Ships That Made History · Episode 3
Mayflower
A little wine ship carries a hundred and two passengers across the Atlantic. A man overboard who wouldn't let go of the rope, a cracked beam and a great iron screw, a baby named Oceanus, the Mayflower Compact, Samoset's welcome, and a harvest feast that lasted three days.
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Carol The middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The fall of 1620. A storm is throwing a small wooden ship around like a toy.
Shannon And a young man named John Howland climbs up from below deck. Maybe he's seasick. Maybe he just needs air. And a wave rolls the ship, and throws him over the side.
Carol Into the ocean. In a storm.
Shannon Into the ocean. But as he goes under, his hand catches a rope trailing in the water. And he holds on.
Carol Welcome to Ships That Made History. One ship, one story.
Shannon Last time, the Victoria became the first ship to sail around the world. This time, a little merchant ship carries a hundred and two passengers to a new home.
Carol Episode three. Mayflower.
Carol So, first things first. What happened to John Howland?
Shannon He held onto that rope, even as it pulled him deep under the water, several fathoms down. The sailors hauled on it, got him up to the surface, and pulled him back aboard with a boat hook.
Carol He made it!
Shannon He made it. He was a little sick for a while afterward. But he went on to live a long life in America, until he was about eighty. He married, and had ten children.
Carol Ten!
Shannon Ten. And today, millions of Americans are descended from that one young man who wouldn't let go of a rope.
Carol So who were all these people, and why were they crossing the ocean?
Shannon The heart of the group was a congregation of English Christians who wanted to worship in their own simple way, outside the Church of England. In those days, that could get you fined or thrown in jail.
Carol So they left.
Shannon First, they moved to Holland, to a city called Leiden, where they could worship freely. They lived there for about twelve years.
Carol So why leave Holland?
Shannon Life was hard there, and their children were growing up more Dutch than English. So they decided to start over, in America, where they could build a whole community of their own.
Carol And they weren't the only ones on board.
Shannon No. About half the passengers were other people looking for a new start. Craftsmen, servants, families. William Bradford, one of the leaders, later wrote that they were pilgrims. People on a journey.
Carol And that's where we get the Pilgrims.
Shannon That's where we get the Pilgrims. Though it took nearly two hundred years for the name to really catch on.
Carol Now, they didn't start out with just the Mayflower.
Shannon No. There were supposed to be two ships. The Mayflower, and a smaller ship called the Speedwell.
Carol The Speedwell. That's a hopeful name.
Shannon (laughs) Very hopeful. And it didn't live up to it. They set out from Southampton in August 1620, and the Speedwell started leaking. They put into port to fix it. Set out again. And it leaked again.
Carol Oh no.
Shannon So in the end, they left the Speedwell behind, squeezed as many people as they could onto the Mayflower, and set out alone from Plymouth, England, on September 6th, 1620.
Carol Late in the year.
Shannon Very late in the year. Which meant fall storms on the Atlantic.
Carol So tell me about the Mayflower herself.
Shannon She was an ordinary merchant ship, about a hundred feet long. She usually carried cargo, like wine from France. Her captain, and one of her owners, was a man named Christopher Jones.
Carol So she wasn't built for passengers.
Shannon Not at all. The passengers lived in the space between the decks, below the main deck. It was low, dark, and crowded. A hundred and two people, with all their belongings, and even a couple of dogs.
Carol Dogs!
Shannon A big mastiff, and a little spaniel. And for more than two months, that cramped space was home.
Carol And the storms came.
Shannon They did. In the middle of the ocean, one storm was so bad that one of the main beams holding up the ship cracked and bent.
Carol That sounds serious.
Shannon It was very serious. The crew talked about turning back. But the passengers had brought a great iron screw with them from Holland, a kind of big jack. They used it to push the beam back into place, and the carpenter fixed it.
Carol Brought from Holland.
Shannon Nobody knows for sure. Maybe for a printing press, maybe for building houses. But it saved the ship.
Carol And there was a baby.
Shannon There was a baby. Elizabeth Hopkins gave birth to a little boy in the middle of the ocean. And his parents named him Oceanus.
Carol Oceanus! That's perfect.
Shannon Born at sea, named for the sea.
Carol So how long did the crossing take?
Shannon About two months. And on November 9th, 1620, at daybreak, they saw land.
Carol Where were they?
Shannon Cape Cod. In what's now Massachusetts. And when they finally got safely into the harbor, Bradford wrote that they fell on their knees and blessed the God of heaven, who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean.
Carol But Cape Cod wasn't where they meant to go.
Shannon No. They'd been aiming further south, near the mouth of the Hudson River. They turned south and tried. But they ran into dangerous shoals and roaring breakers, and they turned back to Cape Cod.
Carol And anchored.
Shannon And anchored, in the harbor at the tip of the Cape, where Provincetown is today.
Carol And before anyone went ashore, they did something important.
Shannon Something really important. They were outside the area they had permission to settle. And some of the passengers were saying that once they got ashore, nobody could tell them what to do.
Carol Uh oh.
Shannon So the leaders wrote out a short agreement. That they'd all join together into one community, and make just and equal laws for the good of everyone. And they'd all obey them.
Carol And they signed it.
Shannon Forty-one men signed it, right there on board the ship. On November 11th, 1620. We call it the Mayflower Compact.
Carol Government by agreement.
Shannon Exactly. People choosing to govern themselves. More than a hundred and fifty years later, that same idea would be at the heart of the United States.
Carol So where did they settle?
Shannon For a few weeks, small groups went out exploring the coast, while everyone else stayed on the ship. And in December, they found a good harbor across the bay, with fresh water, cleared fields, and a hill to build on.
Carol Plymouth.
Shannon Plymouth. The name was already on an English map of the coast, and it fit, since Plymouth was the town in England they'd sailed from. And there was another baby, too. Born on the Mayflower while she sat in Cape Cod harbor. A boy named Peregrine White.
Carol Peregrine.
Shannon It means pilgrim, or wanderer. He was the first English child born in New England.
Carol And that first winter?
Shannon It was a very hard first winter. Many people got sick, and many didn't live to see the spring. Through all of it, the Mayflower stayed in the harbor, and a lot of the families lived on board while the first houses went up.
Carol And then spring came.
Shannon And in March, something surprising happened. A man walked right into the little settlement and said, in English, Welcome, Englishmen!
Carol In English?
Shannon In English! His name was Samoset. He'd learned some English from fishermen who came up the coast. And a few days later, he came back with a friend named Squanto, who spoke English very well.
Carol And Squanto helped them.
Shannon Squanto stayed with them and taught them how to plant corn the local way, with a fish buried in each hill to feed the soil. He showed them where to fish, and he helped them talk with the local leader, Massasoit, the chief of the Wampanoag people.
Carol And they made peace.
Shannon They made a peace treaty that spring. And it lasted for more than fifty years.
Carol And the Mayflower?
Shannon On April 5th, 1621, the Mayflower raised her anchor and sailed home to England.
Carol And did anyone go back with her?
Shannon Not one of the passengers. After everything they'd been through, every single one of them chose to stay.
Carol That says a lot.
Shannon It does. The Mayflower made it home in just about a month, much faster than the trip over, with the wind behind her.
Carol And that fall?
Shannon That fall, after the first harvest, the colonists held a celebration. Massasoit came with about ninety of his men. They stayed for three days, and the Wampanoag brought five deer to share.
Carol The first Thanksgiving.
Shannon That's how we remember it. A harvest feast, shared by two peoples, giving thanks.
Carol So what happened to the Mayflower?
Shannon Nobody knows for sure. A few years later, she was described as being in ruins, and she was probably taken apart. There's an old story that her timbers ended up in a barn in the English countryside. It's still standing, and people still call it the Mayflower Barn.
Carol Is it true?
Shannon Nobody can prove it either way. But it's a lovely story.
Carol And in Plymouth?
Shannon In Plymouth, Massachusetts, you can climb aboard the Mayflower Two, a full-size replica that sailed across the Atlantic from England in 1957. And just down the waterfront, there's Plymouth Rock, under its own little stone shelter.
Carol Where they stepped ashore.
Shannon That's the tradition. And whether or not it's the exact spot, people have been coming to see it for more than two hundred years.
Carol That's the Mayflower. A leaky partner, a cracked beam, a man who held on to a rope, two babies, and a promise to govern themselves.
Shannon And a hundred and two people who never looked back.
Carol Next time, a ship sails to the South Seas to collect breadfruit, and ends up with one of the most famous mutinies in history.
Shannon The Bounty. That's next time, on Ships That Made History.