Mayflower
From Freepedia
- For other uses, see Mayflower (disambiguation).
Image:MayflowerHarbor.jpg The Mayflower was the ship which transported the Pilgrim Fathers from Plymouth, England to "North Virginia" (in what was later to become the United States of America) in 1620, leaving Plymouth on September 6 and dropping anchor near Cape Cod on November 11.
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The ship
The ship Mayflower was used as a cargo ship trading between England and other European countries, principally France but also Norway, Germany and Spain. At least between 1609 and 1623 it was mastered by Christopher Jones, who was Captain on the trans-atlantic voyage, and based in Rotherhithe. He was buried in the graveyard of St Mary's Rotherhithe following his death in March 1623, and it is likely that the ship was broken up for scrap lumber there in the following year. The Mayflower Barn situated just outside the small 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. 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.
The voyage
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. After some reorganisation the voyage was made in the Mayflower alone. Their intended destination was a section of land in the area near the Hudson River. Forced off course by poor weather, the Mayflower arrived at Cape Cod after 65 days at sea. As a result of the delay, the settlers did not arrive until the onset of a harsh New England winter. Before disembarking, 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. Contrary to popular theory, the Pilgrims did not stop at Plymouth Rock looking for liquor, as they were devout and did not drink.
Mayflower 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 this Mayflower Descendants Chart at http://www.familyforest.com/Mayflower_Descendants.html
Mayflower in culture
The voyage and the ship later became famous, virtually an icon of a perilous one-way trip to a new life, and many different kinds of things have been named after it.
The Mayflower is the emblem of the English football club Plymouth Argyle F.C., who are known by the nickname of "The Pilgrims".
Jordans Farm and The Mayflower Barn
Situated on the edge of the Chiltern hills in the South Buckinghamshire countryside about midway between London and Oxford is the small village (and associated farmstead) of Jordans.
The name of the farm appears to date back into the late Middle Ages when some long-forgotten Jordan or Jourdain farmed the area. The known history of the farm beings in 1618 when Thomas Russell bought it. Part of the present farmhouse was already there, and Thomas Russell added on to it in 1624. And at the same time, he built a substantial new main barn with timbers from a ship called the "Mayflower" , purchased from a shipbreaker's yard in Rotherhithe. In the 1920's the antiquarian J Rendel Harris, famous for his discovery of the Syriac 'Odes of Soloman', concluded after meticulous research that the Barn was built with the timbers of the very same Mayflower that carried the Pilgrim Fathers from Plymouth to New England (there have been reported to have been as many as 37 "Mayflower"s plying the oceans at that time). This claim has been subject to much debate up to the present day. What is unquestionable that ship's timbers of that era were used for the construction- if you look into the roof beams of the old barn you can see the clear shape of a ship's keel. Further if you look closer, one of the beams bears the outline of the letter M and the middle beam of the section is cracked, as that on the "Mayflower" has been described as being.
In the interests of balance it should be noted that J Rendel Harris was a prominant Quaker and in the 1920's the farmstead of Jordans was undergoing an interesting social experiment. A group of Quakers had bought the Jordans farm in 1911. In 1919, they established a planned village to be built by Quakers and other conscientious objectors to war. The village was to be self-owning and self-supporting. They established Jordans Village Industries, which produced handmade furniture. The furniture was too expensive for the market, and the enterprise was quickly failing (which resulted in the company going broke in 1924). The newfound fame of Jordans as the location of the final resting place of the timbers of the "Mayflower" couldn't have been more opportune for the fledgeling community as an influx in tourists provided the group with a much needed kickstart in establishing the settlement.
Whether the story is true or not, and the appelation of the "Mayflower" barn is known locally to date back centuries, well before J Rendel Harris's investigations, the barn is a beautiful building situated in a tranquil setting, and today the well preserved structure is a major tourist attraction, receiving many visitors each year from all over the world and particularly from the Americas.
External links
- Mayflower II at Plimoth Plantation Museum
- Mayflower passengers from MayflowerHistory.com
- Mayflower history from MayflowerHistory.com
- Pilgrim Hall Museum of Plymouth, Massachusetts
- General Society of Mayflower Descendants
- The Mayflower And Her Log; Azel Ames, Project Gutenberg edition.
- The First Ships Discussion List Homepage
- The village of Jordans and the Mayflower today
