Mayflower

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For other uses, see Mayflower (disambiguation).

Image:MayflowerHarbor.jpg The Mayflower was the ship which transported the Pilgrims from Plymouth, England to "North Virginia" (which later became part of the United States of America) in 1620, leaving Plymouth on September 6 and dropping anchor near Cape Cod on November 11 (both dates according to the Old Style or the Julian Calendar). This voyage followed and was inspired by the successful establishment of the first permanent English settlement, Jamestown, by the London Company of Virginia in 1607.

1 Ship
2 Voyage
3 Passengers
4 Popular culture
5 External links

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Ship

The ship Mayflower was used as a cargo ship trading (often in wine) between England and other European countries, principally France but also Norway, Germany and Spain. At least between 1609 and 1622 it was mastered by Christopher Jones, who was Captain on the transatlantic voyage, and based in Rotherhithe. He was buried in the graveyard of St. Mary's Church, Rotherhithe following his death in March 1622, and it is likely that the ship was broken up for scrap lumber there in the following year. The Mayflower Barn just outside the Quaker village of Jordans in Buckinghamshire, England, purports to be constructed from these timbers.

Details regarding the size and overall dimensions of the ship are unknown, but it has been estimated from its load weight and the usual size of 180-ton merchant ships in the period to be 90 – 110 feet in length and about 25 feet in width. (The size of a ship is measured, not by its own weight, but by burden (the amount the ship can carry). The term "ton," as used to measure the burden of a ship, derives from the word "tun," a large cask used for storing wine as it was being shipped.) Careful research went into designing a replica, the Mayflower II (launched on September 22, 1956), to make it as much like its namesake as possible.

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Voyage

Image:Southampton-MayflowerMemorial.jpg Initially the plan was for the voyage to be made in two vessels (the other being the smaller Speedwell). The first voyage of the ships departed Southampton, England on August 5 1620, but the Speedwell developed a leak and had to be refitted at Dartmouth. On the second attempt, the ships reached the Atlantic, but once again were forced to return, to Plymouth because of the Speedwell's leak. After some reorganisation the final 66-day voyage was made by the Mayflower alone. With the crowding of 102 passengers plus crew, each family was allotted very little space for personal belongings. At one point, the ship's main beam cracked and had to be repaired using a large iron screw. The Mayflower landed at Renews on the southern shore of the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland, where it picked up water and supplies from local fishing families before sailing on to Cape Cod. Their intended destination was a section of land in the area near the Hudson River. The ship, however, was forced off course by poor weather on the second half of the voyage. (The first half however was pleasant with nice weather.) As a result of the delay, the settlers did not arrive at the future site of Plymouth Colony until the onset of a harsh New England winter. They had failed to reach Virginia, where they had permission from the London Company to settle. To establish legal order outside of this jurisdiction, and to quell increasing strife within their ranks, the settlers wrote and signed the Mayflower Compact. On April 5, 1621 the Mayflower set sail from Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts on a return trip to England, arriving back on May 6, 1621.

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Passengers

The passengers on the Mayflower were the earliest permanent settlers in New England, and so later many members of society took great interest in tracing their ancestry back to one of these. See list of passengers on the Mayflower for a complete accounting. See also list of Mayflower passengers who died in the winter of 1620 - 1621. See some of the descendants of these Mayflower Pilgrims in the Mayflower Descendants Chart.

The Mayflower landed in an area that John Smith had mapped on called New England. The Mayflower had landed in a place called Plymouth.

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Popular culture

The voyage and the ship later became famous as an icon of a perilous one-way trip to a new life, and many different kinds of things have been named after it.