One Small Candle by Thomas Fleming

Author:Thomas Fleming [Thomas Fleming]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / United States / General
ISBN: 9781612301464
Publisher: New Word City, LLC
Published: 2014-02-25T05:00:00+00:00

Twenty-four men, armed and armored as before and under Miles Standish’s command, boarded the shallop and the longboat. Those in the longboat were to go ashore and march down the beach to the mouth of the Pamet River, where the shallop would rendezvous with them and carry all hands up the river for exploration. In an unprecedented move, the passengers made Captain Jones the expedition leader. “We thought it best herein,” Bradford says, “to gratify his kindness and forwardness.” Bradford was once more among the marchers, and this time he was joined by his good friend Edward Winslow.

Winter was on them now, fastening deadly fingers of ice on their flesh. Snow flurries howled across the bay as they shoved off from the Mayflower. “Rough weather and cross winds” were so severe that both the longboat and the shallop had to run for the nearest beach, where everyone waded ashore in water above the knees. Jones surveyed the churning bay and declared that any further progress in the shallop was out of the question.

Bradford, Winslow, and the younger men who were going to march to the river on foot anyway decided to push on for another six or seven miles. That night it froze, and the snow continued to lash them. No clothing they had brought from Holland prepared them for this kind of exposure. Holland winters were cold, but all these men had worked in houses and shops. Huddled in their worn cloaks, some, in William Bradford’s somber phrase, “took the original of their death here.”

At eleven o’clock the next morning, the shallop arrived to pick up the chilled, coughing campers. With a good if biting wind, they sailed briskly down to the mouth of the Pamet River. They were now with a man who, like all sailors, had the instincts of an explorer. As they approached the river’s mouth, Captain Jones suggested they give the place a name. In a wry testimony to the weather, the explorers decided to call it Cold Harbor.

Once more the marching party debarked at the hill between the two creeks, and slogged along though six-inch snow while the shallop sailed beside them. Sounding revealed twelve feet of water in the river at high tide - not enough for ships, but deep enough to handle good-sized boats such as the shallop. They covered five miles before dusk began to darken the sky.

Captain Jones, who had been marching on foot all the way, confessed he was weary and suggested they make camp. They settled under the bows of some pine trees and sent out hunters who came back with three fat geese and six ducks. William Bradford says they ate them “with soldiers stomachs.” Except for a few nibbles of cheese and biscuits, it was the first food they had had all day.

They had planned to march to the head of the Pamet River where they hoped to find fresh water. But in the morning, they conferred and found many objecting to the poor soil in the vicinity and to the lack of a protected harbor for shipping.

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