Communicating an English Revolution to the Colonies, 1688–1689

Abstract

TheAmericaof Boston, bound from its home port to London in December of 1688, began taking soundings that were political as well as nautical as it approached England. Two weeks before an English port was reached, the first news was heard from a shipmaster returning from Barbados, who shared what he had heard earlier from an English vessel out of Galloway. The passengers of theAmericawere told that William of Orange had landed at Torbay early in November, that the prince had taken England, and that King James was dead. The truth, the guess, and the false rumor all came aboard with equal credibility. They were only four days from port before they learned that the king was not dead, though the source was a five-week-old report from the Canary Islands. The occupants of theAmericacould still be buffeted by strange and disturbing tales when they were only one day from Dover. The master of a pink that was two weeks out of Liverpool gave the date of the prince's landing as three weeks later than the event, gave William's force as an astounding 50,000 men and 600 ships, and told the apprehensive colonials that the drowned bodies of Englishmen were being found tied back-to-back and that French men-of-war were cruising with commissions from King James II. All this worrisome “news” proved erroneous but accompanied an account that would prove correct, that the king was not dead but had fled to France.