all dreaming. What surely happened was much shouting and running about: "Get your sails to the yards; make ready; men into the tops; men upon the yards!" And then, "What!'s the anchor Away? -- "Yea" -- "Let fall your foresail! Who's at the helm there? Coil your cable! . . ." It was not easy to get a ship away. Little time for dreaming.
The Concord, like others of its time sailing the deep waters, was according to any present-day standards a dangerously small vessel. The ship, being somewhat undermanned, had only eight seaman, who with Captain Gilbert, the sailing-master William Strete, and two others unidentified, were to hav ebeen the entire complement of the vesses on its homeward trip. She was therefore probably comparable in size with the smaller of the two vessels which sailed with Martin Pring on Gosnold's course to America the following year, a twenty-six-ton vessel according to Pring's narrative, having a comoplement in all of thirteen men and a boy, including the captain and mate. If the Concord was rated at 30 tons, with a water-line length around 60 or 70 feet, it was about the tonnage of one of today's medium-sized fishing vessels on the New England coast.
The Concord was possibly an old vesses, and certainly one in very bad condition. When well out to sea, it was found that the little ship, as noted in Brereton's report, could not stand the press of full sail. When she heeled under a heavy breeze, there was creaking and groaning of timbers and a dangerous opening of seams, convincing all on board that less speed would assure a more certain arrival on the other side of the Atlantic. The journey across, therefore, was to take seven weeks instead of the five or six which Captain Edward Hayes had reckoned. At that, however, as Brereton points out, the passage directly across to their destination was shorter by a thousand leagues than the roundabout course through the tropics, following the fleets sent out by Sir Walter Ralegh.
To those who live on Martha's Vineyard, the first island of Gosnold's discovery off the southern coast of Massachusetts, the group of is created in part by the presence of the island of thousands whose parents or grandparetns crossed over to this region from the Azores in the days of whaling ships, following the course sailed for the first time by Bartholomew Gosnold two and a half centuries before them. Actually, as seen on the map, the Azores are a thousand miles nearer to the southern New England shore than are Portugal and Spain.
The Azores were discovered by the Portuguese sixty or seventy years before Columbus discovered America. In the course of the next century, the islands became a port of call for Spanish and Portuguese voyagers sailing to and from the New World. They also became well-known to British mariners, who set their course to the West Indies from them. Inasmuch as the prevailing wind was from the southwest, these ships sailed on the starbord tack, which took them far to the south before they corssed to the Americas in the tropics. Gosnold saw from his charts that a long reach on the port tack would take him westerly to the part of the coast in the temperate zone on which he wished to land. The first leg of his crossing, therefore, led him to make the familiar run to the Azores.
He nearly missed them, because the sailing-master was unable to sail close enough to an unusually strong wind. The island they finally raised was St. Mary's at the extreme south-eastern corner of the group. Beyond this island the helmsman swung the Concord onto its westerly course, and Gosnold was off for America through uncharted waters. No Englishman had made that turn at the Azores before him.
Ahead of him on the broad Atlantic there might lurk unsuspected dangers. On this course they would meet no friendly sail to give them assistance in case of need. Not even an enemy ship would be sighted. Some great storm might rage far out at sea, ready to overwhelm the little ship. There might be more "western" islands, like the Azores, rimmed with cruel, rocky reefs. They might unawares run on to a great wale, larger than the ship itself, whose flailing flukes would spell distaster. Or the wind might fail, leaving the adrift in a northern equivalent of the equatorial doldrums, caught in a deadly calm until their water was exhausted and their food rotted. But the Concord sailed on day after day, ever at the center of its own little circle circumscribed by the horizon. None of the apprehended dangers materialized.
In Archer's narrative, although he was not mariner, there is sufficient information to enable reconstruction of a rough log of this notable voyage. Hundreds of other vessels, on their way to the Newfoundland fishing grounds, had shaped their course from the western tip of Ireland to the Vicinity of Iceland, then past the southern tip of Greenland to Labradoe, and down the coast of Newfoundland. These fishermen were never more than a few hundred miles from the learest land. Here, therefore, is a record of the first direct trans-Atlantic crossing to the temperate part of America that is called New England.
Reconstructed Log of the Concord
Friday, 26, March, 1602. Sailed from Flamouth.
Wednesday, 14 April. We had sight of St. Mary's.
Friday, 23 April. 200 leagues (600 statute miles) due westward from said Island, in 37º north latitude. The water appeared yellow, the space of 2 leagues north and south, but taken up in a bucket, it altered not either in color or taste from sea water. Brereton commented that "we were loath to press our ships with much sail," so that we made less than a 3-knot headway during these nine days.
Friday, 7 May. We first saw many birds.
Saturday, 8 May. The color of the water changed to yellowish green. At 70 fathom we had ground.
Sunday, 9 May. We had 22 fanthom in fair, sandy ground, having upon our lead many glittering stones, which might promise some mineral matter on the bottom. Near the latitude of 43º.
Monday, 10 May. We sounded in 27, 30, 37 and 43 fathom, and then came to 108. Some thought it to be the sounding of the westernmost end of Saint John's Island. Upon this bank we saw schools of fish in great numbers. Brereton remarked on delays for sounding, on account of the fog.
Wednesday, 12 May. Hoisted out half of our shallop, and sounded 80 fathom. William Strete, the Master, observed that there was now no current, although when we were one hundred leagues westward from St. Mary's in the Azores we had encountered seaoare [seaweed], which continually floated past us up to now. These sea-weeds seemed to have their course towards the northeast, a matter to set some subtle mind to work, for comprehending the true cause thereof.
Thursday, 13 May. We sounded in 70 fathom, and observed great beds of weeds, much wood and divers things else floating by, and we could smell the shore.
Friday, 14 May, 1602. About six in the morning we dewcribed land that lay north of us. The northerly part we called the North Land. Twelve leagues west, we saw a great rock, which we called Savage Rock, because the savages first showed themselves there . . .
Bartholomew Gosnold had made his landfall. The site, on the Maine cost, was probably that known as Cape Neddick.
About high noon of May 14th the Concord was off Savage Rock. There a shallop came towards them, with sails and oars. From the lines of the rig it was recognized as one from the Bay of Biscay, of French or Spanish origin. But as it drew nearer, the yoyagers saw to their amazement that it was manned by eight Indians, one of whom was dressed in vest and breeches of black serge, made "sea-fashion", and wore shoes and black stockings. Another wore a pair of breeches of blue cloth. Otherwise they were naked, "saving about their shoulders certaine loose Deereskinnes, and neere their waists Seale-skinnes tyed fast like to Irish Dimmie Troueses [dimity, cotton fabric?]. In the shallop, the voyagers saw the Indians had a copper kettle, an iron grapple, and other things of European origin.
As no Biscay fisherman in his senses would willingly give up a shallop -- wich he needed for fetching water and wood form the shore -- these Indians had undoubtedly obtrained this one by overwhelming a landing party and robbing their victims even of their clothing. Gosnold and his company, however, apparently entertained no suspicions of this, as the Indians made signs of friendship in their usual fashion and with little urging boarded the English vessel.
The Indians of Savage Rock were discribed as of tall stature, of broad and grim visage, of a black or swarathy complexion, strong and well-proportioned, their eyebrows painted white, and their hair long, tied up with a knot behind their heads.
In their attempts to make themeselves understood, the Indians used several "Christian" words, among them the name "Placentia", by which the bay just west of Avalon Peninsula, Newfoundland, was and is known. Supplied then with a piece of chalk, the non-naked Indians -- probably the chief and his entourage -- drew a map of the coast thereabouts. It may even be that they traced the shore-line which Gosnold purposed to follow southwards from the latitude of his landfall, between 42º and 43º, to his destination, the great bay of Verrazzano, opening south at 41º 40'. In that case, the Indians' drawing undoubtedly showed Cape Cod with a great bay beyond it.
It must also be assumed, from subsequent events, that the Indians' map gave Gosnold the impression that the northern part of Cape Cod was an island. This was presumably the result of their trying to show two canoe waterways, interrupted by portages, from the head waters of one stream to the waters the travellers wished to reach. Both of these were known from early Pilgrim sources. One at the southeastern corner of the Bay was used by Governor Bradford to reach a ship stranded in Chatham harbour. At that time, this harbor not only opened to the sea, but also had a connection to Nantucket Sound, which might have appeared on the Indians' chalk map as the bay Gosnold wanted to reach. The other canoe waterway was at the south-western corner of Cape Cod Bay. This, now a part of the modern Cape Copd Canal, was used by the Pilgrims as their route to a landing station on Buzzards Bay for vessels carrying on trade with the Dutch at Manhattan. The Indians could not , of course, make it clear on their map that Gosnold's ship was much too large to use these Indian waterways, even had there been no portages.
Gosnold stayed only three hours at Savage Rock, despite sighn made by the Indians which he interpreted to mean that they wanted him to stay longer. Finding themselves "short of their purposed place", as Archer expressed it, and at an exposed anchorage with the weather uncertain, Gosnold and his company decided to weigh anchor at three o'clock in the afternoon. They stood off "southerly into [the] sea the rest of that day and the night following, with a fresh gale of wind."
The next morning, May 15th, those who were on the deck early saw ahead of them land which they took to be an island, by reason, Archer remarked, of a large sound that appeared west-ward between it and the mainland. Brereton, who may have appeared on deck somewhat leter, reported that they found themselves "embayed with a mighty headland." They sailed on until nine o'clock that morning, coming to anchor a league off shore at the southerly end, or the "botton", of the body of water known now as Cape Cod Bay. If the identification of Gosnold's "Savage Rock" with Cape Neddick is correct, then they had sailed over 90 statute miles in the course of eighteen hours, averging better than four knots, a rate of speed to be expected with the fresh gale of wind mentioned by Brereton.The bold course southerly form the coast of Maine, passing the mouth of Massachusetts Bay in the dark, is significant of the courage with which Gosnold undertook the exploration of this strange and uncharted coast.
Now, however, Gosnold was temporarily balked. He had come to the quiet protected waters at the southern end of the great bay that he had entered from the north. His plan of his destination was thwarted by this hilly and heavily wooded land before him. Was there, as he had understood from the Indians of Savage Rock, a great bay such as he was seeking beyond this land that blocked his way?
Gosnold was not an explorer with no objective but to plot the shape of the shores of an unknown land; he had a destination, and he had encountered an obstacle in his course to it. Thus, within a matter of hours he was to learn that he had come upon a great cape. Even then, he could not know that this cape, ever thereafter to appear on maps of the New World as he had seen and named it, was to give him everlasting fame.
