But, with America almost close enough to touch, the battered and broken passengers knew their journey was far from over, for they had no right to settle on the land upon which they had unintentionally arrived. The others, meanwhile, were considered common folk and included merchants, craftsmen, indentured servants and orphaned children. The Pilgrims anchored in what is now Provincetown Harbour, Massachusetts, and decided to draw up an agreement that would give them some attempt at legal standing.
It declared that the colonists were loyal to the King of England, that they were Christians who served God, that they would make fair and just laws, and that they would work together for the good of the Colony. The Mayflower finally dropped anchor in a harbor at the tip of Cape Cod. Rather than chancing more days at sea, the Pilgrims decided to land.
Almost immediately, an argument broke out. According to William Bradford who later wrote an account of the Pilgrims' experiences several "strangers" made "discontented and mutinous speeches.
The troublemakers threatened to do as they pleased "for none had power to command them," wrote William Bradford. Three thousand miles from home, a real crisis faced the colonists even before they stepped ashore. Imagine the situation: over people, cut off from any government, with a rebellion brewing. Only staunch determination would help the Pilgrims land and establish their colony.
If they didn't work as a group, they could all die in the wilderness. The Pilgrim leaders realized that they needed a temporary government authority. Back home, such authority came from the king. Isolated as they were in America, it could only come from the people themselves.
Aboard the Mayflower, by necessity, the Pilgrims and "Strangers" made a written agreement or compact among themselves. The Mayflower Compact was probably composed by William Brewster, who had a university education, and was signed by nearly all the adult male colonists, including two of the indentured servants. The format of the Mayflower Compact is very similar to the written agreements used by the Pilgrims to establish their Separatist churches in England and Holland. Under these agreements the male adult members of each church decided how to worship God.
They also elected their own ministers and other church officers. This pattern of church self-government served as a model for political self-government in the Mayflower Compact.
The colonists had no intention of declaring their independence from England when they signed the Mayflower Compact. In the opening line of the Compact, both Pilgrims and "Strangers" refer to themselves as "loyal subjects" of King James. The rest of the Mayflower Compact is very short. It simply bound the signers into a "Civil Body Politic" for the purpose of passing "just and equal Laws. Immediately after agreeing to the Mayflower Compact, the signers elected John Carver one of the Pilgrim leaders as governor of their colony.
They called it Plymouth Plantation. Find out how seven famous Americans trace their roots to passengers on that voyage. George Eastman The man who founded Eastman Kodak Sailing for more than two months across 3, miles of open ocean, the passengers of the Mayflower—including three pregnant women and more than a dozen children—were squeezed below decks in crowded, cold and damp conditions, suffering crippling bouts of seasickness, and English soldier and explorer Captain John Smith played a key role in the founding of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America, in Live TV.
This Day In History. History Vault. Mutiny on the Mayflower Of the passengers on the Mayflower , there were 50 men, 19 women and 33 young adults and children. What Was the Mayflower Compact?
Who Wrote the Mayflower Compact? What Was the Purpose of the Mayflower Compact? It was a short document which established that: Recommended for you. The Mayflower. Mystery at Roanoke. The Mayflower In September , a merchant ship called the Mayflower set sail from Plymouth, a port on the southern coast of England.
Plymouth Colony In September , during the reign of King James I, a group of around English men and women—many of them members of the English Separatist Church later known to history as the Pilgrims—set sail for the New World aboard the Mayflower.
William Bradford As a longtime member of a Puritan group that separated from the Church of England in , William Bradford lived in the Netherlands for more than a decade before sailing to North America aboard the Mayflower in The Pilgrims Some people, many of them seeking religious freedom in the New World, set sail from England on the Mayflower in September Although Mayflower did not sink, a few of these things actually did happen!
Mayflower wasn't taken over by pirates -- the ship sailed on a northern path across the Atlantic to avoid them -- but she was damaged by a bad storm halfway to America.
The storm cracked one of the massive wooden beams supporting the frame of the ship. In another storm, a young passenger, John Howland, was swept off the deck of the ship and into the ocean! Although many people were seasick on the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, only one person died.
He was a sailor who had been very mean to the passengers and taunted them about their seasickness. The colonists believed he died because God was punishing him for being cruel. One baby was born during the journey. Elizabeth Hopkins gave birth to her first son, appropriately named Oceanus, on Mayflower. It must have been very challenging to give birth on a moving ship, with so many people and so much seasickness around. After more than two months 66 days at sea, the Pilgrims finally arrived at Cape Cod on November 11, A few weeks later, they sailed up the coast to Plymouth and started to build their town where a group of Wampanoag People had lived before a sickness had killed most of them.
The Pilgrims lived on the ship for a few more months, rowing ashore to build houses during the day, and returning to the ship at night. Many people began to get sick from the cold and the wet; after all, it was December! Finally, in March , there were enough houses that everyone could live on land.
After a long, hard voyage, and an even harder winter, Mayflower left Plymouth to return to England on April 5,
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