Constance and the Dangerous Crossing: A Mayflower Survival Story

By Julie Gilbert and Francesca Ficorilli

Fifteen-year-old Constance is looking forward to a new life in the New World. There’s nothing left for her in England—no family and no future. She agrees to set sail on the Mayflower, along with her employer. But the ocean crossing is harder than anyone anticipated, and the journey is riddled with dangerous obstacles. Will Constance live to see the New World, or will she and the other passengers be lost at sea?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Capstone Young Readers
• Release date: Jan 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781515893431

Julie Gilbert

Julie Gilbert has been writing and publishing since the fourth grade, when she stapled together a series of graphic novels about her cat. Julie is the author of the Dark Waters series from Stone Arch Books, as well as several titles in the Girls Survive series. She also has written Cemetery Songs, a novel for young adults. Julie’s novels consider themes of identity and belonging, often with a healthy dose of fantasy and magic. She lives with her family in Minnesota.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

The Mayflower

Land’s End, England

Sunday, September 6, 1620

5:40 p.m.

I stood near the back of the crowd in the belly of the ship, inching my way toward the door. The sound of praying filled my ears: The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

I put my foot on the bottom rung of the ladder and glanced back at the bowed heads. A pair of bright blue eyes watched me. My friend Damaris Spofford stood next to her mother, whose head was bowed in prayer.

Don’t go, Constance, Damaris mouthed silently, twisting her hands in her apron.

He makes me lie down in green pastures, the prayers continued. No one else noticed my departure. My eyes skimmed over my other friend, John Howland. I hoped he would notice and follow me on deck, but his dark eyes remained turned down. I tried to ignore my disappointment.

Turning back to Daramis, I pointed to the ladder. Find me later, I mouthed. Tucking my skirt between my legs, I made my way up.

The prayer followed me: He leads me beside still waters.

I wouldn’t mind some still waters right about now, I muttered as I emerged on deck.

The ship dipped beneath me, and my knees buckled. I staggered against the mast, catching myself against the solid beam that kept the sails aloft.

Passengers were not supposed to be on deck unless Captain Jones gave us permission, but I couldn’t take it anymore. I was tired of being cooped up in the gun deck with a hundred other passengers.

The gun deck, so named because it held the ship’s cannon, was sandwiched between the top deck above and the hold below. We sometimes called it the between deck or ’tween deck. Either way, it was barely fit for human habitation.

I needed to taste the sea air and feel the sun on my face. We were going to be on the Mayflower for the next several weeks. I wanted to spend as much time as possible outside.

On deck, the sound of praying was replaced with the sounds of the ship. Sailors shouted to one another over the rushing breeze. A seagull shrieked overhead. Waves slapped against the wooden hull.

I wrapped my hands around the railing and gazed across the English Channel. We were almost to the open sea. I stared out at the evening sky, painted pink and red by the setting sun. Then the sun slid behind a bank of clouds, turning the waves navy blue. The color reminded me of my mother’s eyes. What would she think about me leaving everything behind for a new life?

Find a life that is yours, Constance. That’s what my mother would say.

She had said those words to me so many times when I was growing up. I was a girl without much money, so I didn’t have many choices in life. But I believed her. I would make a life that was mine.

That’s why I was on this ship, heading to the New World. There was nothing left for me in England. My father had died when I was ten. He’d been a schoolteacher—a brilliant man, but one who’d never made much money. After he’d died of a sudden illness, my mother had been forced to find work. She’d taken a position as a maid for the Martins, a wealthy merchant family.

Then, two years ago, my mother had died. I’d been thirteen, with no relatives to take me in. My only choice had been to take my mother’s place as the Martins’ maid.

A few months ago, Mr. Martin had begun to talk about leaving England for the New World. Once he’d heard that a ship called the Mayflower was sailing for the New World, he’d booked passage for his family.

Many of the passengers were making the journey in order to practice their religion freely. Mr. Martin didn’t care much about religion. He was more interested in increasing his wealth in the Colony of Virginia.

Mr. Martin had given me a choice. I could come to the New World with them, or he would help me find a position with another family. I had agonized over it for days. My dream was to teach like my father. No one in England would hire a female teacher, but in the New World, maybe I could start my own school.

I made my choice. Now, here I was.

The

Reviews for Constance and the Dangerous Crossing

[jennybeast · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

While it is clear that some parts of this book are based on historical research, I think it would be better classed as fantasy.

First of all: Constance would not have been able to behave as she does without dire consequences. Other reviewers have commented on this, so I refer you to them.

Second of all: The "fix" of using part of a printing press to save the ship -- I can't even -- yes, there is a large screw in historical printing presses, however:

1: there wasn't a press on the Mayflower. The first presses in the "new world" were in Mexico, and the first printing press imported to North America came over in 1638. I found this after 5 minutes of internet searching. It's ridiculous to think that they would have had a press, in fact, because they wouldn't have had a regular source of paper to print on -- without that, you can't do much printing.

2: how exactly was that supposed to work? To shore up the beam that connects two parts of the ship?? If the beam is broken, shoring it up won't keep the ship from collapsing -- there are too many other forces and movements that would pull it apart. The illustration is laughable, and doesn't even indicate where the screw would be.

3: I'm on a little bit of shaky ground here -- for sure, the vast majority of the press would be made of wood. In most early presses, that includes the screw. If it had been a cast screw, I strongly suspect that it would have been cast out of brass or bronze. Cast iron was not common before the 1700s.

4: The way the screw works in an early press is to apply pressure between 2 fixed places and then spring back. It's not a fixed screw. It simply doesn't work like that -- if you wanted to adapt the screw housing to apply pressure to a specific place, you could, but it would require a lot more work that shoving it into place, and you would also have to figure out how to make the screw stay in place.

I realize I'm going a little overboard here, but the thing I really value about this series as a whole is that many of the books shine a light on the experiences of people of color in time periods when not much has been published about their lives. I also really value seeing books about strong girls and their unrecorded histories. When the books that focus on areas of history that is more familiar to the general public are so poorly researched it casts significant doubt on the integrity of the whole series. That stinks.

There are so many little known stories that do exist and can be brought to light. Why not focus on some of them?