During the anxious days when the abler men were searching on land for a site for the settlement, first on Cape Cod and later at Plymouth, there were events of excitement on the ship left in the harbor. Peregrine White was born and his father’s servant, Edward Thompson, died. Dorothy May Bradford, the girl-wife of the later Governor of the colony, was drowned during his absence. There were murmurings and threats against the leaders by some of the crew and others who were impatient at the long voyage, scant comforts and uncertain future. Possibly some of the complaints came from women, but in the hearts of most of them, although no women signed their names, was the resolution that inspired the men who signed that compact in the cabin of _The Mayflower_,—“to promise all due submission and obedience.” They had pledged their “great hope and inward zeal of laying good foundation for ye propagating and advancing ye gospell of ye kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of ye world; yea, though they should be but as stepping-stones unto others for ye performing of so great a work”; with such spirit they had been impelled to leave Holland and such faith sustained them on their long journey. Many of the women who were pioneers at Plymouth had suffered severe hardships in previous years. They could sustain their own hearts and encourage the younger ones by remembrance of the passage from England to Holland, twelve years before, when they were searched most cruelly, even deprived of their clothes and belongings by the ship’s master at Boston. Later they were abandoned by the Dutchman at Hull, to wait for fourteen days of frightful storm while their husbands and protectors were carried far away in a ship towards the coast of Norway, “their little ones hanging about them and quaking with cold.”[5]