ath and burial at sea of the
voyage.

[We can readily imagine this first burial at sea on the MAY FLOWER,
and its impressiveness. Doubtless the good Elder "committed the
body to the deep" with fitting ceremonial, for though the young man
was of the crew, and not of the Pilgrim company, his reverence for
death and the last rites of Christian burial would as surely impel
him to offer such services, as the rough, buccaneering Master (Jones
would surely be glad to evade them).

Dr. Griffis (The Pilgrims in their Three Homes, p. 176) says "The
Puritans [does this mean Pilgrims ?] cared next to nothing about
ceremonies over a corpse, whether at wave or grave." This will
hardly bear examination, though Bradford's phraseology in this case
would seem to support it, as he speaks of the body as "thrown
overboard;" yet it is not to be supposed that it was treated quite
so indecorously as the words would imply. It was but a few years
after, certainly, that we find both Pilgrim and Puritan making much
ceremony at burials. We find considerable ceremony at Carver's
burial only a few months later. Choate, in his masterly oration at
New York, December 22, 1863, pictures Brewster's service at the open
grave of one of the Pilgrims in March, 1621.]

A sharp change. Equinoctial weather,
followed by stormy westerly gales;
encountered cross winds and continued
fierce storms. Ship shrewdly shaken and
her upper works made very leaky. One of
the main beams in the midships was bowed
and cracked. Some fear that the ship could
not be able to perform the voyage. The
chief of the company perceiving the
mariners to fear the sufficiency of the
ship (as appeared by their mutterings) they
entered into serious consultation with the
Master and other officers of the ship, to
consider, in time, of the danger, and
rather to return than to cast themselves