But then something remarkable happened. Working quickly, the crew pulled Howland close enough to the ship to snag him with a hook and haul the foolhardy young man back onto the deck.
Harold M. Bradford makes only passing mention of the one death on the Mayflower. A young boy named William Butten, an indentured servant to one of the Pilgrims, fell ill during the journey and died just a few days shy of reaching the New World. Given the dangers of the journey and the rough conditions aboard the Mayflower, it was a miracle that only one person out of perished on the day voyage.
The passengers and crew continued to live on the Mayflower for months as permanent dwellings were constructed on the shore. Among them was little Oceanus. In one piece of good news, another baby named Peregrine, the first Pilgrim baby born in the Plymouth Colony , not only survived the brutal winter, but lived on for more than 80 years.
For one thing, Dutch craft guilds excluded the migrants, so they were relegated to menial, low-paying jobs. First, the Separatists returned to London to get organized.
A prominent merchant agreed to advance the money for their journey. The Speedwell began to leak almost immediately, however, and the ships headed back to port in Plymouth. The travelers squeezed themselves and their belongings onto the Mayflower, a cargo ship about 80 feet long and 24 feet wide and capable of carrying tons of cargo. The Mayflower set sail once again under the direction of Captain Christopher Jones. Because of the delay caused by the leaky Speedwell, the Mayflower had to cross the Atlantic at the height of storm season.
As a result, the journey was horribly unpleasant. After sixty-six days, or roughly two miserable months at sea, the ship finally reached the New World.
Technically, the Mayflower colonists had no right to be there at all. It was the first document to establish self-government in the New World and this early attempt at democracy set the stage for future colonists seeking independence from the British. The colonists spent the first winter living onboard the Mayflower.
Only 53 passengers and half the crew survived. Women were particularly hard hit; of the 19 women who had boarded the Mayflower, only five survived the cold New England winter, confined to the ship where disease and cold were rampant.
Kate Waters, children's book author and an expert on the Mayflower and life in Plimoth, has answered a selection of kids' questions. How were the boats and houses built? Both boats and houses were built by hand.
Tree trunks were cut into lumber. Nails were forged out of metal. Sails were made of heavy linen that was woven by hand. Tar was used to waterproof the ships.
Hay and mud were mixed together to fill the cracks in houses. Making things took a long time in the seventeenth century. When the Mayflower II was built, it took two years to complete.
What happened to the other ship that started out from England carrying Pilgrims? The Speedwell is the name of the second ship. It developed leaks and had to turn back. Both the Mayflower and the Speedwell turned back, and most of the Speedwell's passengers crowded onto the Mayflower for the voyage to North America.
That is why the Mayflower was so crowded and one of the reasons why the voyage was so hard. Was life on the Mayflower easy for anyone?
We don't know for sure, but I do not think that anyone had a good crossing. Even the master, Christopher Jones, who was the boss and a part-owner of the ship, must have worried about the well-being of the people aboard.
And storms kept everyone on the ship awake for many hours at a time. Did the Mayflower smell? Yes, the Mayflower did smell. The 'tween decks was crowded with people, many of whom became seasick. People could not take baths on the ship. When the storms came, the passengers could not throw out their chamber pots.
And, at the time, many people thought too much fresh air was bad for you. What a relief it must have been to reach the harbor. What were the ship's sails made of?
The sails were made of heavy woven cloth. At the time, all cloth was made by hand. Ships' sails were very expensive. How did the ship get lost? During a storm, the sky is dark and cloudy.
It is not possible to use the stars to navigate, nor is it possible to steer very well. The Mayflower sighted land farther north than they intended. Because it was winter and the wind was strong, they could not sail around the tip of Cape Cod and go south to Virginia, so they had to stay where they were. How big were the cabins on the Mayflower? Where did people sleep? The passengers did not have private cabins on the ship. They had to live in a big space 'tween decks.
They used curtains to create some privacy. Some of the passengers slept on wooden pallets attached to the walls, others made hammocks out of cloth, and some slept on the floor or in the shallop.
The shallop was the small boat that was used to take people to land. The Mayflower could not sail right up to the beach because the water is too shallow there. Did the Mayflower make any more trips? When the Mayflower got back to England, the ship was very run down. In the s, the ocean was full of dangers. Ships could be attacked and taken over by pirates.
Many ships in the s were damaged or shipwrecked by storms. Passengers sometimes fell overboard and drowned or got sick and died. Although Mayflower did not sink, a few of these things actually did happen! Mayflower wasn't taken over by pirates -- the ship sailed on a northern path across the Atlantic to avoid them -- but she was damaged by a bad storm halfway to America.
The storm cracked one of the massive wooden beams supporting the frame of the ship. In another storm, a young passenger, John Howland, was swept off the deck of the ship and into the ocean! Although many people were seasick on the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, only one person died.
He was a sailor who had been very mean to the passengers and taunted them about their seasickness. The colonists believed he died because God was punishing him for being cruel.
One baby was born during the journey. Elizabeth Hopkins gave birth to her first son, appropriately named Oceanus, on Mayflower. It must have been very challenging to give birth on a moving ship, with so many people and so much seasickness around. After more than two months 66 days at sea, the Pilgrims finally arrived at Cape Cod on November 11, A few weeks later, they sailed up the coast to Plymouth and started to build their town where a group of Wampanoag People had lived before a sickness had killed most of them.
0コメント