 Abt 1590 - Abt 1635 (~ 45 years)
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| Name |
CHAPPELL John Thomas [1, 2] |
| Prefix |
Captain |
| Birth |
Abt 1590 |
Southhampton London, England  [1, 3] |
| Gender |
Male |
| Reference Number |
605 |
| Death |
Abt 1635 |
London, England [1, 4] |
| Notes |
- Captain John Chappell, of London, master of the ship SPEEDWELL, sailed Mai 28th, 1635, from Southampton, England, for the colony in Virginia. Note: May was spelled Mai in the original record.
CAPTAIN JOHN CHAPPELL.
On the 28th of May, 1635, there weighed anchor at Southampton, England, a diminutive little ship called the Speedwell, which sailed away for the colony in Virginia. The master of this ship was John Chappell, and there is but little doubt that when he went ashore at Jamestown he was the first of the name to set foot on the soil of Virginia. That he was the father of young Thomas Chappell, who came to the colony in the same year, who will be referred to hereafter, and hence was our first American ancestor, seems probable, although there is no positive evidence to establish this fact. Neither is there any reason to believe that Captain Chappell remained permanently in Virginia. On the contrary, being a skillful navigator engaged in a profitable trade, as he was, he probably continued on the ocean, or may have returned to England and died there.
The only record found of Captain Chappell is in Hotten's list, and is the clearance papers and passenger list of this voyage.
These papers, verbatim et literatim, are as follows:
"The under written names are to be transported to Virginia imbarqued in ye ship Speedwell of London, John Chappell, Master, from Southampton. Being examined by ye minister of Gravesend of their conformitie to ye orders and discipline of ye Church of England and have taken ye oath of allegiance.
"Mai, 28. 1635."
In addition, it is presumed, to the usual cargo of freight, she carried the following List of Passengers.
"Henry Burr, age 24, Richard Morris 19, William Shipman 22, Nathaniel Fairbrother 21, Jo. Gilgate 22, Richard Rowland 20, C. Metcalf 19,* Rich'd Brown 19, Robt. Parker 21, Thomas Willis 19, Thomas Childs 30, Thomas Roney 19, Chris Peddington 18, Thomas Smith 22, John Mason 22, William Spencer 17, Joseph Spencer 21, Thomas Bates 18, John Barker 22, William Williams 19, Thomas Oliver 19, John West 30, Nick Tetloe 31, William Pasford 19, Jo. Watson 22, Robert Spynk 20, James Lowder 20, Jerry Burr 20, Wm. Appleby 32, Win. Cary 21, Wm. Stamper 22, Jo. Carden 22, Jo. Harris 20, Edmond Clark 16, N. Sylvester 25, Richd. Boyd 22, John Jones 18, Wm. Brown 22, Robt. Spence 24, Joseph Mason 18, Christ. Morton 22, William Kemp 22, Rewbin Lemon 18, John SwanIt), John Flood 24. John Goodson IS, Henry Dawkes 27, William Matts 20, George Foster 26. (Women:) Katharine Perkins 10, Elizabeth Biggs 10, Dorothy Wyncott 40, Elizabeth Pew 20, Christine Reynolds 24, Judith Green 20; Maria Sedgwick 20, Ann Wyncott 16, Frances Longworth 25. Elizabeth Luthill 25, Phillipi Higgs 6 months.'' Total, 49 men, 9 women, and 2 children. v
*The figures indicate the ages. All old records copied are exact copies.
The Speedwell was a 60 ton ship , the smaller of the two ships (along with Mayflower ) intended to carry the Pilgrim Fathers to North America . A vessel of the same name and size traveled to the New World seventeen years prior as the flagship of the first expedition of Martin Pring .
The Leiden Separatists bought the ship Speedwell in Holland , and boarded it at Delftshaven . They then sailed to Southampton , England to meet the Mayflower, which had been chartered by the merchant investors. In Southampton they joined with other Separatists and the additional colonists hired by the investors.
The two ships began the voyage on 5 August 1620 , but the Speedwell was leaky and returned to Dartmouth to be refitted at great expense and time. On the second attempt, Mayflower and Speedwell sailed about 100 leagues beyond Land's End in Cornwall the Speedwell was again found to be leaky. Both vessels returned to Plymouth where the Speedwell was sold.
101 people from the Speedwell boarded the Mayflower, leaving 20 people to return to London . For a third time, the Mayflower headed for the new world. She left Plymouth on 6 September 1620 and entered Cape Cod Harbor on 11 Nov. 1620 . The Speedwell eventually followed, arriving at Plymouth Colony exactly one year later on 10 Nov. 1621 .
*The size of a ship is measured, not by weight, but by burden (the amount the ship can carry). The term "ton," as used to measure the burden of a ship, derives from the word "tun," a large cask used for storing wine as it was being shipped.
At one point, the ship's main beam cracked and had to be repaired using a large iron screw. When the passengers sighted Cape Cod, they realized that they had failed to reach Virginia, where they had permission to settle.
From the journal of William Bradford...The Pilgrims safe arrival at Cape Cod aboard the Mayflower :
"Being thus arived in a good harbor and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees & blessed ye God of heaven, who had brought them over ye vast & furious ocean, and delivered them from all ye periles & miseries therof, againe to set their feete on ye firme and stable earth, their proper elemente. And no marvell if they were thus joyefull, seeing wise Seneca was so affected with sailing a few miles on ye coast of his owne Italy; as he affirmed, that he had rather remaine twentie years on his way by land, then pass by sea to any place in a short time; so tedious & dreadfull was ye same unto him.
But hear I cannot but stay and make a pause, and stand half amased at this poore peoples presente condition; and so I thinke will the reader too, when he well considered ye same. Being thus passed ye vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before in their preparation (as may be remembred by yt which wente before), they had now no friends to wellcome them, nor inns to entertaine or refresh their weatherbeaten bodys, no houses or much less townes to repaire too, to seeke for succoure. ..
Let it also be considred what weake hopes of supply & succoure they left behinde them, yt might bear up their minds in this sade condition and trialls they were under; and they could not but be very smale. It is true, indeed, ye affections & love of their brethren at Leyden was cordiall & entire towards them, but they had litle power to help them, or them selves; and how ye case stode betweene them & ye marchants at their coming away, hath already been declared. What could not sustaine them but ye spirite of God & his grace? May not & ought not the children of these fathers rightly say : Our faithers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this willdernes; but they cried unto ye Lord, and he heard their voyce, and looked on their adversitie…"
On July 22, 1620, the Pilgrims boarded the ship Speedwell in Delfthaven, Holland, and said their tearful good-byes to their friends and church-members whom they were leaving behind. In fact, they were leaving the majority of their church congregation behind--even their pastor, John Robinson, was not coming with them. But the intent was to send these first few men and women to establish the colony: then the rest of the church would be able to come over later. Pastor Robinson preached a sermon on Ezra 8:21. As the time to depart arrived, Pastor Robinson fell to his knees and "with watery cheeks commended them with most fervent prayers."
The Pilgrims sailed on the Speedwell from Delfthaven, Holland to Southampton, England, where they met up with the Mayflower that had just come down from London. The Mayflower had a number of other passengers from England that the Pilgrims did not really know yet--they were friends or investors that had become interested in the voyage while the Pilgrims were trying to raise enough money to undertake the trip. In Southampton, the ships were loaded with food and supplies for the voyage: but the Pilgrims were so short of money they had to sell off most of their oil and butter before they could leave. The Mayflower and Speedwell departed for America on August 5 from Southampton, but after just a short time sailing through the English Channel they were forced into Dartmouth because the Speedwell was leaking. They were delayed several weeks, but finally headed off to America from Dartmouth on August 24. They Mayflower and Speedwell cleared the English channel, and were nearly 300 miles into the Atlantic when word came that the Speedwell was again leaking, and would have to turn back. The two ships returned to Plymouth, England, where it was decided that the Speedwell was not capable of making the voyage. About 20 passengers, most quite frustrated with the voyage and very happy for an excuse to quit, were sent home to England and Holland. The remaining passengers and cargo were transferred from the Speedwell over to the Mayflower.
Finally, after a month of delays and problems, the Mayflower put to sea again, leaving Plymouth, England on September 6, 1620, with 102 passengers (three of which were pregnant women), and a crew of about 30. For the first half of the voyage, the Mayflower had good winds and weather. The of the passengers were troubled by sea-sickness, but they would get used to it. A young boy, Oceanus, was born to Stephen and Elizabeth Hopkins.
One of the sailors on the voyage was remembered as having been very vulgar and rude. He used to laugh at the passengers sea-sickness, and told everyone he hoped to throw half of them overboard after they had died, and then take all their possessions for himself. He cursed and swore terribly. In the end, though, he ended up being the first to get sick, and soon died of a very painful disease, and was in fact the first person thrown overboard. The Pilgrims saw the hand of God in his death, as Bradford wrote "Thus his curses light on his own head, and it was an astonishment to all his fellows for they noted it to be the just hand of God upon him."
Unfortunately for the passengers, the smooth sailing came to an end about half-way across the ocean. The Mayflower was hit with many strong storms and cross-winds, and the ship was so badly shaken that she became very leaky, with water dripping and falling down upon the passengers that were living between the decks. The storms were often bad enough that the Mayflower's crew had to take down the sails, and just let the storm blow the ship wherever it wanted. During one of these bad storms, one of the main beams of the ship bowed and cracked, causing some of the crewmembers and passengers to fear the ship would not be able to continue the voyage. After consulting with the master, Christopher Jones, it was decided the ship was sturdy, and had a good history of surviving such storms, so a great iron screw was used to raise the main beam back into place.
During another storm, passenger John Howland happened to come above deck, and was swept off the ship into the ocean. He just managed to grab ahold of the topsail halyards, and held on long enough for the Mayflower's crew to rescue him with a boathook. William Bradford noted, "though he was something ill with it, yet he lived many years after and became a profitable member both of church and commonwealth". Howland is an ancestor to many people, including Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and George Bush, actor Humphrey Bogart, and founder of the Mormons Joseph Smith.
Finally, the passengers and crew began to sense they were getting close to land. Three days out, a young boy, William Button, who came on the Mayflower in the custody of doctor Samuel Fuller, died. He was the first passenger to die, and the only passenger to die while the ship was at sea. On the morning of November 9, after more than two months at sea (not to mention a month of delays on board the ships back in England), they spotted land, which they later found to be Cape Cod. After 2750 miles, traveling at an average speed of just under 2 mph, the voyage was nearly over.
The Pilgrims were planning to build their settlement around the mouth of the Hudson's River near present-day Long Island, New York; but when the Mayflower turned south, she nearly shipwrecked in some difficult shoals off the coast of Cape Cod. The Pilgrims decided not to risk another attempt, but instead to explore the region around Cape Cod. They anchored in what is now Provincetown Harbor on November 11, 1620. Since they were no longer going to settle where they had thought, and did not technically have the permission of the King of England, the Pilgrims drew up the so-called "Mayflower Compact," to give themselves the authority to establish a government there--it was a temporary solution, until an official patent could be obtained.
With the voyage having come to an end, the Pilgrim men set out to explore Cape Cod and gather firewood, while the Pilgrim women were brought ashore to do the laundry.
The Speedwell Voyage
(This column was first published in the January 20, 2000 ArtVoice of Buffalo, NY)
It is easy for readers of those 18th and 19th century sea stories that are so popular today -- the fictions of Patrick O'Brian and C. S. Forester and the non-fiction accounts of Captain Cook's voyages and Admiral Nelson's battles, for example -- to be misled. We gain from them the impression that sea captains of that time were almost without exception strong men, intrepid leaders who gained the loyalty of their stalwart crews and led them to carry out remarkably successful voyages and campaigns in the face of undeniably ferocious hardships. With, of course, a single blot on this litany of success: Captain Bligh of the Bounty.
To place those accounts in proper perspective it is only necessary to read Kenneth Poolman's THE SPEEDWELL VOYAGE: A TALE OF PIRACY AND MUTINY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY (Naval Institute Press). Here we see the darker side of the picture. By carefully sorting out two opposing accounts, Captain George Shelvocke's self-justifying Cruise on the Spaniards with His Majesty's Commissionand the response by one of his ship's officers, William Betagh's A Voyage Round the World...relating the true historical facts of the whole affair,Poolman has pieced together a remarkable tale of 3 1/2 years of misfortune, calamity, privation, disaster, adversity -- you name it in the way of catastrophe.
Substituting for that old map inscription "Here be dragons!" here be shipwrecks, terribly fought sea battles, rotten leadership, infighting among officers and crews, betrayal of owners, piracy, marooned sailors, mutinies, drunkenness, cowardice, sickness, starvation and desertion. No one in this story comes off well but the original leader of this English raiding expedition, George Shelvocke, is at least a survivor. He makes a terrible start: he is rightly downgraded to second in command by the owners for drunkenness and profligacy less than a week after he takes command. But he slowly gains our acceptance if not our respect and, by the end of the voyage, even the regard of his disreputable crew, at least among those few still alive.
It is entirely appropriate for the Naval Institute Press of Annapolis to publish this book for it is about leadership. Poolman tells us, "In ships so far from home, with little chance of help or rescue, leadership was all-important. Such an expedition could succeed or fail by the strengths and weaknesses of its commander. That fine seamanship mattered went without saying. Equally important was the overall commander's ability to manage men, in this case two ships' companies of illiterate, superstitious sailors, sullen landsmen, jail scrapings, gallow's meat, and malcontents, needing only a common grievance, real or imaginary, and the machinations of some 'sea lawyer' to touch off mutiny. Magellan and Drake had been such men." Unfortunately no Magellan or Drake or Hornblower or Aubrey or Cook or Nelson inhabits this story and the results are spectacularly awful.
In February 1719 two privately owned ships, Speedwell and Success,set out on a raiding expedition. Their charge was to capture and loot Spanish treasure ships carrying Peruvian silver along the west coast of South America. The English had just declared war with Spain and the ships carried letters of marque, which gave them official status but outside the British navy.
Shelvocke, newly assigned captain of Speedwell,was a farmer's son who had joined the Royal Navy as a boy seaman when he was 15. During two long wars with France and Spain he worked his way up to become sailing master and finally second lieutenant of a flagship. But when the war with France ended in 1713, he was beached without even the support of half-pay and when given this assignment, he was living in poverty.
Success's captain, John Clipperton, had an unsavory reputation. On a similar previous voyage he had deserted his commander to strike out on his own. Despite that, because of Shelvocke's bad start, Clipperton was made senior officer of this expedition. Needless to say, bad blood developed immediately between the senior officers and whenever the two ships were together problems arose.
And the sea lawyer Poolman warned of did organize the Speedwell's Levelers -- members of a political movement that sought to "level men's estates." They not only mutinied, gaining all their demands, but they argued with Shelvocke about every decision and often refused to carry out necessary duties.
Not a good setting for the death-defying passage around Cape Horn, where the killing of an albatross by a crew member would provide the basis for Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". Nor for sea battles in which Shelvocke's seamanship did prevail. Nor for another desertion by Clipperton who left Shelvocke and his ship's company with little food and ammunition weeks from any port. Nor for shipwreck on the same island where George Selkirk had been marooned and was to serve as model for Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.
Remarkably Shelvocke got his crew to build a frail new ship out of the wreck of Speedwell.With it he managed to capture the Spanish Sacra Familia,which he sailed on around the world to England, capturing prizes along the way. He did not return to London a hero as Clipperton had arrived before him to condemn Shelvocke to the owners. They had him jailed for various abuses including fraud.
But in a final turn for the better, the captain was exonerated, wrote his story of the voyage and achieved both honor and wealth. And the rebuttal to his book was so shrill and clearly unbalanced that it did Shelvocke no great harm. [5]
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| Person ID |
I2 |
Booth Family |
| Last Modified |
26 Oct 2015 |
| Family |
BARKER Mary, b. 1594, Gravesend, , Kent, England d. 1616, London, England (Age 22 years) |
| Marriage |
Abt 1612 [3] |
| Alt. Marriage |
1619 [1] |
| Children |
| | 1. CHAPPELL John, b. 1611, Gravesend, , Kent, England d. 1658, Charles City County, VA (Age 47 years) |
| | 2. CHAPPELL Thomas, b. Abt 1612, Gravesend, , Kent, England d. Bef 1689, Charles City County, VA (Age ~ 77 years) |
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| Family ID |
F3 |
Group Sheet | Family Chart |
| Last Modified |
23 Feb 2008 |
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| Event Map |
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 | Death - Abt 1635 - London, England |
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| Sources |
- [S902] Holloway Family Genealogy, Holloway Family Genealogy (Reliability: 3).
- [S984] Brooks, Brian, Brooks Web Site \ 2893513-1 (by Brian Brooks) (Reliability: 1).
- [S41] LDS IGI Data.
- [S148] LDS microfilm.
- [S1044] The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (Reliability: 3).
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