Mayflower (ship)

The Mayflower was a merchant ship best known as the conveyance used by the Pilgrims who left England in 1620 and landed at Plymouth Rock, New England, where they established a colony. The ship was primarily used to trade wine and other cargo between European countries. Its single Atlantic crossing took place when the Mayflower was about twelve years old. It survived multiple shorter trips over the next few years before it was most likely sold for scrap and its lumber used in some form of construction.

Background

The Mayflower was a cargo ship. It probably measured 90 feet (27 meters) long by 24 feet (7 meters) wide and could carry 189 tons of cargo. Merchant ships of its era were square-riggers, meaning the main sails are supported on horizontal spars. The rigging is so named because the spars are perpendicular, or square, to the masts and keel, or the center line of the hull. No records exist as to the date or location of the Mayflower’s construction. Some references claim it was built in the port at Harwich, England. English merchant Christopher Jones and several partners purchased the three-masted ship about 1608.

The first record of its travels was a sailing to Trondheim, Norway, in 1609. Andrew Pawling hired Jones to carry goods from London to Norway, sell them, and buy fish, lumber, and tar in Norway. On the return sailing to London, the Mayflower was caught in a storm in the North Sea. To survive, the captain and crew had to throw most of Pawling’s goods overboard.

Jones’s future sailings were closer to home. The Mayflower carried cargoes of French wine, cognac, vinegar, and salt between London and Bordeaux, France. It occasionally traveled as far as Spain and Germany with cargo, most often wine.

Overview

A group of Separatists, who called themselves Saints and two centuries later were dubbed Pilgrims, left England in 1608 to seek religious freedom in Holland. They disagreed with both the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England. Life in Holland proved difficult, however, because the guilds did not allow the Separatists to work at their crafts and the less-constrictive Dutch lifestyle proved to be too tempting to young Separatists. They decided to move again, this time to a place without government interference, where they could keep their young people in check and focus on their faith. They decided upon North America, the so-called New World, and a group returned to England to make arrangements.

The Separatists raised the funds they needed and gained permission from the Virginia Company to establish a settlement near the Hudson River in modern New York. They also received permission from the king to leave the Church of England, as long as they did not cause trouble. The Separatists remaining in Holland sailed to England aboard a ship called the Speedwell to join the rest of the group, which was to sail on the Mayflower. They waited in port for a week while multiple leaks on the Speedwell were repaired.

About forty Separatists and a larger group of secular colonists left Southampton, England, in August 1620 aboard the Mayflower and the Speedwell. Both ships soon turned back because the Speedwell was taking on water, and repairs were made in Dartmouth port. A second attempt ended 300 miles from shore when the Speedwell again leaked, and the ships returned to shore. After six weeks with no progress, many colonists were frustrated and changed their minds about leaving. Those who still wished to continue and their belongings were transferred to the Mayflower. Under command of Captain Christopher Jones, the journey to America resumed on September 6.

Jones had never before sailed to the Americas, but several members of the crew had. A typical crew for a merchant ship of this size numbered about twenty or thirty. Sailing a square-rigged ship was a difficult task, requiring multiple members of the crew to haul lines and adjust sails. A three-masted ship could have ten sails, but each served different purposes so would not all be unfurled at once. Square-rigged ships sailed best when the wind blew from behind at an angle. The crew would use lines called braces to adjust the angle of the sails to best take advantage of the wind. These ships could sail sixty degrees into the wind, so often they moved forward by using zig-zag maneuvers.

The sixty-six-day crossing of the Atlantic Ocean was rough and unpleasant. The delays in port caused the Mayflower to cross the ocean during storm season, and many passengers were seasick. At times the weather was so rough that the crew had to haul in all the sails to avoid having them tear, and allowed the ship to drift with the storms. When they landed at Cape Cod, the settlers discovered they were off course, well north of the area the Virginia Company had permitted them to settle. They first attempted to sail south to the Hudson River, but the Mayflower almost sank when it hit rough weather and the crew turned back, determined to settle in New England after all. They chose to build in modern Plymouth, Massachusetts, near an abandoned Wampanoag village.

Because this was now an unchartered settlement, forty-one of the settlers wrote and signed a document, the Mayflower Compact. In it they established their plan to govern by elected officials and a set of laws, and swore allegiance to the king of England.

The colonists began building homes; however, many were sick and lived on the Mayflower for the first winter. Just half the crew and fifty-three of the original 102 passengers survived the cold, crowded, diseased conditions aboard ship. The settlers moved ashore in the spring. With his surviving crew recovering from illness, Jones sailed the Mayflower back to England on April 5, 1621.

The 1620–1621 sailing was the Mayflower’s only known transatlantic journey. Jones took it for several more trading trips around Europe before he died in 1622. When the ship was appraised in 1624 for probate purposes, it was described as being in ruins and assigned almost no value.

The fate of the Mayflower is unknown. Some sources say it was sold for scrap lumber, some of which was used to build a barn in Jordans, Buckinghamshire, England.

A replica of the ship was built in England and sailed to Massachusetts in 1957 in fifty-three days. England gave the ship to the United States as a gift of friendship. The Mayflower II was scheduled to sail to Boston and other events in 2020 in observance of the four-hundredth anniversary of the Pilgrims’ journey.

Bibliography

“A Brief History of the Mayflower.” Mayflower 400, www.mayflower400uk.org/about/brief-history-of-the-mayflower/. Accessed 29 Oct. 2019.

Dempsey, Annaliese. “Rigged to Blow: Sailing a Square-Rigged Vessel.” Queen Anne’s Revenge Project, 26 Oct. 2017, https://www.qaronline.org/blog/2017-10-26/sailing-a-ship. Accessed 29 Oct. 2019.

Gavin, Christopher. “The Mayflower II Is Coming to Boston in 2020. Here’s What We Know So Far.” Boston Globe, 9 July 2019, www.boston.com/news/history/2019/07/08/mayflower-ii-boston-2020. Accessed 29 Oct. 2019.

“At the Helm of History: The Story of the Mayflower’s Master.” Mayflower 400, 2019, mayflower400uk.org/education/who-were-the-pilgrims/2019/july/christopher-jones/. Accessed 29 Oct. 2019.

“The Mayflower.” History, 13 Sept. 2019, www.history.com/topics/colonial-america/mayflower. Accessed 29 Oct. 2019.

“The Mayflower.” Mayflower History, mayflowerhistory.com/history-of-the-mayflower. Accessed 29 Oct. 2019.

“Mayflower.” Plimoth Plantation, 2019, www.plimoth.org/what-see-do/mayflower. Accessed 29 Oct. 2019.

“Mayflower and Mayflower Compact.” Plimoth Plantation, 2019, www.plimoth.org/learn/just-kids/homework-help/mayflower-and-mayflower-compact. Accessed 29 Oct. 2019.

“The Mayflower and Plymouth Colony.” Independence Hall Association, www.ushistory.org/us/3a.asp. Accessed 29 Oct. 2019.

“The Mayflower Story.” Mayflower 400, www.mayflower400uk.org/education/the-mayflower-story/. Accessed 29 Oct. 2019.