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- 20"long x
4" W x 18" high
This Mayflower tall ship
requires hundreds of hours
to build from scratch (not
from a model kit) by our
master artisans.
- Our
Mayflower model ship is made
with plank on frame
construction (a painstaking
process where each
individual plank is added to
the hull one at a time).
- The
Mayflower Pilgrims ship is
built with rare, high
quality woods such as
cherry, apamate, birch and
rosewood.
- Larger
version available:
Mayflower 28". The
larger version is higher
quality and has more deck
details. Perfect for any
model ship enthusiast.
- The
accurate model rests
perfectly on a scale wood
base.
- To build
this ship, extensive
research was done using
various sources such as
museums, drawings, copies of
original plans and photos of
the actual ship.
Visit our
Frequently
Asked Questions or call with
questions.
History
The Mayflower
was the famous ship that
transported the English
Separatists, better known as the
Pilgrims, from Southampton,
England, to Plymouth,
Massachusetts (which would
become the capital of Plymouth
Colony), in 1620.
The vessel left England on
September 6, and after a
grueling 66-day journey marked
by disease, the ship dropped
anchor inside the hook tip of
Cape Cod (Provincetown Harbor)
on November 11 (dates in Old
Style, Julian Calendar;
according to the New Style
Gregorian Calendar, the
corresponding dates are
September 16 and November 21).
The Mayflower originally was
destined for the mouth of the
Hudson River, near present-day
New York City, at the northern
edge of England's Virginia
colony, which itself was
established with the 1607
Jamestown Settlement. However,
the Mayflower went off course as
the winter approached, and
remained in Cape Cod Bay (mapped
in 1602 by Gosnold).
On March 21, 1621, all surviving
passengers, who had inhabited
the ship during the winter,
moved ashore at Plymouth, and on
April 5, the Mayflower, a
privately commissioned vessel,
returned to England.
In 1623, a year after the death
of captain Christopher Jones,
the Mayflower was most likely
dismantled for scrap lumber in
Rotherhithe, London.
Ship
The Mayflower was used primarily
as a cargo ship, involved in
active trade of goods (often
wine) between England and other
European countries, (principally
France, but also Norway,
Germany, and Spain). At least
between 1609 and 1622, it was
mastered by Christopher Jones,
who would command the ship on
the famous transatlantic voyage,
and based in Rotherhithe,
London, England. After the
famous voyage of the Mayflower,
the ship returned to England,
likely dismantled for scrap
lumber in Rotherhithe in 1623,
only a year after Jones's death
in March 1622. The Mayflower
Barn, just outside the Quaker
village of Jordans, in
Buckinghamshire, England, is
said to be built from these
timbers.
Details of the ship's dimensions
are unknown; but estimates based
on its load weight and the
typical size of 180-ton merchant
ships of its day suggest an
estimated length of 90–110 feet
(27.4–33.5 m) and a width of
about 25 feet (7.6 m). The ship
was manned by a crew of 25-30.
Replica
Careful research went into
designing a replica, the
Mayflower II (launched September
22, 1956), to resemble its
namesake as closely as possible.
This vessel is now part of the
Plymouth Plantation living
museum, near Plymouth,
Massachusetts.
Pilgrims' voyage
Initially, the plan was for the
voyage to be made in two
vessels, the other being the
smaller Speedwell. The first
voyage of the ships departed
Southampton, England, on August
5, 1620, but the Speedwell
developed a leak, and had to be
refitted at Dartmouth.
On the second attempt, the ships
reached the Atlantic Ocean but
again were forced to return to
Plymouth because of the
Speedwell's leak.
It would later be revealed that
there was in fact nothing wrong
with the Speedwell. The crew had
sabotaged it in order to escape
the year-long commitment of
their contract.
After reorganization, the final
sixty-six day voyage was made by
the Mayflower alone, leaving
from a site near to the
Mayflower Steps in Plymouth,
England on September 6. With 102
passengers plus crew, each
family was allotted a very
confined amount of space for
personal belongings. The
Mayflower stopped of at Newlyn
in Cornwall to take on water.
The ship probably had a crew of
twenty-five to thirty, along
with other hired personnel;
however, only the names of five
are known, including John Alden.
William Bradford, who penned our
only account of the Mayflower
voyage, wrote that John Alden
"was hired for a cooper
[barrel-maker], at
South-Hampton, where the ship
visited; and being a hopeful
young man, was much desired, but
left to his own liking to go or
stay when he came here; but he
stayed, and married here."
The intended destination was an
area near the Hudson River, in
"North Virginia". However the
ship was forced far off-course
by inclement weather and drifted
well north of the intended
Virginia settlement. As a result
of the delay, the settlers did
not arrive in Cape Cod till the
onset of a harsh New England
winter. The settlers ultimately
failed to reach Virginia where
they had already obtained
permission from the London
Company to settle.
To establish legal order and to
quell increasing strife within
the ranks, the settlers wrote
and signed the Mayflower Compact
after the ship dropped anchor at
the tip of Cape Cod on November
11, in what is now Provincetown
Harbor.
The settlers, upon initially
setting anchor, explored the
snow-covered area and discovered
an empty Native American
village. The curious settlers
dug up some artificially-made
mounds, some of which stored
corn while others were burial
sites. The settlers stole the
corn and looted and desecrated
the graves, sparking friction
with the locals. They moved down
the coast to what is now
Eastham, and explored the area
of Cape Cod for several weeks,
looting and stealing as they
went. They decided to relocate
to Plymouth after a difficult
encounter with the local native
Americans, the Nausets, at First
Encounter Beach, in December
1620.
During the winter the passengers
remained on board the
'Mayflower', suffering an
outbreak of a contagious disease
described as a mixture of
scurvy, pneumonia and
tuberculosis. When it ended,
there were only 53 persons still
alive, half of the passengers
and half of the crew. In spring,
they built huts ashore, and on
March 21, 1621, the surviving
passengers left the Mayflower.
On April 5, 1621, the Mayflower
set sail from Plymouth to return
to England, where she arrived on
May 6, 1621.
Passengers
The 102 passengers on the
Mayflower were the earliest
permanent European settlers in
New England. (The Jamestown
settlement was the first English
settlement in what would become
the United States.) Some of
their descendants have taken
great interest in tracing their
ancestry back to one or more of
these Pilgrims. Throughout the
winter, the passengers spent
time ashore preparing home sites
and searching for food but
partly remained based aboard the
Mayflower. Only about half of
the settlers would still be
alive when the Mayflower left in
the spring. Governor Bradford
noted that about half the
sailors died as well.
Second Mayflower
A second ship called the
Mayflower made a voyage from
London to Plymouth Colony in
1629 carrying thirty-five
passengers, many from Leiden.
This was not the same ship that
made the original voyage with
the first settlers. This voyage
began in May and reached
Plymouth in August. This ship
also made the crossing from
England to America in 1630,
1633, 1634, and 1639. It
attempted the trip again in
1641, departing London in
October of that year, John Cole,
master, with 140 passengers for
Virginia, but it never arrived.
On October 18, 1642 a deposition
was made in England regarding
the accident.
Mayflower II
After World War II, an effort
began to reenact the voyage of
the Mayflower. With cooperation
between Project Mayflower and
Plymouth Plantation, an accurate
replica of the original
(designed by naval architect
William A. Baker) was launched
in 1956 from Devon, England, and
set sail in the spring of 1957.
Captained by Alan Villiers, the
voyage ended in Plymouth Harbor
after 55 days on June 13, 1957
to great acclaim.
Popular culture
The Mayflower voyage and the
ship became famous as an icon of
a perilous one-way trip to a new
life, with many things named for
it:
* The Mayflower is the emblem of the English football club
Plymouth Argyle F.C., who are
known as "The Pilgrims"
(nickname).
* Songwriter Paul Simon mentions the ship in his "American
Tune" (song).
* Yes member Jon Anderson & Vangelis (as "Jon & Vangelis")
made a song about the ship
called "The Mayflower" released
on their album The Friends of
Mr. Cairo.
* Folk/Rock singer Bob Dylan mentions the ship in his song
"Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" on the
album Bringing It All Back Home.
* The space-shuttle parody in the movie Airplane II: The
Sequel is called Mayflower One.
* Mark Carew wrote a book titled 'Flight of the Mayflower'
where NASA builds an
intergalactic space ship (named
the Mayflower) to travel to a
new world due to the fact that
Earth has become a place where
terror, geo-political shift,
ecological crisis and nuclear
war are pandemic.
* The popular syndicated show, The Brady Bunch, had an
episode revolving around the
Pilgrims and the Mayflower,
called, "The Un-Underground
Movie"
Many Americans believe
themselves to be descended from
Mayflower passengers, e.g. that
somebody's ancestors go "all the
way back to the Mayflower".
While the Mayflower brought one
early settlement, it can be
compared to other settlements in
North America:
* The Mayflower sailed in 1620, but Virginia was settled in
1607 at Jamestown, 1610 at
Hampton, 1611 at Henricus, 1613
at Newport News, 1613 at New
Bermuda, and several other
Virginia settlements which
pre-date Plymouth. Virginia even
had black indentured servants by
1619 and a population of about
4,500 in 1623. Also, Albany, New
York, was settled by the Dutch
in 1614, Santa Fe, New Mexico by
the Spanish in 1610, and St.
Augustine, Florida dates back to
the 16th century.
* Considering Puerto Rico, the towns of Caparra and Old San
Juan would be the first European
settlement in the United States,
in 1508.
* Centuries earlier, 500 years before the voyage of
Christopher Columbus, the
Vikings, from Scandinavia, had
established a permanent
settlement in Greenland
from 1000 AD until circa 1500.
That settlement lasted 500
years, longer than the entire
colonial history of the United
States. In addition, the
archeological site at L'Anse aux
Meadows, on the coast near the
northern tip of Newfoundland in
Canada, has also been identified
as a 10th or 11th century Viking
settlement site.
However, with the Mayflower
voyage in 1620, more emphasis is
placed on the so-called "First
Thanksgiving" and the peaceful
co-existence with the native
Wampanoag tribe, as issues of
civilized culture, among the 13
original colonies of the U.S.
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