Fergus Kelly
EXACTLY 400 years ago this month, the most unlikely and spectacularly ill-equipped pioneers began a journey that would ultimately immortalise them as the founders of the world’s most powerful nation. The first of them boarded a ship called the Mayflower at Rotherhithe on the River Thames in July 1620. Its eventual destination, a wilderness across a vast ocean which to them offered a Promised Land.
They were a band of religious idealists fleeing persecution for their beliefs. It would be another two centuries before they were first referred to as the Pilgrim Fathers. Today more than ten million Americans claim descent from them, including some very famous names.
The worldwide toll of coronavirus has forced the cancellation of planned celebrations in the US state of Massachusetts, site of the Plymouth Colony founded by the Mayflower Pilgrims.
“We are deeply disappointed about 2020,” says Lea Filson, of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants.
Worse still, the anniversary has not escaped the deep divisions wracking the modern-day US. Plymouth Rock, the monument marking the Mayflower landing site, was defaced with red spray paint earlier this year.
“Seeing this type of disrespect for the historic reminders of the Mayflower story is both sad and unsettling,” says Filson. “The outpouring of concern and anger over the incident has been a positive ending to a thoughtless gesture.”
Nor is it the first time the monument has been vandalised
– the word “lies” was painted on it in 2014. Yet there was nearly nothing to commemorate. It was a miracle that the settlers survived the first year – and thanks only to the indigenous inhabitants of the New World in which they landed. And the descendants of those First Nations people say it is important for their story to be remembered too.
“So often the story of the Mayflower is just about the boat.The Mayflower lands and the pilgrims are depicted as founders, not takers,” said Paula Peters, a representative of the Wampanoag people.
“The commemoration also gives us the opportunity to remind the world who we are and that we are still here.”
THE 102 passengers who, along with 30 crew, set sail on the Mayflower were not, as often labelled, Puritans (a term describing those who wished to purify the Anglican Church from within) but Separatists, who sought to break away completely – a dangerous proposition at a time when it was illegal not to attend a church service. Similar transgressions could be punished with fines, imprisonment and even execution for the leaders.
Most were from Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.At first they fled to comparatively tolerant Holland, where they stayed for more than a decade, but what they really sought was a fresh start.
The first colonies had been established across the Atlantic the previous century in land named Virginia, in honour of the virgin queen, Elizabeth I. The vast majority of a previous settlement there called Jamestown had died of starvation within six months. Undeterred, the Separatists hired two ships. The first, called the Speedwell, brought the pilgrims from Holland. It would rendezvous with the second, the Mayflower, after the latter had picked up its own human cargo from London.
Originally from Harwich, captain Christopher Jones, the 180-ton Mayflower had been a busy working ship for more than a decade, chiefly bringing in wine from France.
Jones’s best client was a wealthy merchant who lived opposite William Shakespeare’s
Globe Theatre,
Essex, like its
LANDING SITE MONUMENT: Visitors at Plymouth Rock and, left, defaced by red paint
though by 1620 the Bard had been dead for four years. Problems arose at once. The Speedwell kept springing leaks, forcing the initial expedition to return to Plymouth, where its passengers transferred to the crowded Mayflower.
The crossing did not get under way until September 1620, causing one passenger, William Bradford, to record worriedly in his journal: “We lie here waiting for as fair a wind as can blow… our victuals will be half eaten up, I think, before we go from the coast of England.”
Best-selling author Bill Bryson wrote of the pilgrims: “It would be difficult to imagine a group of people more ill-suited to a life in the wilderness. They packed as if they had misunderstood the purpose of the trip.
‘They found room for sundials and candle snuffers, a drum, a trumpet, and a complete history of Turkey. Yet they failed to bring a single cow or horse, plough or fishing line.”