Long search for a reliable, coetaneous picture of one of the larger ships
of the merchant service of England, in the Pilgrim period, has been
rewarded by the discovery of the excel lent "cut" of such a craft, taken
from M. Blundeville's "New and Necessarie Treatise of Navigation,"
published early in the seventeenth century. Appearing in a work of so
high character, published by so competent a navigator and critic, and
(approximately) in the very time of the Pilgrim "exodus," there can be no
doubt that it quite correctly, if roughly and insufficiently, depicts the
outlines, rig, and general cast of a vessel of the MAY-FLOWER type and
time, as she appeared to those of that day, familiar therewith.

It gives us a ship corresponding, in the chief essentials, to that which
careful study of the detail and minutiae of the meagre MAY-FLOWER history
and its collaterals had already permitted the author and others to
construct mentally, and one which confirms in general the conceptions
wrought out by the best artists and students who have attempted to
portray the historic ship herself.

Captain J. W. Collins, whose experience and labors in this relation are
further alluded to, and whose opinion is entitled to respect, writes the
author in this connection, as follows "The cut from Blundeville's
treatise, which was published more or less contemporaneously with the
MAYFLOWER, is, in my judgment, misleading, since it doubtless represents
a ship of an earlier date, and is evidently [sic] reproduced from a
representation on tapestry, of which examples are still to be seen (with
similar ships) in England. The actual builder's plans, reproduced by
Admiral Paris, from drawings still preserved, of ships of the MAYFLOWER'S
time, seem to me to offer more correct and conclusive data for accurately
determining what the famous ship of the Pilgrim Fathers was like."