a few pieces of information about the ship can been gleaned from the text. For example, he reported that one of the passengers fell overboard during a storm but saved himself by grabbing a topsail halyard, confirming that the ship
was rigged with topsails. The ship was only identified as the "Mayflower" in a 1623 document that listed the colonists' names and land assignments; the list groups individuals by ship name and lists "May-floure" for the colonists that arrived on the 1620 voyage. It turns out that "Mayflower" was a popular name for ships back then. Historians were able to narrow it down to one, however, by matching the name of the ship's captain, Christopher Jones, with a ship "Mayflower" in the record books with a captain of the same name. His ship Mayflower was a trading vessel during that time period and could have made the voyage to North America when the Pilgrims embarked on their historic journey. After the Mayflower sailed back to England in the spring of 1621, she resumed her trading voyages between London and France. A few years after Captain Jones died, there is one last mention of the ship in the 1624 records when the owners declared the ship "in
minis" and were requesting an appraisal from the British Admiralty. Today, you can tour the Mayflower IL a reproduction of the original ship, owned by the living history museum Plimoth Plantation. Because we don't know exactly what the original Mayflower looked like, the Mayflower II was designed to represent what a typical trading vessel of that tonnage, or size, and rig (don't forget the clue about the topsails) would have looked like. Mayflower II serves as a dockside exhibit and occasionally goes sailing for special events. You can visit the Mayflower II and Plimoth Plantation, either in person in Plymouth, Massachusetts, or online at www.plimoth.org. To learn more about the first Thanksgiving and what really happened, check out their interactive online feature, "You are the Historian," by clicking on the "Online Learning Center" under "Education Programs." (Plimoth Plantation, 137 Warren Avenue, Plymouth, MA 02360).
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The image of the Pilgrim in the black suit the starched white collar and big buckles on his hat and shoes is largely just a myth. They did wear black on Sundays, but they fastened their shoes with leather ties, not buckles. Buckles did not even come into fashion back in England until the 1660s, forty years after the Pilgrims landed in North America . No one knows what happened to the original ''Mayflower Compact, " but William Bradford, the governor of Plymouth Colony, later published a history of the colony, titled Of Plimoth Plantation, which contained the document's text, as shown on this page from his book.
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LI BRARY OF CO NGRESS
SEA HISTORY 133, WINTER 2010- 11
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