The Mayflower Story

The Mayflower Story — page 3 — had taken a northern track to avoid pirates who preferred fairer weather and seas But Jones and his crew had fought westerly gales that blew against their course No ports had been available for repairs or provisions during the trek Passengers and crew had seen nothing but sea sky and clouds Many of the passengers had suffered the awful miseries of seasickness and others were ill with life threatening diseases A crewman had died as had one of the passengers A baby had been born For an ordinary English merchant ship of the 1600s the 66 day journey had Exploring the been a very long voyage Hudson The Mayflower's passengers originally Off Nantucket intended to settle at the mouth of the Hudson River They would not be the Two days earlier the Mayflower had first dropped first Europeans to reach that river In anchor in these same heavy seas It had missed its 1609 English sea captain Henry Hudson had explored what became known as the original destination the northern reaches of the Virginia Hudson Valley He was working for the Colony at the Hudson River by more than 200 miles Dutch East India Company a group of 320 km Instead of risking a wintry passage south merchants Sailing as far north as the site of Albany in present day New York to the Hudson however Jones had decided to land his Hudson claimed the river and the entire passengers where they landed and remain with them valley for the company until suitable sailing weather returned in the spring

The Mayflower Story — page 4 — Some of the 102 passengers were devoutly religious people They had come for the purpose of worshipping freely They were Separatists who had left the Church of England an act that in their time was against the law Others were English colonists who simply wanted to make a fresh start in the New World The Separatists knew this group as the Strangers Collectively the Mayflower passengers are commonly known as the Pilgrims Jones's decision to halt the Mayflower's journey at Cape Cod after the initial landing in North America was a fateful one It might have been a relief to the Separatists Virginia was still under the king's authority so they would have been subject to royal decrees The Separatists might still be persecuted for their religious beliefs Separatists Saints and Puritans Separatists was a term used during the 1600s though some considered it derogatory Members of this religious group knew themselves as Saints These colonists and the larger group known today as Pilgrims were not Puritans another group of devoutly religious New World settlers Unlike the Separatists Puritans remained members of the Church of England conforming to English law Their goal was to improve and purify the church by living closer to the tenets of early Christianity They sought to establish a better form of English Christianity in North America In 1630 ten years after the Separatists established Plymouth the Puritans landed at what became Salem and Charlestown and founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony The Pilgrims did not all agree on this destination however Landing at this remote spot and forming

The Mayflower Story — page 5 — An artist depicted some of the people from the Mayflower heading to shore in the New World It would have been a thrilling and nerve tracking experience Late to the Party The Mayflower was not the first European ship to reach New England European fishing boats had been sailing the waters off New England for centuries even before Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World in 1492 The Basques a people from northwestern Spain and part of France were renowned for their great hauls of cod Some people in Massachusetts believe a rumor that the Mayflower may have been a latecomer to their shores well behind the arrival of people from elsewhere in Europe The theory was eagerly taken up by the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and other prominent citizens of Boston Massachusetts in the 1800s For this reason Boston has a monument to Leif Ericsson a Viking explorer looking out over Commonwealth Avenue According to the monument Ericsson may have built a settlement in the area six centuries before the Pilgrims arrived Historians do not give the idea much attention because no physical or archival evidence has been found to support it a settlement on land for which they had no charter were not in their plan They wished to continue the journey to the region they had legally been approved to settle With land in sight they could surely hunt game or catch fish for food if needed and find fresh water during their journey south to the mouth of the Hudson River The crew of the Mayflower saw things differently They did not look kindly on the chore of ferrying emigrants to the New World The Pilgrims had baggage and equipment that claimed the space below decks and prevented the crew from storing and trading their own goods The sailors had a long winter ahead and would need to safeguard the provisions they had Whether the Pilgrims stayed in New England or Virginia did not matter to the sailors who did not relish any further

The Mayflower Story — page 6

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