Ranting Alert! Thought I'd make a quick stop in Plymouth, England and check-out the Mayflower Steps -- supposedly the actual steps used by the Pilgrims back in 1620 to board their ship to America -- and did I get a history lesson! Seems like every time I turn around, I'm amazed at the crap they taught us in high school European (and in this case, American) history classes! Turns out we don't know the "Pilgrims" at all!
First of all, they weren't even called "Pilgrims" until a couple of hundred years later. Secondly, today we'd call them a "cult" and probably slam the door in their faces! They were a tiny off-shoot of the Church of England who, along with many others, didn't like King Henry VIII being head of the Church of England. Seeing as it wasn't a terribly smart move in those days to publically object to anything Henry did, it's hard to know just how large the group was -- maybe a couple of hundred is a guess.
They apparently didn't like the Pope either -- seems they didn't like pretty much anybody and bounced around France and the Netherlands for a few years trying to find a place they felt comfortable. Supposedly, the only reason those countries let them in was to display their "open-mindedness/tolerance" -- and to "piss-off" Henry -- rubbing it in his nose that his "subjects" didn't like living under his rule. They were so annoying that after a while even the Netherlands essentially kicked them out and back they went to England. From here, they decided to go to the "wilderness" in the New World.
They hurriedly bought a boat for cash (yes, they had money), the Speedwell, and then realized it wasn't big enough to hold them all (about eighty people signed-up to go) at which time they contracted passage on the Mayflower for the overflow passengers. They headed off to sea in both boats from Southampton only to have the Speedwell start taking on water a week or so out, at which time they put back into Dartmoor, supposedly fixed the leaks and headed back out only to have it start leaking again within a couple hundred miles.
Plymouth was the closest harbor so they pulled-in there -- only to be told the Speedwell was so rotten, it wasn't seaworthy (other rumors have it that the crew sabotoged the boat so they didn't have to continue on with "these people"). At Plymouth, apparently about half of the passengers were so ill from being seasick or just sick of the whole idea of going to the New World that they dropped-out. Everyone who still wanted to go was consolidated onto the Mayflower. While things were being "rejiggered", they all moved off the boats into proper lodgings in Plymouth -- some reports describe them behaving like the "society" people that most of them were, hobnobing with the locals -- other reports have them remaining aloof from the locals.
(Ranting continued:) In our history books they make it seem like it was these "brave religious outcasts" battling the relentless sea and the elements -- when in reality, more than half of the passengers on the boat were not "Pilgrims" but business owners/agents routinely traveling to the New World looking after their business interests there. The business passengers disembarked along the way leaving just the "Pilgrim" group on board as it sailed north along the American coast -- seems they went as far north as Canada before turning around and going back to what is today the Boston area.
Some of the newer, more progressive history books finally get something correct in that there was no Thanksgiving that first year (most likely it was a couple of years before they celebrated the Fall harvest) and that, without the charity of the Native Americans in the area, their "colony" would never have made it through that first winter.
Standing on the Mayflower Steps in a drizzly rain by myself and staring off to sea was, however, a moving experience -- just imagining what must have been going through these people's minds.
