The Mayflower and Her Log; July 15, 1620-May 6, 1621 — Volume 3Ames, Azel
History
The Mayflower and Her Log; July 15, 1620-May 6, 1621 — Volume 3
Ames, Azel
Massachusetts -- History -- New Plymouth, 1620-1691; Mayflower (Ship); Pilgrims (New Plymouth Colony)
In 1619, as appears by Neill, the Virginia Company had one John Clarke in
Ireland, "buying cattle for Virginia." We know that Captain Jones soon
sailed for Virginia with cattle, in the FALCON, of 150 tons, and as this
was the only cattle ship in a long period, we can very certainly identify
Clarke as the newly-hired mate of the MAY-FLOWER, who, Cush man says
(letter of June 11/21, 1620), "went last year to Virginia with a ship of
kine." As 1620 did not begin until March 25, a ship sailing in February
would have gone out in 1619, and Jones and Clarke could easily have made
the voyage in time to engage for the MAY-FLOWER in the following June.
"Six months after Jones's trip in the latter" (i.e. after his return
from the Pilgrim voyage), Neill says, "he took the DISCOVERY (60 tons) to
Virginia, and then northward, trading along the coast. The Council for
New England complained of him to the Virginia Company for robbing the
natives on this voyage. He stopped at Plymouth (1622), and, taking
advantage of the distress for food he found there, was extortionate in
his prices. In July, 1625, he appeared at Jamestown, Virginia, in
possession of a Spanish frigate, which he said had been captured by one
Powell, under a Dutch commission, but it was thought a resumption of his
old buccaneering practices. Before investigation he sickened and died."
That Jones was a man of large experience, and fully competent in his
profession, is beyond dispute. His disposition, character, and deeds
have been the subject of much discussion. By most writers he is held to
have been a man of coarse, "unsympathetic" nature, "a rough sea-dog,"
capable of good feeling and kindly impulses at times, but neither
governed by them nor by principle. That he was a "highwayman of the
seas," a buccaneer and pirate, guilty of blood for gold, there can be no
doubt. Certainly nothing could justify the estimate of him given by
Professor Arber, that "he was both fair-minded and friendly toward the
Pilgrim Fathers," and he certainly stands alone among writers of
reputation in that opinion. Jones's selfishness,
[Bradford himself--whose authority in the matter will not be
doubted--says (Historie, Mass. ed. p. 112): "As this calamitie,
the general sickness, fell among ye passengers that were to be left
here to plant, and were basted ashore and made to drinke water, that
the sea-men might have ye more bear [beer] and one in his sickness
desiring but a small can of beare it was answered that if he were
their own father he should have none." Bradford also shows (op.
cit. p. 153) the rapacity of Jones, when in command of the
DISCOVERY, in his extortionate demands upon the Plymouth planters,
notwithstanding their necessities.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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