With a Prosperous Wind

click image for larger view

WITH A PROSPEROUS WIND (a & b)

Japanese woodblock (moku hanga)
Paper size: 29" x 14" (73.6 x 35.5 cm)
3 shina plywood blocks
14 hand-rubbed impressions
Paper: Nishinouchi
Edition: 12 (6 of each ship)

I've been reading a book called Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick, a surprisingly riveting history of the 55 years between the arrival of the Puritans in Plymouth and the end of King Philip's War, the bloody war between the Indians and the colonists that was fought in New England from June 1675 to August 1676. Philbrick has followed primary texts in his account of the early years of Plymouth colony, including William Bradford's diary, published under the title Of Plymouth Plantation.

Bradford's diary says very little about the grueling 66-day voyage, but one thing he does say is that on September 6, 1620, the Mayflower set out from Plymouth England "with a prosperous wind." I thought that would be a fitting title for this first print. There were 102 passengers crammed onto what was probably a 113-foot boat, and the ship only averaged about 2 miles per hour on its 3,000-mile journey.

I can only imagine how terrifying that journey must have been. Bradford wrote,

"If they looked behind them, there was the mighty ocean which they had passed and was now as a main bar and gulf to separate them from all the civil parts of the world."

But the Puritans believed that God's hand guided their every action. I wanted the print to be very vertical, both to make the boat appear small and to reflect this sense that the heavens were watching over them in their undertaking.