Mayflower (ship)

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"Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor" painting by William Halsall, 1882

The Mayflower was a ship. There are no actual pictures of the Mayflower but it is thought to have looked a lot like the famous painting that is shown here. The Mayflower is famous for bringing the first Europeans who were pilgrims and other settlers to an area that they named Plymouth colony. This area is in what is now the State of Massachusetts in the United States of America.

The Mayflower set sail from England in July 1620, but had to turn around twice because Speedwell, the ship it was traveling with, was leaking. The Mayflower finally left on September 6 of the same year, leaving the Speedwell behind. The ship carried 102 men, women and children, who lived in the dark, damp, cold cargo decks below the crew's quarters. Many of them became sick on the voyage.

After over two months at sea, the passengers arrived at Cape Cod on November 11, 1620. They tried to sail on to their original destination, which was called the Colony of Virginia but, due to bad weather, sickness, and a shortage of food, the Mayflower had to turn back toward Cape Cod.[1]

Since there were no laws where they landed, they wrote a document called the Mayflower Compact. This document established the rules by which the people would live and how they would treat each other. It was the first governing document of Plymouth Colony. The Mayflower Compact was created by the passengers who crossed the Atlantic on the ship, looking for the freedom to practice their religion according to their own beliefs in God. The Mayflower Compact was signed on 11 November 1620 (OS) by 41 of the ship's more than one hundred passengers.[2]

A few weeks later, they named where they landed, Plymouth Colony, and started to build their village near where a group of Wampanoag people had lived before (a sickness had killed most of them). They lived on the ship for a few more months, rowing to shore to build houses in the day, and returning to the ship at night. The weather turned very cold, and many people continued to get very sick from the cold and the wet. Scurvy and other diseases were among the diseases they suffered from. About half the people on the Mayflower died that first winter. In March 1621, there were enough houses for everyone to live on land.

The Mayflower set sail to return to England on April 5, 1621. The ship arrived there in May 1621. It was used very little after its return. In May 1624 the ship was old and needed many repairs. It was broken up and sold for scrap lumber.[3][4][5][6]

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References [change]

  1. ↑ Eugene Aubrey Stratton, Plymouth Colony: Its History and People, 1620-1691 (Salt Lake City:Ancestry Publishing, 1986), p. 413
  2. ↑ George Ernest Bowman, The Mayflower Compact and its signers, (Boston: Massachusetts Society of Mayflower Descendants, 1920). Photocopies of the 1622, 1646 and 1669 versions of the document pp. 7-19.
  3. ↑ "The Mayflower after the Pilgrims". MayflowerHistory.com. http://www.mayflowerhistory.com/History/mflower7.php. Retrieved 2012-02-19.
  4. ↑ Pezzi, Bryan (2000). Massachusetts. Weigl Publishers. ISBN 9781930954359. http://books.google.com/books?id=TBhW_Hee-98C&lpg=PA17&dq=mayflower%20scrap&pg=PA17#v=onepage&q&f=false.
  5. ↑ Philbrick, Nathan (2008). The Mayflower & the Pilgrims' New World. Putnam Juvenile. ISBN 978-0399247958. http://books.google.com/books?id=H0_P-q9GM_gC&lpg=PT101&pg=PT101#v=onepage&q&f=false.
  6. ↑ Johnson, Clint (2006). Colonial America And The American Revolution: The Best 25 Sites. ASDavis Media Group. ISBN 9780976601326. http://books.google.com/books?id=eyExLN1prkYC&lpg=PA37&dq=mayflower%20scrap&pg=PA37#v=onepage&q&f=false.

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