Connie Lapallo - Scrapbook and Excerpts

Introduction	Joan's English Home	Departing England	Life On Board Ship	New Jamestown Home	Learning to Survive
Will the Company Abandon Them?	Cecily in Lady Gates’s Care	Remembering Cecily’s Journey	Plymouth and Pilgrimages?	The Spanish Threaten	Babies Arrive amidst Turmoil
Brutal Martial Law	Nothing to Eat	Hope: the First General Assembly
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	Cornwall was the last view of England Joan would have had before the ships hit open water. I stood on a mountain with a Dark Age fortress (said to be the birthplace of King Arthur.) The irony was not lost on me. If the real King Arthur had been born here, then this, symbolically, was the birthplace of England. I gazed first to the land behind me, the English countryside—the “Magical Little Town of Tintagel. Then I turned, facing the Atlantic. I wondered again how the English Adventurers chose to leave such beauty for unknown lands beyond the sea. I imagined the ships departing these waters toward the setting sun, leaving Old England behind forever.		The ships got off to a slow start. The winds pounded us from the Southwest, forcing us to seek shelter in Falmouth Harbor, tucked away on the Cornish coast. “This is not a good omen!” said Elizabeth, one of the women whose pallet was next to my own. She didn’t look like a pleasant neighbor, but perhaps her disposition would improve once the journey began. Then it occurred to me that no one’s disposition would get jollier being so long at sea and in such tight quarters. “Ah, well,” I said to myself with a sigh. For six frustrating days we sat, waiting for the winds to turn. Now that we were going and committed to it all, I wanted to see progress. Instead, all I saw was the rocky Cornish coast. From Dark Enough to See the Stars in a Jamestown Sky by Connie Lapallo © 2006, 2008