An aunt in Ohio said earlier that it will be below zero tonight, friends in Virginia reported that church was cancelled because of snow, and it will probably snow overnight in Salt Lake City. Here? It's in the high 40s (60s in the day) with the next good chance of rain not until next week. Before anyone gets too jealous, remember we're still dealing with drought here. That said, I'm going to have to use my imagination as I tell the story of a storm that took place about 395 years ago.
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| "Howland Overboard" by Mike Haywood |
The Tilleys would all survive the voyage, only to perish, except for young Elizabeth, within that first year in the New World. Elizabeth, a teenager at the time, lived to adulthood and had ten children. How must she have felt during that first rough winter, witnessing all of the adults who were to take care of her die, knowing that she was the last of her family in the New World?
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| From Bradford's list of Mayflower passengers John appears in the Carver household as a manservant. |
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| The Tilleys also appear on this list. |
But back to the storm and to John, the central player in this story. John was a servant of the Carver family, also aboard. Fellow pilgrim William Bradford later described him as being “a lusty young man.” He, along with the others, must have been pretty brave. They had risked everything for the privilege of practicing their religion, facing persecution and a fierce ocean for its sake.
And the Atlantic can be very fierce. Bradford stated, "In sundry of these storms the winds were so fierce and the seas so high, as they could not bear a knot of sail, but were forced to hull (lay-to) for divers days together." He called the storm of our story "mighty" and said that they were laying at hull. I could be wrong but this may be laying ahull. "No storm tactic is more controversial than lying ahull. The technique is simply to douse all sail, batten down the boat and let it find its own natural position in the sea. The tiller is usually tied to leeward (wheel to windward) to help the boat keep her bow from falling off too far. (From Day, George, "Heaving-to," Boats. com, 2000, retrieved 2 Mar 2015) This technique seems to involve allowing the vessel to drift, as it is not anchored.
The trouble started when John was "coming upon some occasion above the gratings" and fell overboard. Now exactly why John was where he was is unknown. Bradford didn't see fit to explain this part of the incident in full detail.
Now, I must say that I have seen some claim that John must have been drunk to fall off the ship, which I must refute. There is nothing in any contemporary account to confirm this and it seems to be a fairly recent and apochryphal addition to the account. Not that I would object if were really so. I'm not the type to expect all my ancestors to have led entirely virtuous lives or to blindly refuse to acknowledge that they could have made mistakes or behaved badly. In fact, I have some very hilarious drunk Dutch colonists from the same century that I own to be mine as much as I do John. Sometimes, as a genealogist, you just have to roll with what the evidence gives you. However, there is no evidence to support the idea of him being tipsy and there is certainly no need to invent a reason for John falling overboard. To quote Tolkien, "There isn't no call to go talking of pushing and pulling [or being drunk]. Boats [or ships] are quite tricky enough for those that sit still without looking further for the cause of trouble." (Words in brackets added by me.)
Why did he probably fall overboard? I used to live near Jamestown, Virginia and had a number of opportunities to explore the replicas of the Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery, the ships that carried the first Virginia settlers. The space below deck is limited, even without a full complement of passengers and cargo, and one docent explained to me that after bobbing on the ocean day after day in stagnant, smelly air, passengers relished any time they could even partially stick their cramped bodies above deck. There might be a number of reasons John may have been "above the gratings."
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| Below deck on the larger of the Jamestown ships (photo taken by me, 2010) |
Whether he was supposed to be up there or not can only be guessed. But even if he wasn't supposed to be, it wouldn't shock me. I've seen people run out of a building during an earthquake, even though they're not supposed to (that is, if one values not having a dent in the head). What comes to mind at this point is the opening of Shakespeare's Tempest, where the passengers seem to be moving about the ship during the storm (annoying the crew, in that case).
Bradford said that he was "with a seele (roll) of the ship, thrown into sea." The fact that he fell off a heaving deck, once he was up there, is hardly surprising. I don't drink at all but I'm pretty sure I could very well end up flipped off a deck if there was a mighty storm.
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| A topsail being set and furled (Photo by IT2 Jack Shrader, showing the USS Constitution) |
Anyways, what happened next is thrilling and amazing. Wrote Bradford, "...but it pleased God that he caught hold of the topsail halyards which hung overboard and ran out at length." A halyard is a line (basically rope, in layman's terms) used to hoist sails, yards, flags, etc., in this case, a topsail (the square sail set above the lowest sail on a mast). In other words, John fell but was able to grab onto a line, which ran out behind the drifting vessel.
That could easily have been his end. He could have easily given up and lost hold of that line. But he didn't! "Yet he held his hold (though he was sundry fathoms under water) till he was hauled up by the same rope to the brim of the water, and then with a boat hook and other means got into the ship again and his life saved." Such a close call!
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| Replica of the Howland house at Plimoth Plantation |
Poor John was a little worse for the wear after his rescue but he survived. "And though he was something ill with it, yet he lived many years after and became a profitable member both in church and commonwealth." He married Elizabeth and had those ten children I mentioned. He died over fifty years later and the records of Plymouth Colony say that "Hee was a godly man and an ancient professor in the wayes of Christ ; hee liued vntill hee attained aboue eighty yeares in the world. Hee was one of the first comers into this land, and proued a vsefull instrument of good in his place, & was the last man that was left of those that came ouer in the shipp called the May Flower, that liued in Plymouth."
My brother, upon learning of John's near-fatal mishap, joked that he was our only ancestor to waterski to America! But in all seriousness, he was blessed to live and thrive. Besides me, his descendants include Joseph Smith, his wife Emma (Hale) Smith, several U.S. presidents, and Sir Winston Churchill. The world would be a very different place without John Howland and his posterity!
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| Chart of some of John and Elizabeth's descendants, which can been seen at family history displays at some LDS temple visitors' centers |
Next week's challenge from No Story Too Small: "Week 11 (March 12-18) – Luck of the Irish. Do you have an ancestor who seemed particularly lucky? Do you have a favorite Irish ancestor? This is their week." Oh, goodness! A good quarter of my family history is Irish. Next week, I gear up for St. Patrick's Day and celebrate my Irishness!
