Early Encounters: Native Americans and Europeans in New England. From the Papers of W. Sears Nickerson

The Sparrow Hawk

The Sparrow Hawk A fRmily nRmed SpRrrow settled in the vicinity of Old Ship .n.HRrbor in 1675. Mr. JRmes L. SpRrrow, R descendRnt, in 1863 stRted thRt Recording tofRmily trRdition Rvessel dRtingfrom the eRrly dRYS ofthe colony JRy buried in the sRnds ofPotRnunRlJuut HRrbor Rnd thRt its nRme WRS SpRrrow-HRwk. Nickerson left no notes on this Rrticle which I hRve revised from R clipping from the CRpe Codder. His primRry source is obviously BrRdford. The earliest recorded shipwreck on the Back Side of Cape Cod was that of the SpRrrow HRWk in the fall of 1626} Governor William Bradford, who was an eyewitness left the details of it in his history of Plimouth Plantation.1 The SpRrrow HRWk was a small English ship loaded with emigrants bound for Virginia. After six weeks at sea with "ye maister ... sick ... of ye scurvie," they had "no water, nor beere, nor any woode left," and were steering a "desperate course" due west, hoping to "fall with some land, what soever it was they cared not," before "they should be starVed at sea, or consumed with diseases.... " She struck in the night on the harbor bars "right before ... ye midle of Manamoyake Bay.... sprung ye but end of a planke or too" in pounding across and fetched up halffull ofwater on a sand flat inside. By daylight, when the tide had ebbed, they found they could all wade ashore to the point of the beach on the north side of the inlet and "saved their lives & goods, though much were hurte with salt water.... "They had no idea where they were nor what they should do next. It was not long, however, before they sighted Indians paddling down channel toward 102 The Sparrow Hawk 103 The site of the discovery of the Sparrow Hawk. Courtesy of the Pilgrim Society, Plymouth, Massachusetts them. Expecting to be attacked, the men primed their matchlocks and stood on their guard. What was their surprise when they were hailed in English by the canoe men who told them where they were, inquired if "they were the Gove'r of Plimoths men, or friends;" and offered to "bring them to ye English houses, or carry their letters." The "Manamoyake Bay" of Bradford and the Indians is the Pleasant Bay of today, and at that time its inlet, as he says, opened out to sea almost directly east of it. This was less than six years after the landing of the Pilgrims; Plimoth Plantation was the only white settlement within hundreds ofmiles, and there was not a settler's cabin on all ofCape Cod. Nevertheless, Bradford had already rounded the Cape in a little trading sloop, with Squamo as pilot, and been in through this same inlet to buy corn and beans ofthe Bay Indians. 104 The Coming ofthe Mayflower As soon as the friendly Indians brought two of the Sparrow Hawk's crew to Plymouth, Bradford mustered his boat's crew, loaded their shallop with oakum, spikes, and necessary tools with which to mend the sprung planks of the ship and set out to her relief. Coasting down the north shore of the Cape, they landed at the head of Namskaket Creek and portaged their supplies on their backs over the Indian trail to Arey's Pond in South Orleans. From here the Indians paddled them down to the wreck in their log canoes, and the Plymouth men must have looked like angels from heaven to the sick and sea-weary people huddled in the December cold under the lee ofa beach knoll on the bleak and God-forsaken point. The Pilgrims mended their ship for them, replenished their food supply , and rounded up some of the sea men who were run away among the Indians. They made the Sparrow Hawk shipshape and seaworthy again and then went home. But they had not been home many days before in came an Indian runner with the bad news that a great storm had driven her ashore again and so beaten and shaken her that she was now wholly unfit to go to sea. So the shipwrecked crew and passengers were brought to Plymouth where the settlers cared for them as well as they could until a couple ofbarks carried them away to Virginia the following summer. The shifting sands soon buried the deserted hulk, and salt marsh grew over her grave. But Cape Cod traditions are as indestructible...