“For ninety-six passengers at L4, L384. 
          For thirty-two tons of goods at L3 (per ton). 
          For passage for a man, his wife and servant, (3 persons)
          L16/10, L5/10 each.”

Goodwin shows the cost of transportation at different times and under varying conditions.  “The expense of securing and shipping Thos.  Morton of ‘Merry Mount’ to England, was L12 7 0,” but just what proportion the passage money bore to the rest of the account, cannot now be told.  The expense of Mr. Rogers, the young insane clergyman brought over by Isaac Allerton, without authority, was, for the voyage out:  “For passage L1.  For diet for eleven weeks at 4s. 8d. per week, total L3 11 4” [A rather longer passage than usual.] Constant Southworth came in the same ship and paid the same, L3 11 4, which may hence be assumed as the average charge, at that date, for a first-class passage.  This does not vary greatly from the tariff of to-day, (1900) as, reduced to United States currency, it would be about $18; and allowing the value of sterling to be about four times this, in purchase ratio, it would mean about $73.  The expenses of the thirty-five of the Leyden congregation who came over in the may-Flower in 1620, and of the others brought in the Lion in 1630, were slightly higher than these figures, but the cost of the trip from Leyden to England was included, with that of some clothing.  In 1650, Judge Sewall, who as a wealthy man would be likely to indulge in some luxury, gives his outlay one way, as, “Fare, L2 3 0; cabin expenses, L4 11 4; total, L6 14 4.”

CHAPTER IV

THE MAY-FLOWER—­THE SHIP HERSELF

Unhappily the early chroniclers familiar with the may-Flower have left us neither representation nor general description of her, and but few data from which we may reconstruct her outlines and details for ourselves.  Tradition chiefly determines her place in one of the few classes into which the merchant craft of her day were divided, her tonnage and service being almost the only other authentic indices to this class.

Bradford helps us to little more than the statement, that a vessel, which could have been no other, “was hired at London, being of burden about 9 score” [tons], while the same extraordinary silence, which we have noticed as to her name, exists as to her description, with Smith, Bradford, Winslow, Morton, and the other contemporaneous or early writers of Pilgrim history.  Her hundred and eighty tons register indicates in general her size, and to some extent her probable model and rig.