Martin Pring,who became more famous ten years later in the East India trade, and who rose to the dignity of “Generall to the Fraternity of the Trinitie House” at Bristol, was selected by sundry of the chiefest merchants of that town in 1603 to represent their interests on a voyage to the region where Gosnold and Gilbert had gathered a profitable cargo of sassafras. He was given the charge of “a small ship called the Speed-well in burthen about fiftie tunnes, manning the same with some thirtie men and Boyes ... with a Barke called the Discoverer, of six and twentie tunnes or thereabout, being thirteene men and a Boy in all in that Barke.” They made land on the Maine coast, and after following the northern shore of Massachusetts Bay for a ways, struck across to the southwest, hitting upon Plymouth harbour. Here there was abundance of sassafras, and the ships’ companies made a camp on shore while they gathered their cargo.Pring wrote an account of the voyage for Richard Hakluyt, who had persuaded the Bristol merchants to make the venture. Samuel Purchas, who came into possession of Hakluyt’s papers, printed the narrative at London in 1625, in the fourth volume of “Purchas his Pilgrimes.”
Martin Pring,who became more famous ten years later in the East India trade, and who rose to the dignity of “Generall to the Fraternity of the Trinitie House” at Bristol, was selected by sundry of the chiefest merchants of that town in 1603 to represent their interests on a voyage to the region where Gosnold and Gilbert had gathered a profitable cargo of sassafras. He was given the charge of “a small ship called the Speed-well in burthen about fiftie tunnes, manning the same with some thirtie men and Boyes ... with a Barke called the Discoverer, of six and twentie tunnes or thereabout, being thirteene men and a Boy in all in that Barke.” They made land on the Maine coast, and after following the northern shore of Massachusetts Bay for a ways, struck across to the southwest, hitting upon Plymouth harbour. Here there was abundance of sassafras, and the ships’ companies made a camp on shore while they gathered their cargo.
Pring wrote an account of the voyage for Richard Hakluyt, who had persuaded the Bristol merchants to make the venture. Samuel Purchas, who came into possession of Hakluyt’s papers, printed the narrative at London in 1625, in the fourth volume of “Purchas his Pilgrimes.”