Mayflower and Speedwell

Note: this post originally appeared November 24, 2009.

On August 15, 1620 two ships departed Southampton, England with more than 100 colonists -- Separatists resistant to the Church of England -- bound for an area near the Hudson River in North America. The two ships were Mayflower and Speedwell, and the colonists would come to be known as the Pilgrims.

The earliest records of Mayflower date to 1607. At that time the vessel was captained (and partly owned) by Christopher Jones, who would serve as captain on the Pilgrims' voyage, and was engaged mainly in wine trade between England and France, with frequent trips into the Baltic Sea to Norway. Mayflower, 100 feet long and 25 wide, and was a typical merchant ship of her day.

Speedwell had a somewhat more colorful history. Originally named Swiftsure, she was built in 1577 and took part in the English defeat of the Spanish Armada. She was renamed Speedwell in 1605. At sixty tons she was only a third the size of Mayflower.

The Speedwell developed a leak shortly after the Pilgrims' departure in August 1620 and both ships returned to England for repairs. More leaks developed on their second attempt two weeks later, so the ships returned again. All the colonists crowded onto Mayflower, which departed for the last time September 16th. Soon after, and suspected by the colonists all along, it was discovered the Speedwell's own crew had caused the leaks to escape fulfilling their one-year contracts.

Sixty days after leaving England, Mayflower arrived not at the Hudson River, but at Cape Cod. The incoming winter weather had made precise navigation difficult. Jones has been mocked for missing "Virginia" by hundreds of miles, but the term Virginia at that time applied to most of the British-claimed area of the eastern seaboard, not just to the US state we know today.

Two people died along the way, including Dorothy Bradford, wife of colony leader William, who fell overboard accidentally. A legend that she committed suicide dates from the mid-1860s. Two were also born, one en route, and one that winter as the colonists waited out the winter aboard ship. It was during this winter that more than half the remaining passengers died, leaving only 53 to go ashore in March to begin setting up their colony, called Plymouth (this was not the first active European settlement in North America; St. Augustine, Florida had been founded more than fifty years before). Mayflower left for England the following month, arriving back there in May.

Capt. Jones died in 1622. Records indicate that Mayflower was probably broken up for her wood around 1624, although some records suggest she was still afloat as late as 1629. This may be confusing two ships of the same name, as a second ship named Mayflower sailed back to Plymouth colony that year. A replica, Mayflower II, was built and sailed to the US in the mid-1950s, captained by Australian mariner and writer Alan Villiers.

A 1920 claim by a barn owner in Jordans, England that his barn was made with wood from Mayflower has been disproved, but has occasionally been cited as fact by some media, including National Geographic and the TV quiz show Jeopardy!

Perhaps the most accessible account of the Pilgrims early history in North America is humorist Sarah Vowell's The Wordy Shipmates. Vowell also has better scholarship than many high school history textbook writers: the Mayflower Pilgrims were Separatists, not Puritans. For a firsthand account see William Bradford's own Of Plymouth Plantation.

For more on the early exploration and settlement of North America, see my post on Amerigo Vespucci.

For more on the defeat of the Spanish Armada, see my review of The Pirate Queen.