buy necessaries, ye shippe men would usuallie say to some of them
that they could not want any thinge, they were full of ye
Spiritt. 4. That ye last Lords Day, or ye Lords Day before,
there were many drinkings aboard with singings & musick in tymes
of publique exercise. 5. That ye last fast ye master or captaine
of the shippe, with most of ye companie, would not goe to ye
meetinge, but read ye booke of common prayer so often over that
some of ye company said hee had worne that threed-bare, with many
such passages. Now if these or ye like be true, as I am persuaded
some of them are, I think ye trueth heereof would be made knowen,
by some faithfull hand in Bristoll or else where, for it is a very
remarkable & unusuall stroake," etc., etc.

Governor Winthrop, who was a man of much milder spirit than Endecott,
faithfully records this judgment, under its date in his Journal, with
additional particulars. The explosion took place "about dinner time, no
man knows how, & blew up all, viz. the captain, & nine or ten of his
men, & some four or five strangers. There was a special providence that
there were no more, for many principal men were going aboard at that
time, & some were in a boat near the ship, & others were diverted by a
sudden shower of rain, & others by other occasions." The good Governor
makes this startling record the occasion for mentioning "other examples
of like kind." Yet the especial providential significance which both he
and Endecott could assign to such a calamity would need a readjustment
in its interpretation, if compelled to take in two other conditions
under which the mysterious ways of that Providence are manifested,
namely: first, that many ships on board which there have been no such
profane doings have met with similar disaster; and second, that many
ships on board which there has been more heinous sinning have escaped
the judgment.