The Speedwell’s Confession

When a Ship Refused to Lie

Sparks of Liberty · Book One

New Release · May 2026

A ship’s carpenter discovers his captain is sinking the vessel on purpose. Seventy souls aboard. One man with a rope and the truth.

In the summer of 1620, the Speedwell was meant to cross the Atlantic alongside the Mayflower. She never did.

Three times she put to sea. Three times she turned back, taking on water, until the Separatists abandoned her and crowded aboard the Mayflower alone. History recorded the Speedwell as the ship that failed.

This is the story of what that failure cost, and what it saved. The ship that turned back. The people who chose her. The carpenter who came to understand that the leak was no accident, and that the crossing everyone remembers was made possible by the one nobody does.

A historical fiction short read, built on the documented record.

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A note from the writing desk

I kept circling one fact I could not let go of. The Speedwell was supposed to be there. Two ships set out for the New World, and history remembers only one. The other turned back. Because she did, the people aboard her made a different set of choices, and four hundred years bent around them. That is the question every Sparks of Liberty story asks. What does one ordinary decision cost, and what does the world look like on the other side of it?

Christopher B. Gordon

The history behind the story

Every Sparks of Liberty story is fiction built on documented fact. Volume One of the Historical Library shows you the real Speedwell, the ship with two names, the people who could not stay, the three crossings, the 1635 passenger list. The fiction ends. The record begins.

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