The Mayflower

I remember two things about visiting the Mayflower in Plymouth, Massachusetts forty years ago:  my dad had to bend over on the decks because the pilgrims were significantly shorter than us and my mom bought me a silver pin of the ship at the gift shop.  Here is the history of the famous ship.

The Mayflower was a Dutch cargo fluyt that weighed 180 tons and measured 110 feet long.  It had four decks (main, gun, cargo) and three masts.  Square-rigged and beak-bowed, it had castle-like structures at its fore and aft, making progress slow against the prevailing winds.  Hence, the trip from England to America took over two months to complete.

Master Christopher Jones planned out the route of the Mayflower.  The ship first disembarked in July of 1620 filled with 135 people, both passengers and crew.  Many of the passengers were Separatists, wanting to separate from the Church of England.  However, hired hands and indentured servants were also on board, including four young children (long before the British Home Children came to Canada).

The Mayflower met up with another ship, the Speedwell, which sprang a leak and was abandonned, its passengers joining those on the Mayflower.  In September 1620, the ship disembarked from Plymouth, England to sail to the New World.  Its cargo deck held cannon, shot and gunpowder, just in case pirates were lurking in the Atlantic.  Its cargo hold held live sheep, poultry, pigs and goats along with food and supplies.  Its captain navigated using a compass and kept time with an hourglass.

 
With the voyage taking longer than expected, the food supply grew low.  Rather than risking drinking the untreated water, most drank beer on board the ship (although that seems hard to believe in case of the Puritans on board).  To entertain themselves, passengers played cards like Nine Men's Morris. Winds were strong resulting in many cases of seasickness.  Miraculously, only two deaths were reported on the voyage.

The Pilgrims' planned destination was the Virginia Colony.  However, in November 1620, with the winter approaching, they decided to dock at Provincetown, Massachusetts on Cape Cod.  There, after stealing corn and getting in a skirmish with the Natives, they decided to flee.  In December, they reached Plymouth.  While still on board the ship, they signed the Mayflower Compact, a list of rules that they would follow in the new colony.

The first winter was cruel.  The Pilgrims stayed on board the ship since they did not have dwellings to live in yet.  In the closed quarters of the ship, scurvy, pneumonia and tuberculosis ran rampant. Half of the passengers and crew perished.

The following spring, the crew of the Mayflower returned to England, taking less than half the time thanks to the prevailing winds at their backs.  That fall, the Pilgrims, thankful for their bountiful harvest, celebrated the first Thanksgiving.  Three years later, the Mayflower was scrapped.

In 1956, a Mayflower II was built.  It sailed to America the following spring, following a similar route to that of the original ship.. The Mayflower II docked at Plymouth, Massachusetts where it became a floating museum.  In 1970, marking the 350th anniversary of the Pilgrim's landing, the ship was taken over by the Natives to protest their poor treatment.  The issue was resolved and the Mayflower II still floats at Plymouth Rock.

Mayflower II courtesy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayflower.

Plymouth Rock

"This rock has become an object of veneration in the United States.  I have seen bits and pieces of it carefully preserved in several towns in the Union.  Does this sufficiently show that all human power and greatness is in the soul of man?  Here is a stone in which the feet of a few outcasts pressed for an instant; and the stone becomes famous; it is treasured by a great nation; its very dust is shared as a relic."  (Alexis de Tocqueville, upon the occasion of his visit from France, 1834)

Plymouth Rock, on which 135 Pilgrims first landed in 1620, courtesy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_Rock.

Forty years ago, when my family visited Boston, we made the pilgrimage to Plymouth Rock.  Two things stood out in my seven-year-old mind:  the fact that my dad had to bend over when we explored the decks of the Mayflower and the bronze pilgrim figurine that my mom bought me at the gift shop. Here is the history of the great rock..

Plymouth, located on the Atlantic Ocean 45 miles south of Boston, is where the Pilgrims chose to land in 1620.  Alexis de Tocqueville called them outcasts as they were a group of separatists fleeing the persecution of the Church of England.  The group, numbering in the dozens, had first landed at Provincetown, Massachusetts on Cape Cod in November.  After stealing some corn, getting in a skirmish with the Natives and failing to find a good place to settle, they set off again.  

Henry Bacon's painting circa 1834 courtesy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_Rock.

On a blustery December day, they landed at Plymouth where they happened upon a giant rock which served as a natural dock.  They decided to call it Plymouth after the town that they had disembarked from in England.  Relieved to have reached land, grateful to have survived that first winter and thankful for God's bountiful harvest that first summer, the Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving the following November.  

Elder Faunce, in the "Story of the Pilgrim Fathers" (1841), confirmed that his father landed at the same rock in 1623 upon arriving from England.  In 1774, on the eve of the American Revolution, the giant rock was split in two, the top half remaining at the site, the bottom half being relocated to the town's meeting house in Plymouth.  Passersby would sometimes chip pieces off the stone as keepsakes.

The 1867 structure courtesy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_Rock.

The rock remained there for 50 years.  In 1834, it was relocated to Pilgrim Hall where a Victorian Canopy was built around it in 1867.  As in the past, tourists would sometimes steal pieces of the rock as souvenirs.

In 1880, the top half of the rock was re-attached to the bottom half of the rock at the Atlantic shoreline.  The 1620 date was carved into the rock at that time.  Estimated to weigh 20,000 pounds in 1620, the rock now measures about a third of its original size.  

While the rock has lost much of its weight, it has not lost its intrigue.  Nearly one million people flock to Plymouth each year to view the rock, a tad more than first landed on it almost 400 years ago.

The Parthenon-like portico circa 1970's, the way it would have looked when I visited on my Boston trip courtesy dreamstime.com.