I was living off turtles,
birds, mollusks, and wild pigs
and wanted to live
on the Isle of Devils forever.
The Governor sentenced me to death
when I tried mutiny.
I begged and pleaded for freedom
and he let me
go on to Jamestown.
By the time I returned to London
my wife was dead.
Bradford liked that I spoke with Natives.
With my new wife
and my bickering servants
I decided to give it another try.
Waves banged the bridge,
cold water soaked us through the decking.
The mainyard and its mainsail leaned over
to touch the waves with its head.
“At Hull!” Captain Jones cried, with all his lungs.
The crew lowered the sails and rigging,
latched it all down tight,
battened the hatches,
barred the doors,
tucked into the forecastle,
and prayed to God
to do what we couldn’t
but our bent oak beam cracked like a cannon shot.
The crew turned back the jack,
propped it with a post
and nailed it with a prayer.
(Without intermission) we stood up
to the middles with buckets,
barricades and kettles
bailing out
the rain from above.
Spewed oakum sprung a leak,
all of us mixing defeat and resolve.
No hope for our lives
but for a higher cause.
We shut down the hatches
and committed to the mercy of the sea
and our Almighty God.
We opened our last libations
and drank to meeting in a more blessed world.
The sea froze and spit at us.
Ten of us left in the shallop,
our wet clothes were heavy iron coats.
We named Grampus Bay ashore
and saw silhouettes of Nauset
cleaning black fish
until they disappeared in the night.
The mast broke into three pieces
and the sails fell overboard.
If I had no plantation to this land
there would be no trades
No riches.
No poverty.
No use of service — none.
No contract.
No succession.
Bound of land, tilth, vineyard — no.
No use of metal.
No corn.
No wine, oil — none.
No occupations.
All of us idle
with innocence and purity.
All things in common
without sweat, effort, treason,
felony, sword, pike,
knife, gun, or horsepower.
Having undertaken for glory
in the presence of God
and one another,
we covenant ourselves together
into a civil body politic
for our better ordering.
Author’s note: Stephen Hopkins is known as a Mayflower passenger and the interpreter in the Plymouth colony. What is less well known is that he was on a shipwrecked voyage that eventually made it to Jamestown, where Hopkins first engaged with Native Americans. That voyage became the raw material for Shakespeare’s The Tempest, in which Hopkins is the character Stefano. This poem engages with the original tempest and the near wrecks the Mayflower had off the coast of Provincetown and on our shores.
Kevin Gallagher is a poet, publisher, and political economist. His latest books of poetry are And Yet It Moves and The Wild Goose. Gallagher is the editor and publisher of spoKe, an annual of poetry and poetics. He is director of the Boston University Global Development Policy Center and lives in Belmont.
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