Eaglewing – Livingstone`s
account.


John Livingstone’s account is given in Reid’s History
of the Presbyterian Church:


We had much toil in our preparations and many hindrances
in our undertaking, and both sad and glad hearts in taking
leave of our friends. At last, about the ninth of
September 1636, we loosed from Loch Fergus, but were
detained sometime with contrary winds in Loch Ryan in
Scotland, and grounded the ship to search some leaks in
the keels of the boat. Yet thereafter we set to sea, and
for some space had a fair wind, till we were between three
and four hundred leagues from Ireland. and so nearer the
banks of Newfoundland than any place of Europe. But if
ever the Lord spake by his winds and other dispensations,
it was made evident to us, that it was not his will that
we should go to New England. For we met with a mighty
heavy rain out of the north-west, which did break our
rudder, which we got mended (by the skill and courage of
captain Andrew Agnew, a godly passenger) with much of our
gallon-head, and fore cross-trees, and tore our foresail,
five or six of our champlets, a great beam under the
gunner-room door broke. Seas came in over the round-house
and broke a plank or two on the deck, and wet all them
that were between the decks. We sprung a leak that gave us
seven hundred strokes in two pumps in the half-hour glass.
Yet we lay at hull a long time to beat out the storm, till
the master and company came one morning, and told it was
impossible to hold out any longer; and although we beat
out that storm, yet we might be sure in that season of the
year we would foregather with one or two more of that sort
before we could reach New England.


 After praying and discussing the emergency that had
arisen in their plans, they all agreed to return to
Ulster:


 The next morning, as soon as we saw day, we turned and
made good way with a main course and a little of a
fore-top sail; and after some tossing, we came at last, on
the third of November, to an anchor in Loch Fergus. During
all this time, amidst such fears and dangers, the most
part of the passengers were very cheerful and confident;
yea, some in prayer had expressed such hopes, that rather
than the Lord would suffer such a company in such sort to
perish, if the ship should break, he should put wings to
our shoulders and carry us safe ashore. I never in my days
found the day so short as all that time, although I slept
some nights not above two hours, and some none at all, but
stood most part in the gallery astern the great cabin,
where Mr. Blair and our families lay For in the morning,
by the time that every one had been some while alone; and
then at prayer in their several societies, and then at
public prayer in the ship, it was time to go to dinner;
and after that, we would visit our friends in the
gunner-room, or those between the decks, or any that were
sick, and then public prayer would come, and after that,
supper and family exercises. Mr. Blair was much of the
time sickly, and lay in time of storm. I was sometimes
sick, and then my brother, Mr. McClelland, only performed
duty in the ship: several of those between the decks,
being throng, were sickly. An aged person and one child
died, and were buried in the sea. One woman, the wife of
Michael Colvert of Killinchy parish, brought forth a child
in the ship; I baptized him on Sabbath following, and
called him Seaborn .


 Reid details that there were 140 passengers on the
Eagle Wing,
among the “little colony, who were about
to settle in the uncultivated wilds of America, for the
sake of enjoying liberty of conscience” were Mr Blair, Mr
Livingstone, Mr Robert Hamilton and Mr ,John McClelland,
afterwards ministers in Scotland, the Provost of Ayr. John
Stuart, Captain Andrew Agnew, Charles Campbell, John
Sumervil, Hugh Brown, and Andrew Brown, a deaf mute from
the parish of Lame
.


 Source:  
James Seaton Reid, The History of the Presbyterian
Church in Ireland,
vol. I (Edinburgh, 1834) pp. 202—3. 


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