English ship Zouche Phoenix (1624)

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: England

The English ship, Zouche Phoenix (aka Zouch Phenix), carried emigrants and supplies to New England in the spring of 1624 including agents of the Dorchester Company^[1]. She was a consort to the ship Unity.

Royal Navy sea battle.

Four years earlier, In 1620, the Zouche Phoenix was commissioned by the Royal Navy and took part in the naval expedition to Algiers (1620-21) against the Barbary pirates. She was described as a ship-rigged, 280 tons bm vessel with 26 guns and a crew of 100^[2].

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Lord Zouche.

Zouche Phoenix was likely named in honor of Lord Edward la Zouche, 11th Baron Zouche, who was a Commissioner of the Virginia Company (1608-25).

The Zouche Phoenix may have been renamed (or re-christened) from the English ship Phoenix (1613)^[3] or the Phoenix (1613)^[4] although these may be referring to the same ship.

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1635 Lawsuit regarding supplies the Zouche Phenix brought to Cape Anne

Some 11 years after the Zouche Phenix brought passengers and supplies to the attempted plantation on Cape Anne in 1624, there was a lawsuit, after the Dorchester Company which hired it went bankrupt, to recover the value of some of the materials sent including "6 and 20 hogsheads" of salt (for curing fish), a valuable commodity at the time. A transcription (shown here in part) was included in a publication of "The Planter's Plea."^[5]

The 1635 Zouche Phenix lawsuit.

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Notes regarding passengers brought to New England on the Zouch Phenix in 1624

The Dorchester Company obtained a charter to establish a fish salting stage and plantation on Cape Anne in New England and brought a group of men there in 1623. The following year, they sent Thomas Gardner and John Tilley to oversee the plantation and fishing operations, respectively.^[6][7]

They arrived in the spring of 1624 on the Zouch Phenix bringing supplies, other agents of the Dorchester Company including John Balch, John Woodbury, Peter Palfrey, William Trask and others. The ship's manifest included some family members of Thomas Gardner and John Balch. Not listed would be an unknown number of indentured servants. By the second year there were 32 men left at Cape Anne including “spare” fishermen and field men.^[8]

Soon after, the Dorchester Company hired Roger Conant, a trader who arrived in New England with the Plymouth Colonists in 1620 but had left the colony, to be governor at Cape Anne. Despite the efforts of Conant and the others, the fishing operation only returned 60% of the initial investment after three years and the fishing operation ceased.^[9]

Most of the fishermen probably returned to England on the company ships but others remained on Cape Anne with Roger Conant. Since Cape Anne proved to be an unsuitable location for establishing a plantation, they removed to a nearby location called Naumkeag at the present location of Salem.

Among those who accompanied Conant to Naumkeag (Salem), in 1626, were Palfrey, Woodbury, Balch “and others” but there is no official list or number. John Woodbury would return to England in 1627 to obtain more supplies returning again to Naumkeag within a year with his son.^[10] Others at Naumkeag would be a number of indentured servants who were brought over for the settlement on Cape Anne. When a larger group of colonists arrived at in 1628, led by John Endicott, they were greeted by “sundry inhabitants” who called themselves the “servants” of the Dorchester Company.^[11]

Salem selectmen overlaid on land grant.

All of the principal passengers who arrived at Cape Anne on the Zouch Phenix in 1624 were instrumental in the founding of Salem and the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The earliest town records from 1635 show Thomas Gardner, John Balch, John Woodbury, William Traske and Peter Palfrey serving as selectmen and peers to John Endicott (governor) and Roger Conant.^[12]

Notes:

1. John Tilley was killed in an Indian encounter prior to Apr 1634.^[13]

2. Walter Knight and Thomas Gray may have been the exceptions to being ideal citizens of the new colony based on official court records:

• "Walter Knight, appearing, was fined 10t for his rude speaches and contemptuous …. for security he made over a bill of 11t" (Salem court record Mar 1640).^[14]
• "Thom(as) Gray for being drunke, prophaning of the name of God, keeping a tippling house, & drawing his knife in the Courte, was censured to bee severely whipped & fined 5t" (Salem court record Sep 1639).^[15]

3. The others took the Oath of Freemen as follows: William Traske, 1630, chosen (militia) captain in 1636; John Balch, Peter Palfrey and John Woodbury, 1631, Woodbury served as town constable; Thomas Gardner, 1637, acted as a selectman prior to taking oath, served as town constable and in many other capacities.^[16]

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Sources

1. ↑ Charles Edward Banks, The planters of the Commonwealth: a study of the emigrants and emigration in colonial times: to which are added lists of passengers to Boston and to the Bay Colony; the ships which brought them; their English homes and the places of their settlement in Massachusetts, 1620-1640 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1961), 58, https://archive.org/details/plantersofcommon00bank_0/page/58/mode/1up?view=theater.
2. ↑ Rif Winfield, British Warships in the Age of Sail (1603 – 1714) (England: Seaforth, 2009), Ch 4 "Small Ships", https://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=show_ship&id=14336.
3. ↑ Wikipedia contributors, "English ship Phoenix (1613)," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=English_ship_Phoenix_(1613)&oldid=1096096096 (accessed March 10, 2023).
4. ↑ Wikipedia contributors, "Phoenix (1613)," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Phoenix_(1613)&oldid=1094239711 (accessed March 10, 2023).
5. ↑ "John White's Planter's Plea, 1630" and other documents. Rockport, MA: The Sandy Bay Historical Society and Museum, 1930. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39076005679266&seq=7 (accessed Oct 2023).
6. ↑ Alexander Young, Chronicles of the first planters of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, 1623-1636 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1846), 23. https://archive.org/details/chroniclesoffirs00youn/page/n15/mode/2up (accessed Oct 2023).
7. ↑ John W. Thornton, The landing at Cape Anne, or, The charter of the first permanent colony on the territory of the Massachusetts Company with a history of the colony, 1624-1628 (Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1854), 43. https://archive.org/details/landingatcapean00thor/page/43/mode/1up?view=theater (accessed Oct 2023).
8. ↑ Young, Chronicles of the first planters, 9.
9. ↑ Young, Chronicles of the first planters, 10-11.
10. ↑ Thornton, The landing at Cape Anne, 55, Appendix IV, 82.
11. ↑ Thornton, The landing at Cape Anne, Appendix IV, 82.
12. ↑ Town Records of Salem, Massachusetts, Volume I, 1634-1659 (Salem: The Essex Institute, 1868), 12-13. https://archive.org/details/townrecordsofsalv1sale/page/n17/mode/1up (accessed Oct 2023).
13. ↑ Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, Ed, Records of the governor and company of the Massachusetts bay in New England, Vol. 1, 1628-1641 (Boston: William White, 1853), 115. https://archive.org/details/recordsofgoverno01mass/page/115/mode/1up (accessed Oct 2023).
14. ↑ Shurtleff, Records of the governor, 314.
15. ↑ Shurtleff, Records of the governor, 270.
16. ↑ H. Franklin Andrews, List of freemen, Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1630 to 1691 : with freeman's oath, the first paper printed in New England (Exira, Iowa : Exira Print. Co., 1906). https://archive.org/details/cu31924028814304/page/n19/mode/1up?q=gardner&view=theater (accessed Oct 2023).