April 13, 1702

April 13, 1702, stands as the day Lemuel Gulliver completed his first voyage and set foot again on English soil, ending a journey that had begun with the sailing of the "Antelope" from Bristol on May 4, 1699. The date marks the conclusion of his extraordinary adventures among the diminutive peoples of Lilliput and Blefuscu, a period of approximately two years and eleven months that had transformed him from a struggling surgeon into a celebrated—and profoundly altered—traveler. The return was not merely a homecoming but the close of a narrative arc that would soon be resumed, for Gulliver's insatiable desire for foreign travel would allow him to stay with his family for only two months before he embarked on a second voyage.

The Voyage Home and Arrival in England

Gulliver's return journey from Blefuscu was itself a remarkable feat of endurance and ingenuity. After escaping the political machinations of the Lilliputian court, he had constructed a boat from materials found on the Blefuscu shore, fitting it with sails made from thirteen folds of the strongest linen, ropes twisted from dozens of native cords, and an anchor fashioned from a great stone he discovered after a long search. He set sail on September 24, 1701, at six in the morning, and after a voyage of several days during which he subsisted on the carcasses of a hundred oxen and three hundred sheep, he was rescued by an English merchantman returning from Japan under the command of Captain John Biddle of Deptford. The ship, with about fifty men aboard, carried Gulliver through the North and South Seas, and the voyage was "very prosperous for the most part." The only misfortune was that rats on board carried away one of his sheep, whose bones he later found picked clean in a hole. The ship arrived in the Downs—the famous natural roadstead off the southeast coast of Kent—on April 13, 1702.

The Evidence of His Travels

Gulliver brought with him physical proof of his adventures that would astonish those who heard his tale. He had stored the boat with live cattle—six cows and two bulls, as well as several ewes and lambs—intending to propagate their breed in England. Upon landing, he got the rest of his livestock safe ashore and set them grazing on a bowling-green at Greenwich, where the fineness of the grass made them feed heartily. He had feared they might not survive the long voyage, but Captain Biddle had allowed him some of his best biscuits, which, rubbed to powder and mingled with water, served as their constant food. During the short time he remained in England, Gulliver made a considerable profit by showing these animals to many persons of quality and others, and before beginning his second voyage he sold them for six hundred pounds. He also carried with him the gold given him by the Emperor of Blefuscu—fifty purses of two hundred sprugs each—together with the emperor's picture at full length and other rarities of that country. He gave two purses of two hundred sprugs each to Captain Biddle and promised him a cow and a sheep upon their arrival in England.

The Brief Interlude at Home

Gulliver's stay in England was remarkably short. He remained only two months with his wife and family, for his "insatiable desire of seeing foreign countries" would suffer him to continue no longer. Before departing, he left fifteen hundred pounds with his wife and settled her in a good house at Redriff. His remaining stock he carried with him, part in money and part in goods, in hopes of improving his fortune. His eldest uncle, John, had left him an estate in land near Epping of about thirty pounds a year, and he had a long lease of the "Black Bull" in Fetter Lane, which yielded him as much more, so that he was not in any danger of leaving his family upon the parish. His son Johnny, named after his uncle, was at the grammar school and described as a "towardly child," while his daughter Betty—who is now well married and has children—was then at her needlework. Gulliver took leave of his wife, boy, and girl with tears on both sides, and went on board the "Adventure," a merchant ship of three hundred tons bound for Surat under Captain John Nicholas of Liverpool, on June 20, 1702.

Narrative and Thematic Significance

The date April 13, 1702, functions as a structural pivot in Gulliver's Travels, closing the first part of the narrative and establishing a pattern of departure, adventure, return, and renewed restlessness that will characterize the entire work. The brevity of Gulliver's stay—only two months—underscores the compulsive nature of his traveling, a trait he himself acknowledges as a kind of fate. The return also introduces a recurring motif: the difficulty of readjustment to normal scale after prolonged exposure to the miniature world of Lilliput. Though less dramatic than the disorientation he will experience after Brobdingnag, this first homecoming already hints at the psychological transformations that travel has wrought. The practical success of his venture—the profit from showing his cattle, the financial security he leaves for his family—stands in ironic contrast to the political disillusionment he has just escaped, suggesting that the rewards of travel are material rather than moral. The date thus marks not an ending but a pause, a brief interval of domestic stability that the narrative itself cannot sustain.