Mayflower

A group of independent English Christians from Nottinghamshire were being harassed by the authorities because of their religious beliefs. So they emigrated to Holland in The Netherlands where there was freedom of religion and set up a church there at Leiden.

Landing of the Pilgrims by Michele Felice Cornè, circa 1805.

The English separatists did not feel at home in Holland, so they borrowed £4,000 from a London company of investors. This was to subsidize a voyage across the Atlantic to take them to a plot of land they had obtained near the Hudson River in the New World.

The ship they hired for the voyage, The Mayflower, was tiny, with a deck just 90ft long. Even so, this small ship took 102 English Separatists to the New World, as well as its crew of 25-30.

Before being hired by the Pilgrims for their journey to America, the Mayflower was a merchant ship that transported wine, cognac and vinegar between France and Spain

John Alden, a cooper from Harwich in Essex, was asked to join the Mayflower company for the important task of caring for the Pilgrims' beer casks while on their New World journey.

The Mayflower departed from Southampton, England on its first attempt to reach the New World on August 5, 1620. It was forced to dock in Dartmouth when its companion ship, the Speedwell, sprung a leak. It eventually set sail from from Plymouth, England for North America on September 16, 1620.

Whilst sailing across the ocean on The Mayflower, the 78 men and 24 women occupied themselves by playing darts.The first baby born on the Mayflower during its voyage to the New World was named Oceanus Hopkins.
.

Cold food was the chief fare of the Mayflower passengers - hard biscuits, cheese, and salted beef or fish. An occasional hot dish could be cooked over an open charcoal fire in a box of sand. Without fresh provisions many passengers contracted scurvy in the 66-day voyage.

There were two dogs recorded on the crossing - a Mastiff and a Spaniel.

An indentured servant boy, John Howland, went overboard on The Mayflower and was miraculously saved. His descendants include: The Bush family, Franklin D. Roosevelt, writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Longfellow, Brigham Young and Joseph Smith, Chevy Chase and over 2 million others.

Because of bad weather and a shortage of beer, the Pilgrims were forced to land at Cape Cod on November 9, 1620, far away from the territory granted to them. They tried to sail on to the Hudson River, also within the New England grant area, but because of bad weather and a shortage of beer, they were forced to set anchor at Cape Cod two days later.

Exploratory parties were undertaken to find a suitable place for their permanent settlement, which they found at Plymouth Rock, in Plymouth, Massachusetts twenty-five miles (40 km) away). They landed at  Plymouth Rock on December 21, 1620.

Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor by William Halsall (1882)

The Mayflower lay in New Plymouth harbor through the winter of 1620–1. On April 5, 1621 with its empty hold ballasted with stones from the Plymouth Harbor shore, the ship set sail for its return.

By 1624, the Mayflower was no longer useful as a ship and although her subsequent fate is unknown, she was probably broken up about that time.

The Pilgrims established the second successful permanent English colony in the part of North America that later became the United States, after the Jamestown Colony.

Source Comptons Encyclopedia