In November 1621, about a year after the Mayflower’s arrival, a small ship unexpectedly sailed into Plymouth harbor. This was the Fortune, carrying the Colony’s agent Robert Cushman and about 35 new colonists. Some of the passengers were related or known to the previous arrivals but others had been recruited by the Colony’s investors, the Merchant Adventurers.

The group had endured an unusually long voyage. The 55-tun Fortune had sailed under shipmaster Thomas Barton in July but encountered westerly crosswinds that kept them from leaving the English coast until the end of August. When they finally arrived in New England, the newcomers, who had not been well provisioned for their journey at the start, were spectacularly ill equipped to support the struggling Plymouth settlement.

“…there was not so much as a bisquit cake or any other victuals for them, neither had they any bedding, but some sorry things they had in their cabins, nor pot, or pan to dress any meat in; nor over-many clothes, for many of them had brushed away their coats & cloaks at Plimoth as they came but there were sent over some Birchin-Lane suits in the ship out of which they were supplied. The plantation was glad of this addition of strength, but could have wished, that many of them, had been of better condition; and all of them better furnished with provisions, but that could not now be helped.”
-William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation

According to Bradford, the Fortune stayed about two weeks in Plymouth before sailing back, “laden with good clapboard as full as she could stow, and 2 hogsheads of beaver and otter skins, which they got with a few trifling commodities brought with them at first, being all together unprovided for trade; neither was there any amongst them that ever saw a beaver skin till they came here, and were Informed by Squanto. The freight was estimated to be worth near £500. Mr. Cushman returned back also with this ship…” Unfortunately for the Colony’s finances, the Fortune was taken on its return voyage by a French privateer and its valuable cargo seized; the English passengers were later released.

After the ship’s departure from Plymouth, the new company were assigned living quarters with various families and their scanty provisions rationed to last through the winter. The Fortune’s passengers provided a labor force to build a palisade around the English village after a message received from the Narragansett people was deemed threatening. That spring, a palisade of boards with flankers and gates “was accomplished very cheerfully and the Town Impaled round by the beginning of March….”

Who arrived aboard the Fortune in 1621? There is no surviving passenger list for the Fortune and, in fact, no official passenger lists exist for any of the early ships to Plymouth from 1620 to 1630. How do we know which ship an early colonist arrived on?

William Bradford’s Mayflower passenger list, recorded in his journal, is an invaluable source on the first wave of English immigrants to Plymouth. Bradford compiled his list decades after the Mayflower voyage to record for posterity “The names of those which came over first, in the year 1620, and were (by the blessing of God), the first beginners, and (in a sort) the foundation of all the plantations, and Colonies, in New England (And their families).”

The basis for identifying passengers on other early ships to Plymouth Colony, including the Fortune, is the 1623 Division of Land (Plymouth Colony Records 12:5) which granted acreage to each settler. An indispensable scholarly resource on these early immigrants is Robert Charles Anderson’s Great Migration Study Project with the New England Historic and Genealogical Society, a comprehensive examination of historical and genealogical sources with the goal of identifying all European settlers of Plymouth Colony who arrived before the end of 1633. This meticulous ongoing research informs the following list of known, as well as possible or likely,* Fortune passengers.

Passengers on the Fortune

John Adams
Elizabeth [Basset], (Mrs. William)*
William Bassett
William Beale
Jonathan Brewster
Clement Briggs
Edward Bumpas
John Cannon
William Conner
Robert Cushman
Thomas Cushman
Stephen Deane
Philip Delano
Thomas Flavell
–Flavell (son)
Martha Ford (Widow Ford)
–Ford, (husband of Widow Ford)*
Robert Hicks
William Hilton
Bennet [Benedict] Morgan
Thomas Morton
Austin Nicholas
William Palmer
William Palmer Jr.*
William Pitt
Thomas Prence
Moses Simonson
Hugh Stacy
James Steward
William Tench
John Winslow
William Wright

Learn more about passengers to early Plymouth:

Robert Charles Anderson, The Pilgrim Migration: Immigrants to Plymouth Colony 1620-1633 (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2004).

Robert Charles Anderson, The Mayflower Migration: Immigrants to Plymouth, 1620 (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2020).

Caleb H. Johnson, “New Light on William Bradford’s Passenger List of the Mayflower,” The American Genealogist 80 (2005): 94-99.

Caleb Johnson, The Mayflower and Her Passengers (Xlibris, 2006).

W. Becket Soule, Passengers of The Fortune (1621), Compiled for the Delano Kindred 2021 Reunion Plymouth and Duxbury, Massachusetts (Heritage Books, 2023).