Sea Log - Day Three - Jan. 9th, 2002 (Wednesday)

Today we traveled South and made our way to Plymouth MA.  Before leaving we spend some time in lecture, discussing Treasure Island (which they were supposed to have finished before the trip began) and Moby Dick.

The day opened with sunshine but by the time we had reached Plymouth it had turned cloudy and cold.

The Mayflower II

Behind us is moored the Mayflower II and exact replica of the original merchant ship which brought to the new world a group of religious non-conformists called Pilgrims.  The following is an excerpt found at Plymouth's history web site.

The English ship the Mayflower carried the Separatist Puritans, later known as pilgrims, to Plymouth, Mass., in 1620. The 180-ton vessel was about 12 years old and had been in the wine trade. It was chartered by John Carver, a leader of the Separatist congregation at Leiden, Holland, who had gone to London to make arrangements for the voyage to America. The ship was made ready at Southampton with a passenger list that included English Separatists, hired help (among them Myles Standish, a professional soldier, and John Alden, a cooper), and other colonists who were to be taken along at the insistence of the London businessmen who were helping to finance the expedition.

A 180 ton vessel sounds big to "land lubbers" but one look at the Mayflower assures the visitor that this was one small ship.  For most of the voyage the Pilgrims were strongly encouraged to stay below deck.  And below deck they were miserable.  A fascinating read is William Bradford's account of the voyage from the ninth chapter of his History of Plimouth Plantation (archaic spelling).  For more of the document go here.  For contemporary descriptions of Bradford go here.  All of this useful information originate from Caleb Johnson's The Mayflower Web Pages.

Bradford like his fellow colonists saw God's hand in everything that happened.  For example in the above connected chapter the death of a sailor who had enjoyed the sickness of the Pilgrims during the storms of the voyage and the salvation of one of the group who was washed overboard are both looked upon as direct intervention by the Lord Himself.

Right beside the Mayflower II is the enclosed Plymouth Rock.  The bay comes right up to a structure surrounded by thick columns.  And when one gets there, looking down through a grid is indeed a stone upon which is carved the numbers 1620.

Something I did not realize until I visited their site is that this memorial is actually the smallest park in the Massachusetts state forest and park system.  The photo (I wish we had had such a nice a day) and the following comments from from the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Management (DEM) site: Pilgrim Memorial is also the most heavily visited. Nearly one million people a year come from all over the world to visit the town where in 1620 Europeans first made a home in new England and to see Plymouth Rock where, tradition tells us, the passengers on the Mayflower first set foot in the New World.

One special feature was that when our group went over to the rock we were met by an old man wearing an tarter cap.  His name was Norman and he told us about the new Indian monument, the deaths of the many Pilgrims that first winter, and of the family who lived in the lighthouse we could just see in the mist whose children had to be ferried to school.  He was a wonderful find and I hope that one of my group can provide me with a photo of him soon.

For more about the history of the rock check out Pilgrim Hall's site.

  Not far from either the Mayflower or the Stone is a stature dedicated to the memory of Samoset.

Samoset was the first Indian to make contact with the Pilgrims. He was a member of an Algonquin tribe that resided at the time in southeast Maine. He was a sagamore of his tribe, and was visiting chief Massasoit. He spoke in broken English that he had learned from the English fishermen that came to fish off Monhegan Island, from off the coast of southeast Maine. Samoset was described by the Pilgrinms in this way: "He was a man free in speech, so far as he could express his mind, and of a seemly carriage ... He was a tall straight man, the hair of his head black, long behind, only short before, none on his face at all."

I love the statue because unlike so many images of Native Americans this one seems to try to present an image of nobility and trustworthiness.  His help is credited to have saved many of the lives of the early colonists.

Still I must confess to a small bit of sadness when I found at the foot of this statue a new plaque placed by modern Native Americans who claim that Thanksgiving is for them a day of morning because the arrival of the white settler began the genocide of so many Native American tribes (Click on image for larger version).

I understand the point, but the spirit of it seems misplaced here.  In point of fact the Pilgrims took great care to have good relations with the people they found in the new world.  For religious Englishmen to include American natives in the great feast of Thanksgiving (or Harvest Home) is an indication that their attitudes towards the tribes they found were not, as they were in other colonies, of evil dark men who lived in the woods, serving the darkest of men, Satan.

That was not Pilgrim theology.  Just as neither was burning witches nor wearing  black.  Pilgrims did not view others outside of their community with the horror some of the other American colonists did.  Also they did not enslave native Americans.  It is important to remember the terrible acts committed against the original people of this continent.  But to take a day which should actually unify Americans with the ideal of crossing cultures with hearts filled with thankfulness.

We did see several very old homes from the outside