What a piece of junk!
Luke Skywalker, Star Wars
Elizabeth Ring sailed from Delfshaven, in the Netherlands, aboard the Speedwell in the summer of 1620. She was traveling with her parents, William and Mary Ring, and also her two younger siblings, Susannah and infant Andrew. Elizabeth is believed to have been about eleven years old.
It was not her first time on a ship, although Elizabeth was likely too young to remember that first voyage. Born in Suffolk, England, she had crossed the English Channel as an infant, when her parents joined the separatist colony at Leiden. Her childhood there was likely difficult but peaceful. The city boasted forty thousand residents at that time, many from different refugee groups across Europe, and a small group of English expatriates would have been of little consequence. For years the Dutch left them largely to themselves.
Their only problem: they had little money. Back in rural Pettistree, England, William Ring might have been a farmer, even a prosperous one, but in Leiden he was a simple “say worker”, making blankets and overcoats out of coarse wool using the cheapest of looms. Elizabeth’s mother Mary likely worked as a spinster to supplement their income. The working hours were long for both of them, from dawn until dusk, six days a week, enforced at the sound of the town bell. From a young age Elizabeth would have kept busy helping her parents in their work and the upkeep of their tiny cottage and the daily care of her younger siblings.
The grueling pace of the merchant city was a common frustration for many of the separatist parents. They wanted more time to educate their children but felt forced, by tight economics, to instead put them to work. Elizabeth would have learned to read at night, by candlelight, from excerpts of the Bible, the small collection of books kept by her parents, and the religious pamphlets printed on the “Pilgrim Press” by Elder Brewster and his assistant, Edward Winslow.
By 1618 the group saw their peaceful existence could not last. War with Spain was clearly coming and the Dutch had turned to the English for help. In exchange for England’s allegiance, King James insisted on control of his expatriate subjects. His demands made the future of the Leiden separatists far less secure, and the savage natives of the lightly populated New World seemed the smaller threat. Over the next two years, the colonists made preparations to leave.
Like most of the pilgrims, the Ring family likely used canal boats to travel the thirty miles from Leiden to Delfshaven. Delfshaven, now a borough of Rotterdam, was situated twenty miles from the sea on the northern bank of the Nieuwe Maas tributary of the Rhine river. There they would have seen the Speedwell, their floating home for months to come, for the first time. It is hard to imagine what they thought.
It was not a big ship, fitted for only sixty tons of cargo compared with one hundred eighty for the Mayflower. Other oceangoing ships anchored in the port would have seemed large by comparison. Even more concerning, the Speedwell was quite old. It had been built for the Royal Navy over forty years earlier, in 1577, and put to sea for the war against Spain. Originally called the Swifture, the vessel participated in the navel battles against the Spanish Armada and the Earl of Essex’s 1595 Azores expedition. Then, in 1605, the ship was decommissioned and sold. Rechristened as the Speedwell, the ship was used for private commerce for the next fifteen years, changing hands an unknown number of times until 1620, when a Leiden separatist named Captain Blossom purchased it for the Puritan voyagers.
Elizabeth may have been oblivious to any of these seaworthiness concerns. She likely enjoyed those exciting first days aboard, peering from the gun port at the passing ships as the Speedwell navigated the waterways out of Europe’s largest port. She might have marveled at her first view of the expansive North Sea.
Once free of the European coast, the Speedwell sailed southwest into the English Channel. By the time they reached their first destination, the port of Southhampton, England, the ship was already leaking. The Mayflower, which had sailed from London that month with over sixty passengers, was there to meet them and had to wait until her smaller sister ship was declared fit for the long voyage. The repairs, which along with port fees were paid for out of the colonist’s food and stores, took two long weeks.
On August 5 the Speedwell sailed from Southampton alongside the Mayflower, en route at last to the New World, but quickly began leaking again. They were forced to put in at Dartmouth for further repairs. The problem proved to be a single loose board, about two feet long. The crew made repairs and, in a second attempt, the two ships left Dartmouth. They made it further this time, several hundred miles beyond Land’s End in Cornwall, but once again the leaking Speedwell forced them to turn back.
What caused the leaks? Then, as now, the source was a mystery. After the voyage William Bradford, the pilgrim leader and eventual governor of Plymouth Colony, wrote the seeping water was probably caused by overmasting. The crew had installed a new mast for the Atlantic voyage, one that proved too big for the ship and placed excessive strain on the hull. But Bradford also suggested a second reason: sabotage. He believed some of the crew had been willing to risk sinking the ship to abort the trip, rather than face starvation and mistreatment by the New World natives.
Regardless of the cause, by the time the two ships docked at Plymouth (where some of the group were entertained by David and Amias Thomson) it was early September. The colonists had no choice but to abandon the Speedwell. A dozen Speedwell passengers crowded onto the Mayflower. Elizabeth Ring and her family were not among them.
How these decisions were made are the subject of speculation. For the Ring family, perhaps their two months at sea, living in cramped quarters with nothing but a chamber pot bolted to the floor in one corner, were already more than enough. They returned to Leiden, where they lived nine more years. Sources report they were one of the last families in the separatist group to leave the city.
Finally, in 1629, Elizabeth once again boarded a ship bound for Plymouth Colony. Her father William Ring had passed away by then, but she traveled with her mother and siblings. This time the crossing was successful.
Soon after their arrival Elizabeth, now in her early twenties, married a prosperous colonist named Stephen Deane. Deane, a passenger on the 1621 Fortune voyage, had built and operated the colony’s only corn mill and appears to have been a respected member of the community. Elizabeth and Stephen had several children together.
When Stephen died in 1634, Elizabeth remarried Josiah Cooke. They, too, had three children together.
In 1645 the Cooke family moved to Eastham, far out on Cape Cod, where they lived for many years. Elizabeth outlived Josiah by over a decade and died a widow there in 1687. She was survived by four of her six children, most of whom still lived nearby.
We appear to descend from Elizabeth and Josiah’s youngest child, a son also named Josiah, through our great-grandfather Ralph Prescott.
As for the Speedwell, the ship was sold at auction in London soon after its aborted crossing attempt. Whether from a new mast or less fearful crew, no one can say, but the ship’s leaking problems appear to have been resolved, and its new owners enjoyed many years of productive service.
Wicked Moxie 