Her magazine, carpenter’s and sailmaker’s lockers, etc., were doubtless well forward under her forecastle, easily accessible from the spar-deck, as was common to merchant vessels of her class and size.  Dr. Young, in his “Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers” (p. 86, note), says:  “This vessel was less than the average size of the fishing-smacks that go to the Grand Banks.  This seems a frail bark in which to cross a stormy ocean of three thousand miles in extent.  Yet it should be remembered that two of the ships of Columbus on his first daring and perilous voyage of discovery, were light vessels, without decks, little superior to the small craft that ply on our rivers and along our coasts . . . .  Frobisher’s fleet consisted of two barks of twenty-five tons each and a pinnace of ten tons, when he sailed in 1576 to discover a north-west passage to the Indies.  Sir Francis Drake, too, embarked on his voyage for circumnavigating the globe, in 1577, with five vessels, of which the largest was of one hundred, and the smallest fifteen tons.  The bark in which Sir Humphrey Gilbert perished was of ten tons only.”  The little James, which the Company sent to Plymouth in July, 1623, was “a pinnace of only forty-four tons,” and in a vessel of fifty tons (the Speedwell), Martin Pring, in 1603, coasted along the shores of New England.  Goodwin says:  “In 1587 there were not in all England’s fleet more than five merchant vessels exceeding two hundred tons.”  The Sparrow-Hawk wrecked on Cape Cod in 1626 was only 40 feet “over all.”  The Dutch seem to have built larger vessels.  Winthrop records that as they came down the Channel, on their way to New England (1630), they passed the wreck of “a great Dutch merchantman of a thousand tons.”

The may-FLOWER’S galley, with its primitive conditions for cooking, existed rather as a place for the preparation of food and the keeping of utensils, than for the use of fire.  The arrangements for the latter were exceedingly crude, and were limited to the open “hearth-box” filled with sand, the chief cooking appliance being the tripod-kettle of the early navigators:  This might indeed be set up in any part of the ship where the “sand-hearth” could also go, and the smoke be cared for.  It not infrequently found space in the fore castle, between decks, and, when fine weather prevailed, upon the open deck, as in the open caravels of Columbus, a hundred years before.  The bake-kettle and the frying-pan held only less important places than the kettle for boiling.  It must have been rather a burst of the imagination that led Mrs. Austin, in “Standish of Standish,” to make Peter Browne remind poor half-frozen Goodman—­whom he is urging to make an effort to reach home, when they had been lost, but had got in sight of the may-Flower In the harbor—­of “the good fires aboard of her.”  Moreover, on January 22, when Goodman was lost, the company had occupied their