The voyage that made America?
After 10 gruelling weeks at sea, the Mayflower finally dropped anchor off Cape Cod on 11 November 1620 (Old Style calendar). More than 130 people were squashed onboard what seems a tiny ship by today’s standards; the vessel was just under 100 feet long and 25 feet wide. Delayed departure meant that, during the second half of the voyage, in October, savage storms forced sails to be taken down. A structural beam of the ship was cracked, mended by the carpenter using a “great iron screw”. A man called John Howland was hurled by a wave into the ocean, managing to cling onto a rope and so to save his own life. Many passengers, some of whom had never even seen the sea before, let alone been on it, lay down and groaned, feeling dreadfully sick.
The storms blew them north of their immediate target: the Hudson river, near modern-day New York. It was already a month later than they had hoped to reach America and their brief efforts to sail south from Cape Cod (in modern-day Massachusetts) were foiled by the currents.
As the colonists were not in Virginia, their ultimate intended destination, some passengers sought to take advantage of their circumstances, stating that they were not answerable to anyone. They would, they declared, “use their own liberty; for none had power to command them”.
What happened next would seal the ’s place in American history. In response to this
