[p. 56]
The Mayflower of the Pilgrims.
[copy.]
Found among the papers of the
Society's former
Secretary,
Eliza M. Gill.
The ship in which the Pilgrims, who settled at
Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620, made the passage from
Europe to
America.
Rigged model: Scale 1/2 inch to 1 foot.
England, 1620.
A wooden, carvel built, keel vessel, with full bluff bow, strongly raking below water line; raking curved stem; large open head; long, round, (nearly log shaped) bottom; tumble — in top side; short run; very large and high square stern; quarter galleries; high forecastle, square on forward end, with open rails on each side; open bulwarks to main and quarter decks; a succession of three quarter decks or poops, the after one being nearly 9 feet above the main deck; two boats stowed on deck; ship rigged with pole masts; without jibs; square spritsail (or water-sail) under bowsprit; two square sails on foremast and mainmast, and lateen sail on mizzenmast.
Dimensions of Vessel.
Length over all, knightheads to taffrail, 82 feet; beam, 22 feet; depth, 14 feet; tonnage, 120; bowsprit, outboard, 40 feet, 6 inches; spritsail yard, 14 feet, 6 inches; foremast, main deck to top, 39 feet; total length, main deck to truck, 67 feet, 6 inches; foreyard, 47 feet, 6 inches; fore topsail yard, 34 feet, 1-1/2 inches; mainmast, deck to top, 46 feet; total deck to truck, 81 feet; main yard, 53 feet; main topsail yard, 38 feet, 6 inches; mizzenmast, deck to top, 34 feet; total deck to truck, 60 feet, 6 inches; spanker yard, 54 feet, 6 inches; boats, one on port side of deck, 17 feet long by 5 feet, 2 inches wide; one on starboard side, 13 feet, 6 inches long by 4 feet, 9 inches wide.
This model was under the personal supervision of
Capt. J. W. Collins.
It is an exact miniature, in hull and rig, of a ship of the date and size of the
Mayflower. Careful attention was given to its construction in all details; it was built from the lines and rigged from the sail plan of a ship contemporaneous with the
Mayflower,
[p. 57] and, it may fairly be assumed, represents such a ship as brought the Pilgrims from
Plymouth, England, to the
New England coasts.
The Pilgrims' Mayflower, of 1620, was at one time an English warship.
The name is one of the oldest ship names in the English navy, going back to 1415, when a vessel with that name carried some of the knights who fought in Agincourt across the channel.
Her successor—the Mayflower of 1447—was the flagship of Richard, Duke of Gloucester.
But the Mayflower of 1620 was an old Armada veteran long before she came across the Atlantic, and took a prominent part in that historic sea-fight in 1588, fighting alongside of Drake's Revenge and Hawkins' Victory. In the fight off Gravelines.
when the Armada made a last desperate attempt to save itself from utter rout, the Mayflower's part was a prominent one.
According to a recent writer in the London Graphic, the ship was one of the chief ones contributed to Queen Elizabeth's fleet by the merchants of the city of London, but Goodwin's Pilgrim Republic states that the officials of Lynnes offered the Mayflower (150 tons) to join the fleet against the dreaded Armada. The Graphic erroneously implies that the Mayflower ended her days ingloriously in the slave trade between Guinea and America.
Goodwin, in refrence to this rumor, says that the slaver Mayflower was a ship of 350 tons, while the Pilgrim vessel was only 150.
The latter came to Salem in 1629, and the last known of her was when she was one of a fleet that landed John Winthrop and his colonists in Charlestown in 1630.—Boston Herald.
The most authentic information fixes the tonnage of the
Mayflower of the Pilgrims at 120 tons.
