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Jones had been master of the Mayflower for the last eleven years, sailing back and forth across the Channel with English woolens to France and returning to London with French wine. Wine ships such as the Mayflower were known as “sweet ships,” since the inevitable spillage of the acidic wine helped to temper the stench of the bilge. In addition to wine and wool, Jones had transported hats, hemp, Spanish salt, hops, and vinegar to Norway and may even have taken the Mayflower on a whaling voyage to Greenland. He and his wife, Josian, had had five children, and although he had no way of knowing it at the time, Josian was pregnant with another son, who would be born at their home in Rotherhithe, just down the Thames from London, the following March.
    Serving as Jones’s mate and pilot was Robert Coppin, who, unlike Jones, had been to America before. Also serving as pilot was John Clark, forty-five, who’d delivered some cattle to Jamestown the previous year. Giles Heale was the ship’s surgeon. In the days ahead, as sickness spread through the passengers and crew, he would become one of the most sought-after officers of the Mayflower. Another important position was that of the cooper, who was in charge of maintaining all barreled supplies and provisions. In Southampton, Jones secured the twenty-one-year-old cooper John Alden, who because of his youth and skills was already being encouraged by the Pilgrims to remain in America at the completion of the crossing. In addition, there were somewhere between twenty and thirty sailors, whose names have not survived.
    In Southampton, the Leideners met up with the family and friends who had first boarded the Mayflower in London and would be continuing on with them to America. Most shared their religious beliefs and several of them were actual members of the Leiden congregation. The most notable of the group was Elder William Brewster, who had been hiding out in Holland and perhaps even England for the last year. The return of Brewster, the highest-ranking layperson of the congregation and their designated spiritual leader in the New World, must have been as emotionally charged as their departure from Leiden.
    Also joining them in Southampton were Robert Cushman and John Carver, who was traveling with his wife, Katherine, and five servants. Although not a member of the congregation, Captain Miles Standish was well known to the Leideners. Standish, who was accompanied by his wife, Rose, and may or may not have come over on the Speedwell, had served as an English mercenary in Holland and would be handling the colony’s military matters in America.
    It was in Southampton that they met the so-called Strangers—passengers recruited by the Adventurers to take the places of those who had chosen to remain in Holland. Besides the domineering Christopher Martin, who had been designated the “governor” of the Mayflower by the Adventurers and was traveling with his wife and two servants, there were four additional families. Stephen Hopkins was making his second trip to America. Eleven years earlier in 1609 he had sailed on the Sea Venture for Virginia, only to become shipwrecked in Bermudaan incident that became the basis for Shakespeare’s The Tempest. While on Bermuda, Hopkins had been part of an attempted mutiny and been sentenced to hang, but pleading tearfully for his life, he was, at the last minute, given a reprieve. Hopkins spent two years in Jamestown before returning to England and was now accompanied by his pregnant wife, Elizabeth; his son, Giles; and daughters Constance and Damaris, along with two servants, Edward Doty and Edward Leister.
    In addition to the Mullinses, Eatons, and Billingtons (whom Bradford later called “one of the profanest families amongst them” ), there were four children from Shipton, Shropshire. Ellen, Jasper, Richard, and Mary More were the products of an adulterous relationship between their mother, Catherine More,