Mayflower voyage

The Mayflower arrived in Southampton, England, to rendezvous with the Speedwell and to pick up supplies and additional passengers. Among the passengers to join the group in Southampton were several Pilgrims including William Brewster, who had been in hiding for the better part of a year, and a group of passengers known to the Pilgrims as "The Strangers". This group was largely made up of passengers recruited by the Merchant Adventurers to provide governance for the colony as well as additional hands to work for the colony's ventures. Among the Strangers were Myles Standish, who would be the colony's military leader, Christopher Martin, who had been designated by the Merchant Adventurers to act as Governor for the duration of the trans-Atlantic trip, and Stephen Hopkins, a veteran of a failed colonial venture that may have been the inspiration for Shakespeare's The Tempest.[9]


"The Embarkation of the Pilgrims from Delfthaven in Holland" (1844) by Robert Walter Weir
The departure of the Mayflower and Speedwell for America was beset by delays. Further disagreements with the Merchant Adventurers held the departure up in Southampton. A total of 120 passengers, 90 on the Mayflower and 30 on the Speedwell, finally departed on August 15.[10] Leaving Southampton, the Speedwell experienced significant leakage, which required the ships to immediately put in at Dartmouth. After repairs were completed and a further delay ensued awaiting favorable winds, the two ships made it only two hundred miles beyond Land's End before another major leak in the Speedwell forced the expedition to return again to England, this time to the port of Plymouth. The Speedwell was determined to be unseaworthy; some passengers abandoned their attempt to emigrate, while others joined the Mayflower, crowding the already heavily burdened ship. Later, it was speculated that the master of the Speedwell had intentionally sabotaged his ship to avoid having to make the treacherous trans-Atlantic voyage.[11]
The Mayflower, carrying 102 settlers, left Plymouth on September 6, 1620, without her sister ship the Speedwell, and sailed for the New World with a land patent allowing them to settle specifically at the mouth of the Hudson River. Of the seventy adult passengers on the Mayflower, only twenty-seven adults were Pilgrims. Forty-three of the adult passengers the Pilgrims called "Strangers." The forty-three strangers had no religious interest in the colony. The Strangers were personal servants, indentured servants, or adventurous pioneers. Their goal was to seek their fortune in the New World, not to find religious freedom.
The voyage took almost two months as it was drawn out by strong westerly winds and by the Gulf Stream. Land was sighted on November 9 off the coast of Cape Cod. The Mayflower made an attempt to sail south to the designated landing site at the mouth of the Hudson but ran into trouble in the region of Pollack Rip, a shallow area of shoals between Cape Cod and Nantucket Island. With winter approaching and provisions running dangerously low, the passengers decided to return north and abandon their original landing plans.[12]
The location in Cape Cod Bay settled by the Plymouth Colony was outside the territory of the London Company, which had granted its patent. The northern coastal territory had been granted to the Plymouth Company, but this patent fell into disuse after the failure of the Popham Colony. It was reorganized under a sea-to-sea charter under the Plymouth Council for New England. The actual Plymouth Colony would obtain land patents from the Plymouth Council in 1621 and in 1630, but it was governed independently from the Council under the Mayflower Compact.
[edit]Prior exploration and settlements


Title page of Captain John Smith's 1616 work A Description of New England, the first text to use the name "New Plymouth" to describe the site of the future colony
The Pilgrims were not the first people in the area. Besides the Native American tribes native to the area, there had been nearly a century of exploration, fishing, and settlement by Europeans. John Cabot's discovery of Newfoundland in 1497 had laid the foundation for the extensive English claims over the east coast of North America.[13] One of the earliest maps of New England, produced c. 1540 by cartographer Giacomo Gastaldi, erroneously identified Cape Breton with the Narragansett Bay; the resulting map completely omits most of the New England coast.[14] European fishermen had been plying the waters off the New England coast for much of the 16th and 17th centuries.
Frenchman Samuel de Champlain had explored the area extensively in 1605. He had specifically explored Plymouth Harbor, which he called "Port St. Louis", and made an extensive and detailed map of it and the surrounding lands. Patuxet, the native village upon which the town of Plymouth would soon be built, was shown by Champlain as a thriving settlement.[15] However, in 1617–1619, before the arrival of the Mayflower, smallpox and other diseases brought by English fishermen to the area had completely wiped out 90% of the Native Americans along the Massachusetts coast, including Patuxet.[16]
Popham Colony, also known as Fort St. George, was organized by the Plymouth Company (unrelated to Plymouth Colony) and founded in 1607. It was settled on the coast of Maine and was beset by internal political struggles as well as sickness and weather problems. It was abandoned in 1608.[17]
Captain John Smith of Jamestown fame had explored the area in 1614 and is credited with naming the region of New England. He named many locations using approximations of Native American words. The future site of the Pilgrim's first settlement was originally named "Accomack" by Smith. In consultation with Prince Charles, son of King James, Smith changed "Accomack" to New Plymouth. A map published in his 1616 work A Description of New England clearly shows the site of the future Pilgrim settlement as named "New Plimouth".[18]
In the Mayflower settlers' first explorations of Cape Cod, they came across evidence that Europeans had previously spent extensive time there. They discovered remains of a European fort and uncovered a grave that contained the remains of both an adult European male and a Native American child.[19]