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The voyage of the Mayflower More than 30 million people have ancestral links to the passengers and crew who sailed aboard the Mayflower from Plymouth UK to Plymouth Bay, Massachusetts 400 years ago this September
The Mayflower left Plymouth on September 16th, 1620 to travel to America. Sadly, events planned for September 2020 to commemorate the 400th anniversary have been postponed until the summer of 2021, due to the coronavirus pandemic. Nonetheless, September 16th still marks the anniversary of the departure of a group of intrepid ‘Pilgrims’ and other passengers, intent on creating a new start in what was known as the New World.
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The Mayflower eventually left these shores with about 30 crew members and 102 passengers on board; just under half of the passengers were English ‘Separatists’ or ‘Saints’ as they have been named, the rest were skilled tradespeople and pioneers, also known as ‘Strangers’. Drawn from Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire and Leiden in the Netherlands, the Separatists sought religious freedom from the Church of England. In 1608 a group of English Protestants left Scrooby in Nottinghamshire to establish themselves in Leiden in the Netherlands, where they could worship without fear of persecution. However, in time they found life there hard and with little chance of future economic return, they resolved to move again. Together with some of the remaining congregation in England, a core group decided to travel to Virginia in America where several colonies already existed. They were granted permission to establish a colony there and managed to persuade a group of London merchants to back their venture.
The Speedwell sailed from the Netherlands carrying the party from Leiden, aiming to meet up with the
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Mayflower in Southampton, before the two ships set sail together for America. However, by the time the Speedwell reached Southampton it was already beleaguered by a leak, which firstly caused the two ships to change course for Dartmouth for repairs, and then to abort the second attempt at the crossing, when the Speedwell started leaking badly 300 miles beyond Land’s End, forcing a return to Plymouth. With the Speedwell declared unseaworthy, some of the Saints dropped out, but the remainder joined the passengers on the Mayflower and set sail once again. The journey across the Atlantic took 66 days, hampered by severe winter storms due to the later start date. The grim crossing took its toll on the passengers, with one Stranger lost overboard, as well as a woman giving birth. The crew sighted Cape Cod on November 9th, 1620 and started to head south towards the Hudson River where the intended settlement location lay. But rough seas forced them back and they decided to stay at Cape Cod instead, anchoring at what is now Provincetown Harbor. Knowing they had no right to colonise this part of the country, the group decided to draw up a legal document stating their aims to work together to help the colony thrive and ‘combine ourselves together into a civill body politick’ to establish laws and enable fair government of the settlement.
Paula Peters, citizen of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Nation making a Wampan belt
The resulting Mayflower Compact was signed by 41 men on board the ship.
The colonists explored the area and eventually came upon a Native American village called Patuxet which had been abandoned when disease was introduced by earlier European colonists. On December 12th, 1620 the colonists arrived at Patuxet, creating the settlement which became modernday Plymouth, Massachusetts. The first winter was harsh and almost half of the passengers and crew died between December 1620 and the following summer.
The Pilgrims had settled on land which had been home to the Wampanoag tribe for 10,000 years. In the spring of 1621, two English-speaking members of the Wamponoag, Samoset and Tisquantum, showed the settlers how to plant corn, where to fish and hunt beaver, saving them from starvation. Eventually this led to an historic peace treaty between the Wampanoag chief Ousamequin and the Pilgrims. After an excellent harvest in their first autumn, the colonists celebrated with a three-day festival of prayer and invited the Wampanoag to join them for the feast – the first Thanksgiving.
Unfortunately, as more and more settlers arrived, tensions escalated between the colonists and the Native American tribes. There were frequent, violent outbreaks and then disease brought by the colonists decimated the Native Americans; by the 1630s, the Native Americans had become a minority population in this region, and in King Philip’s War in 1675 the Wampanoag were almost destroyed by a colonist army.
Compiled by Rosemary Best
For a full account of the Mayflower Story go to www.mayflower400uk.org or visit the ‘Mayflower 400: Legend and Legacy’ exhibition at The Box when it is able to open to the public.
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