The Mayflower~~

When foreigners come to Boston, most of them will visit Mayflower. Even though I have lived in Boston around 3 years, this is my first time to visit there. I'd like to share the ideas.

The Mayflower Before the Pilgrims

About 1607 or 1608, Christopher Jones and several business partners purchased the Mayflower.  Their first voyage in the ship was to Trondheim, Norway, in 1609, to bring back lumber, tar, and fish.  The Mayflower got caught in a very bad winter storm on the way home from Norway, and the captain ordered his crew to throw some of the lumber overboard to lighten the ship.  They barely survived the storm, which lasted several weeks and blew them several hundred miles off-course.

After that, Christopher Jones must not have wanted to sail the Mayflower into the cold North Sea, because he never went there again.  Instead, for the next ten years, he took the ship to La Rochelle and Bordeaux, France, and Malaga, Spain, often several times a year.  He would return to England with a ship loaded with as much as 200 tons of French wines, Cognac, and occasionally some vinegar.

In May, 1620, after returning to London from Bordeaux, France, the Pilgrims made contact with Christopher Jones, and they hired him to transport them to America.

 

The Mayflower after the Pilgrims

The Mayflower stayed with the Pilgrims in America the first winter, and departed home for England in April, arriving back home in May 1621.  Master Christopher Jones, the ship's captain, died the next year, in March 1622.  Christopher Jones owned a fourth of the ship, and when he died the ownership of his share passed to his widow, Josian.  

Josian, with the other three owners, stopped using the ship, and by May 1624 it had fallen into ruins.  It was appraised at that time to a value of just over £128, and because of its very poor condition it was almost certainly broken up and sold off as scrap.

Shortly before the 300th anniversary of the Mayflower's voyage (1920), a historian by the name of J. Rendell Harris published a book, The Finding of the Mayflower, in which he claimed to have rediscovered the Mayflower, as a barn in Jordans, England.  However, his evidence was extremely speculative, much of it based on oral tradition that he himself may have initiated and encouraged; and the possible family connections between the barn owners and the Mayflower's owners has not stood the test of subsequent research.  The barn likely is the remains of a 17th century ship, but there is no evidence it is actually the Mayflower.