The Mayflower: What Was Life Like At Sea?
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What challenges did the Mayflower face before departure?
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November 11th, 1620. The Mayflower arrives off the shores of Cape Cod, anchoring in what is today Provincetown Harbor in Massachusetts. For the next five weeks, it will remain anchored here as search parties are dispatched ashore to scout sites for settlement all along the Cape. They'll finally choose a location about 30 miles across the bay, a place previously mapped by an earlier English expedition, and coincidentally, named for the harbor town these pilgrims had seen before leaving England for the last time, Plymouth. Plymouth Hello, and nice you're here. We're American History Hit, and I'm Don Wildman. Happy holidays. This week, in the Thanksgiving spirit, we are covering the voyage of the Pilgrims, from England to the Dutch Netherlands, and finally to the windswept shores of New England, where in 1620, they settled and struggled and somehow made a home.
And according to popular legend, dined festively in the company of Native American friends, everyone celebrating a plentiful harvest of corn and ample poultry, anticipating snuggly times ahead in winter, and yeah, that was the story doled out to us as kids. The truer history of the pilgrim voyage to America is a lot more involved. In our previous episode, we covered the first half of the story, where in 1608, a persecuted people left England, crossed the English Channel to Amsterdam, settled in Leiden. A decade later, many of those folks opted to uproot and make the greater journey to the promised land of the New World. So now, as we rejoin our pilgrim's progress, picture a scene few today would have the guts to try.
Crossing an ocean in a vessel only 100 feet in length, designed to carry cargo, not passengers, and there are more than 120 of you on board, including the crew. Rough passage, no matter what the weather. We are in Plymouth, England, as we begin the story, leaving the harbour, the wind filling the sails. And here to helm this historical voyage is once more Anna Scott, researcher from the University of Lincoln in England. She has written extensively on the Pilgrims and features prominently in a history hit project, the TV documentary Mayflower 400, the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower voyage. Anna, welcome back. Part two, are you ready? Absolutely. So where we are right now is we've arrived in Southampton. It's the summer of 1620, around July. And this group of pilgrims is going to become part of an economic enterprise, which is run by a group called the Merchant Adventurers, which is an English firm. And they are basically hiring this group of religious sojourners to become laborers in this company that will land in the New World.
These are early days. I mean, there's not too much happening in this land afar. Plenty for the indigenous people, of course, but not this new European crowd that's arriving. We basically got Jamestown and St. Augustine and a few other things have been tried, but that's about it. So they're going to go off into the great unknown. First, they start with two ships. Let's talk about how that happens.
Of course. So we all have heard of the Mayflower and the second ship was called the Speedwell. And we're going to hear about whether or not it lived up to its name. But you might be able to guess for yourself because obviously it's not one of the ships that anybody's ever heard of. Yeah, absolutely. So on these two ships are in Southampton and the separatist group, the Pilgrims, the Saints, all of these different names have been used for that group. They are on the Speedwell. That's the ship that they've bought for this voyage. So they've invested by buying themselves a ship Selling their homes in the places that they originally came from. They've come from Leiden in Holland and originally they lived in England in rural parts of Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire. So each time they've moved on, they've had to sell everything and take with them what they can carry.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What challenges did the Mayflower face before departure?
0:02–7:19
2
How did the Speedwell fail the Pilgrims?
7:19–15:25
3
What were the living conditions like on the Mayflower?
15:25–26:27
4
Who were the key figures aboard the Mayflower?
26:27–31:34
5
What was the relationship between the Pilgrims and the crew?
31:34–37:52
6
How did the Pilgrims cope with the hardships at sea?
37:52–38:49