Ah! it is not the sea,
It is not the sea that sinks and shelves,
But ourselves
That rock and rise
With endless and uneasy motion,
Now touching the very skies,
Now sinking into the depths of ocean. (1)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Building of the Ship
Story I:
Richard and the Lyon
When working to understand our seventeenth century ancestors and their lives, it is a disservice to their memories to settle for viewing them as older, simpler versions of ourselves. It would be misguided. We are all made up of the same universal matter and, yes, we all bleed the same blood, but it is through acknowledging our differences that we can begin to, “consider the people of that time more in their own terms” (2). So drastic are the differences, in fact, that in order to even begin to attempt to understand, Fernand Braudel suggests that we “strip ourselves in imagination of all the surroundings of our own lives,” adding that a journey into the past “is a journey to another planet, another human universe” (3). It is with this frame of mind that I have absorbed and mediated on the life of my ancestor, Richard Benjamin - the first of my Benjamin line to step foot on the soil of this continent.
Richard Benjamin boarded a ship named Lyon in London, England on 22 June 1632. The ships of the day “were stubby merchant ships, whose sailing qualities left much to be desired. The Arabella (Eagle), 1630; Lyon, 1632; Francis, 1634; and Elizabeth Ann, Hopewell, Plaine Joan, Planter, and True Love of 1635, all shared the characteristics of the Mayflower. The voyages were uncomfortable at best, dangerous at worst” (4). This discomfort was in part due to the fact that, as the historian Banks explains:
“Turning a wine ship into a passenger vessel with accommodations for one hundred and fifty or two hundred souls becomes a problem of several dimensions . . . . In [the hold] of the ship…cabins had been constructed, probably rough compartments of boards for women and children, while hammocks for the men were swung from every available point of vantage.” (5)
The Lyon that Richard sailed upon would not have been spacious or comfortable by today’s standards and he would have been in close quarters with his fellow travelers during the voyage. While most of “the passengers on the Lion in 1632 were primarily from the East Anglia area of England . . . Also among the number on board were a few from other areas, such as County Kent, County Sussex, London, and places near London” (6). My research indicates that it is likely that Richard came from Heathfield, Sussex County, England. Heathfield is about forty-one miles southeast of London, as the crow flies.
replica of the lyon, used with permission from the Braintree District Museum, Essex, UK
Richard was about thirty years of age when he departed Sussex to board the Lyon for his voyage to his new world. He is listed as single - no wife or children next to him on the passenger list - but near what could be his brother, who is listed with his wife and their children. Further proof of Richard’s presence on the Lyon comes from a list “certified by Capt. Mason in June 1632” in London, which reads in part, “June 1632 - The names of such Men transported to New-England to the Plantacon there per Cert. from Capten Mason have tendred (sic) and taken the oath of allegiance according to the Statute…Richard Beniamin” (sic) (7). This fact, the oaths of allegiance the passengers took, is the significant difference between the 1632 voyage and many previous voyages.
The Lyon was notable amongst the many vessels that took part in the great migrations of her time for other reasons as well, and she was Richard’s protector, strong and courageous, as he sailed down the River Thames bound for the New World.
“This ship was famous in the history of the early emigration to Massachusetts, and her Master was equally noted for his skillful seamanship and his sympathy with the policy of the Puritan leaders. In 1630, 1631, and 1632 she made four voyages hither in quick succession under his command with the regularity and safety of a ferry, and on one of them saved the new settlement from starvation and death by her timely arrival with provisions and anti-scorbutics” (8).
Another history book describes the Lyon as being “larger and more comfortable than the Mayflower” (9). Part of what that means is that the passengers aboard must have had the means to afford this comfort. Nevertheless, when taking into account that a journey into the past “is a journey to another planet, another human universe” (10) we are reminded that regardless of its comfort relative to other ships of the day, any sea voyage in the 1600’s would surely have been a traumatic experience.
The Lyon carried my ancestor and his fellow passengers first out into the North Sea and then South through the Dover Narrows, into the English Channel, past the Isle of Wight and into the Celtic Sea. Next was Land’s End followed by nothing but the great North Atlantic Ocean until the ship arrived in Boston on September 16th, 1632, eight weeks later. This voyage of the Lyon was blessedly uneventful in the context of the day, suffering no greater inconvenience than a week’s worth of fog and east wind. As John Winthrop wrote:
“16, being the Lord’s Day. In the Evening Mr. Peirce, (sic) in the ship Lyon, arrived, and came to an anchor before Boston. He brought one hundred and twenty-three passengers, whereof fifty children, all in health; and lost not one person by the way, save his carpenter, who fell overboard as he was caulking a port. They had been twelve weeks aboard, and eight weeks from the Land’s End. He had five days east wind and thick fog, so as he was forced to come, all that time, by the lead; and the first land he made was Cape Ann.” (11)
by William Wood, used with permission from Art Source International
This 1632 voyage of the Lyon, uneventful as it was, would be her final. Upon her attempted return to England “the Lyon foundered in the Chesapeake…Seven crewmen and five passengers were drowned” (12). Captain Pierce himself survived.
Regardless of the relative comfort of their journey, their health upon arrival, or the gold in their pockets, the Lyon’s passengers’ new home in the New World was certainly full of hardship and uncertainty. The occupation of a planter was survival. Back in England the passengers had, no doubt, heard many and varied reports of life in the Colonies. Along with land and freedom from the religious oppression in Europe, there must also have been tales of starvation, struggle and hardship. Each passenger must have weighed his or her odds and decided to take the chance.
Sailing of the Braintree Company in the 'Lyon', 1632, Maurice Greiffenhagen, Braintree District Museum, hanging at Braintree Town Hall, Essex
We know that Richard left behind a land where all society deferred to the King, first and foremost, and where, if you were not of the nobility, the gentry or the wealthy merchant class, then you were living as a yeoman or tenant farmer with the amount of land you could afford to lease or own determining (if you were male) your right to vote. Some ninety-five percent of England’s population at the time Richard left were amongst this poorest class of laborers. A population of husbandmen and craftsmen with no ownership holdings, voice or authority. Those who were ruled over and who lacked all rights. Those who were persecuted for their religious beliefs. Those whose wages were “fixed low by law and made lower still by a slow but steady inflation” (13) forcing many to live near starvation. Those who left lost love affairs behind and those who simply followed friends. There were those who followed their greed, boys who left to spite a parent felt to be too stern and parents who “sent their sons to the wilderness to be tamed” (14). No doubt, however, as David Cressy stated; “Emigration was often the result of a bundle of motives, a cluster of considerations, that funneled into a specific decision” (15). What we do know is that they sought worthiness in the eyes of their creator and admiration from their fellow Englishmen.
As a writer inspired by my craft, my muse, I imagine how Governor John Winthrop penned his sermon A Model of Christian Charity aboard the Arabella in 1630. I close my eyes and I can envision them all crammed aboard this stubby little merchant ship listening to the Governor’s religious inspiration:
“He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, ‘may the Lord make it like that of New England.’ For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.” (16)
Richard himself was not aboard Winthrop’s ship, but these were his peers and the ideas of his contemporaries. Whether or not Richard was an overly religious man himself, the community he was a part of, made up of Puritans and their sympathizers, truly believed it had a calling and was doing something profoundly important in bringing its faith to these shores.
And so, the first generation of my paternal line of Benjamin, in the body of one Richard Benjamin, emerged from the fog of London and the North Atlantic to arrive on a new continent. There he would take part in the European struggle to paint what they thought of as civilization onto the canvas of the wild. Creating what they saw as something valuable out of what they had been taught was nothing. Creating useful civilization out of what their belief system termed useless wilderness. Richard and his contemporaries must have been constantly exhausted.
I have an incredible sense of empathy and a powerful sense of intuition, still, I cannot quite wrap my mind around exactly how Richard must have felt when he first disembarked the Lyon and stepped foot on the soil of the new continent. How long had he planned for this voyage? Was it a quick decision with funds readily available and off he went? Or did he yearn and save for this for a very long time? Did he leave loved ones behind in England or had he traveled with the only family that he knew? Had he perhaps lost his wife? Was he the type of man, full of bravado, “[t]hat shall laugh at all disaster, [a]nd with wave and whirlwind wrestle!” (17)? Or was he one of those referred to as being a “landsmen, terrified by the sea” (18)? Perhaps a little of both?
Richard’s arrival in his new home is far too profound of a moment to sum up in a short word or two. That’s alright, though. It is a moment that was for him and his fellow passengers, and for them alone. A moment reserved only for the immigrant to this country, for him or her to experience first hand and for others of us to only imagine. Richard left absolutely everything familiar to journey to a new land. It is likely that it was a land he believed, as so many of his contemporaries did, held opportunity beyond his wildest dreams. Three centuries after Richard’s arrival, a 1934 New York Times article written by L. H. Robbins said of the Statue of Liberty:
“To the throngs of homeless newcomers…she seemed a Lady Bountiful bidding them welcome to a land of freedom; a goddess indeed…. In their toll they saw her as she had awaited them at the end of their voyage, a symbol and a promise. Native-born Americans can hardly know what [it] meant, and still means, to folk who once were strangers.” (19)
Although it would be many, many years before lady liberty stood on the shores of a country called America, the very land itself was Richard’s welcoming goddess.
There is so much of Richard’s story about which I can only wonder. He and his fellow immigrants have become my beautiful mystery to ponder. The wonder, excitement, apprehension and exhaustion they must have experienced fuel my imagination. I have learned that, when we accept mystery and wonder as part of the answer to our quest for the story of our ancestors, we can begin to fully understand how our questing for their story is, after all, really part of a story about ourselves.
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