A TOAST TO PLYMOUTH
COVID-19 crushes Mayflower party, but city set to fete epic voyage
We know there are 30 million Mayflower descendants around the world, with 10 million in the U.S. And of course that means there are 20 million elsewhere, including Canada.
Mark Howell, marketing director for Mayflower400UK.
It was a party 400 years in the making. But like the “great sickness” that bedevilled many of the brave men, women and children who set out for the New World on-board the Mayflower, a persistent pestilence had other ideas.
Planners in Plymouth, England, watched in dismay last spring as the COVID-19 pandemic laid waste to planned 400th anniversary celebrations of that epic voyage. Events were postponed or scuppered outright as it became clear the plague was not going away quietly.
In many ways, it was a chilling echo of that day on Sept. 16, 1620, when a cramped merchant vessel carrying 102 migrants and roughly 30 crew left the port city in southwestern England for a 66day, 2,800-nautical mile journey across the “vast and furious ocean” to a new life.
With its arrival in November 1620 on the shores of what is now the United States, the Mayflower — which would typically haul wine, timber, tar and herring — disgorged a sickly band of pilgrims seeking religious and economic freedom.
Along the way, they would help plant the seeds of American democracy, foster a tradition of Thanksgiving Day feasts — leaving millions of nervous turkeys in their wake — and sire more than 30 million progeny.
Last year was to have been the “world's biggest family reunion” as Mayflower descendants from every corner of the world celebrated in sites throughout Plymouth and elsewhere in the U.K. — the culmination of six years of preparation.
That had to be scaled back massively because of the health crisis, but organizers are promising a “spectacular” grand finale this July — the Four Nations Commemoration Ceremony — as restrictions are eased across Britain and beyond.
And while the Mayflower may seem a quintessentially American story, organizers in Britain said interest among Canadians is growing.
“We know there are 30 million Mayflower descendants around the world, with 10 million in the U.S.,” Mark Howell, marketing director of the Mayflower400UK organizing committee, said. “And of course that means there are 20 million elsewhere, including Canada.”
Much as it has derailed plans and claimed lives today, a mysterious illness known as the “great sickness” would cut a deadly swath through those who made the perilous journey 400 years ago. Indeed, only half of those who set sail from Plymouth would survive the journey and the brutal first winter in what became the state of Massachusetts. Of those who did, the sight of Indigenous corpses scattered amid their new home was a ghastly reminder of the deadly epidemics wrought by European exploration.
But the Pilgrims persevered and within 10 years a “prosperously expanding” colony flowered on the eastern seaboard. Among its famous ancestors: Ashley Judd, Clint Eastwood, George W. Bush, Bing Crosby, Richard Gere and Marilyn Monroe.
Though the Pilgrims — who were divided into religious separatists, or “Saints,” and economic migrants, the “Strangers” — are also linked with the English Midlands and the Netherlands, it is Plymouth, their last port of call, with which they are indelibly bound. It was here the weary emigrants, desperate to leave the cramped Mayflower after a succession of false starts, spent several days being “kindly entertained” among the bars and bakeries of the Barbican quarter.
Thronged with sailors and explorers, the cobbled streets of the Barbican and Sutton Harbour embraced the emigrants, though fishermen freshly returned from the cod banks off Newfoundland warned darkly against crossing the Atlantic in late September. Sympathetic to the cause of religious freedom — and long a centre for traders, adventurers and political agitators
— Plymouth was cosmopolitan and globalized well before its time.
Many landmarks from that era remain among the 200-plus Tudor and Jacobean heritage structures in Barbican's warren of lanes, including Elizabethan House and Gardens; Black Friars, the oldest working gin distillery in England; and Jacka's Bakery, which provided hardtack (a type of biscuit) for the ship's galley.
Nearby is the poignant Mayflower Steps memorial and Mayflower Museum, which tells the story of the migration over three floors. Pick up a copy of the 1620 passenger list from the gift shop. You might spot a distant cousin.
For food options, nothing tops an open-air North Atlantic burger at Cap'n Jaspers snack stand. Stare down thieving gulls while admiring the smart flats and cafés breathing new life into Plymouth's oldest neighbourhood.
History buffs should stagger over to the Minerva Inn on Looe Street. Serving punters since 1540, the city's oldest pub is rife with ghostly tales of levitating spoons, jukeboxes playing unbidden and spectral prostitutes lurking under the dartboard. Sir Francis Drake lived a few doors away.
To the west of the Barbican is The Hoe, the green expanse overlooking Plymouth Sound where Sir Francis is said to have merrily continued his game of lawn bowling as the Spanish Armada advanced up the English Channel in 1588. More prosaically, it's said he was merely waiting out bad weather. A statue pays tribute.
Smeaton's Tower, the Naval War Memorial and the “Beatle Bums” — where the band posed for a 1960s photo — also draw visitors, while the art deco Tinside Lido, an outdoor salt water pool, teems with sunbathers and swimmers. The Royal William Yard — a former naval supply depot refashioned as galleries, shops and bars — and the trails of Mount Edgcumbe country park are short ferry rides away.
Plymouth's downtown was bombarded by the Nazis, and its postwar pedestrianized replacement much derided through the years. But the 1960s stores and offices clad in Portland stone have been scrubbed, revived and re-evaluated and are now “as much part of the city's rich history as the Armada and the departure of the Pilgrim Fathers,” The Guardian notes.
Mayflower “family” or not, there are plenty of reasons to raise a toast to Plymouth. As one of the ship's most distinguished voyagers, William Bradford, wrote: “As one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many, yea in some sort to the whole nation.”
Editor's note: While we have missed the opportunity to travel, being vaccinated may not be your ticket to ride. There are still risks associated with it. Consult federal and provincial websites for safety info as well as your destination country before planning your trip.