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Mayflower Factor the Survivors Who Wanted to Return with So, 400 Years Later: Does a Handful of Out- Him

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Mayflower Factor the Survivors Who Wanted to Return with So, 400 Years Later: Does a Handful of Out- Him The Mayf lower Factor How They Became Us, and Does It Still Matter? by Jerry Roberts his year, as we reach the quadricen- more “American” than anyone else, includ- sent back from the colony. As their part of tennial of the Mayflower’s arrival on ing the hundreds of thousands of peo- the bargain, the Leiden separatists would the shores of Massachusetts and the ple who had established themselves here invest their time and effort to produce introduction of the people we now long before Europeans “discovered” North these commodities. The financers were call the Pilgrims into the American narra- America. only risking their money—the settlers Ttive, it is a good time to take a look at this Pilgrims 1.1 would also be risking their lives. In order incredible story and how this one voyage The Mayflower story begins with a small to bolster their numbers to establish a more has impacted our nation and, indeed, our group of religious dissenters who had sep- viable colony, additional settlers, also eager world. Amidst all the hoopla, however, arated from the established Church of for a chance to better their lot in the New some might ask an obvious question: In a England and fled to the Netherlands to World, joined the venture. Collectively nation of rapidly evolving demographics worship freely. But after nine years of they are now known as the Pilgrims, not and diversified cultural identities, where self-exile in Leiden, they feared they were to be confused with the Puritans who came the melting pot has done a lot of melting losing their identity and decided to create to Dorchester by the thousands, beginning in the past 400 years, is the Mayflower their own settlement in the “New World,” in 1630, and established the Massachusetts story still actually relevant, and to whom? where they could maintain their English Bay Colony. We all came here from somewhere else. identity, but worship as they chose. To The company secured a patent to es- Whether our ancestors migrated from Asia achieve this goal, they would need permis- tablish a colony near the mouth of the twelve thousand years ago, disembarked at sion from the Crown, and a patent from Hudson River, at the northernmost end of Ellis Island, were transported on a slave the Virginia Company of London—and, the Virginia Colony, about 250 miles up ship against their will, landed at JFK air- of course, funding. With money provided the coast from the English settlement at port, walked across the Canadian or Mex- by a group of London-based investors Jamestown. While the King was not thrilled ican borders, or stepped ashore on the known as the “merchant adventurers,” they with religious dissenters (it was his church windswept beaches of New England in formed a joint stock company. The inves- they were rejecting, after all), he was eager 1620, every family has its own Mayflower tors would risk capital for the potential of to get more English settlements established story in one form or another. The Pilgrims financial reward from a monopoly on mar- in the Americas to counter the growing and their descendants, of course, are no ketable goods and materials that would be regional ambitions of the Dutch and others. ing ross ic C tlant ansA er’s Tr Mayf ow Plymouth Cape Cod Bay Speedwell Mayflower map by brian andrews d. 14 SEA HISTORY 171, SUMMER 2020 adobe stock image stock adobe The Voyage hopes of passing through Nantucket Sound, the United States Constitution, as one of The company purchased a small ship named the ship’s master and part owner, Christo- the three most important documents in Speedwell to transport the Leiden group pher Jones, decided to turn back and seek world history establishing self-government. back to England, where it would meet up protection in Cape Cod Bay. They anchored The desperate search for a site to start with the others and then head out across inside the tip of Cape Cod, near what is building their settlement involved several the Atlantic in tandem with a larger vessel, now Provincetown, Massachusetts, on the expeditions ashore using small boats, some- the Mayflower, which had been chartered 11th. Realizing they were now well outside times wading waist-deep in the cold water, for the crossing. TheSpeedwell would re- the jurisdiction of the Virginia Colony, the and some challenging encounters with the main with the Pilgrims, while the May- leaders drafted the Mayflower Compact local indigenous people. The fact that the flower would return to England. and it was signed by most of the adult males Pilgrims stole a Pamet family’s winter store The two ships set off from Southamp- on board. This document is now recog- of corn and disturbed two graves did not ton on 5 August 1620, but problems with nized, along with the Magna Carta and help matters any. the Speedwell forced them to turn back and land at Dartmouth. The two vessels set off again on 23 August, but the Speedwell con- tinued to have problems and forced the two ships to return—this time to Plymouth, England. At last, having written off the smaller ship, 102 passengers and approxi- mately thirty crewmen set sail aboard the Mayflower on 6 September. It was already dangerously late in the season, and a series of storms put the pas- sengers and crew through a grueling 66 days at sea. When at last they were in sight of the coast on 9 November, the ship was off Cape Cod, more than 230 miles north- east of their intended destination. After an attempt to sail through Pollock Rip in Signing the Mayflower Compact, 1620 painting by jean leon gerome ferris courtesy 1899, library of congress SEA HISTORY 171, SUMMER 2020 15 A promising site was eventually iden- as thousands of additional English settlers A Box of Bones tified on the western side of the bay, and began to pour into New England, life be- Plymouth, Massachusetts, is strewn with the Mayflower sailed there, dropping anchor came more and more difficult for the -in statues and monuments honoring the Pil- off Plymouth on 16 December. The process digenous population. In 1675 these con- grim legacy. The waterfront itself is domi- of building shelters ashore commenced flicting dynamics erupted into what the nated by the grand columned structure that immediately, but the effects of exposure English would call King Philip’s War. dwarfs Plymouth Rock within. Moored and exhaustion soon began to take their Casualties on both sides were staggering, nearby is the Mayflower II, a full-scale re- toll. During their first winter ashore, near- and it hastened the further degradation of production of the ship that brought 102 ly half of the passengers perished. Aboard an ancient way of life for the indigenous men, women and children to this shore in the Mayflower, the crew suffered the same peoples of New England and beyond. 1620. Under the stewardship of Plimoth 50% casualty rate. The surviving group While most Americans celebrate Thanks- Plantation museum, the ship has attracted comprised a number of new widows, wid- giving today as an extension of the Pilgrim thousands of visitors annually for the past owers, and orphans. More than half of the legacy, to others it is understandably a day sixty years, and it has just gone through a survivors were under sixteen. When the of mourning. nearly six-year, $10 million refit that will Mayflower departed for England on 5 April allow it to continue to do so. 1621, Captain Jones offered to take any of The Mayflower Factor the survivors who wanted to return with So, 400 years later: Does a handful of out- him. Yet, despite the casualties and suffer- casts, only half of whom even survived their ing, they all decided to stay. first three months ashore, really matter in The Pilgrims had landed in the heart a modern nation of more than 330 million of Patuxet, a region already populated by people? They do. Like pennies invested in large groups of indigenous Wampanoag a bank with compound interest, genera- people with their own millennia-old civi- tional mathematics can be staggering. To- lization. Tragically, the once-flourishing day, conservative estimates hold that more Wampanoag, on whose lands the Pilgrims than ten million Americans—know it or settled, had themselves been decimated by not, like it or not—are direct descendants illnesses carried across the ocean by earlier of one or more of the Mayflower Pilgrims. European explorers. The story of the Pil- Some have suggested the number could be grims’ interaction with the native people as high as 25–32 million! Within many of is far too complex to do it justice here, but these vast family trees are a surprising num- it is nevertheless a story worth exploring. ber of people who have helped shape our The Pilgrims were fortunate to receive crit- nation, indeed the world we live in today. ical assistance when they needed it the But what if things had worked out just a most, and built a positive relationship with little bit differently? What if just a few more, Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoag. But even one or two, had not made it through interactions with other tribes were not so that first winter. Would it matter now, four harmonious. In the decades that followed, centuries later? jerry roberts Memorial statue of Gov. William Bradford in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Bradford became one of the best known of all those involved with the Mayflower story. He joined the sep- aratist church as a teen and ended up as the Plymouth Colony’s long-term governor.
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