PRIMARY SOURCE DETECTIVES WHO JOURNEYED ON THE MAYFLOWER Nicola Barber Heinemann LIBRARY Chicago Illinois
A NARROW ESCAPE It is fall 1620 A tiny ship battles the waves on the vast Atlantic Ocean It is crammed with people They are constantly wet and many are seasick The weather is increasingly stormy and treacherous At times the wind is so strong that the crew members take in all the sails and simply allow the ship to drift it is too dangerous to try to sail On October 1 they are once again being battered by wind and waves when a cry goes up Man overboard One of the passengers a man named John Howland has slipped on the wet deck and fallen over the side However as he falls he grabs a rope trailing in the sea He holds on for dear life although he is being half-drowned by the wild waves As the icy water begins to numb his hands he feels something grab at his clothes Howland is hoisted back to safety with a long boat hook HOW DO WE KNOW After this narrow escape Howland went on to live for another 50 years unlike the majority of his fellow passengers He was one of the Pilgrims and the little ship was the Mayflower This book tells the story of the Pilgrims why they ended up crossing the Atlantic on the Mayflower and what happened to them after they finally arrived on the shores of North America But it also examines how we know about this voyage What are the documents and objects that have allowed historians to piece
together events that happened nearly 400 years ago HISTORY DETECTIVES WHAT IS A PRIMARY SOURCE In history a primary source is one that gives us firsthand information about an event or a particular period in time Primary sources come in many different forms they can be eyewitness accounts sketches or paintings documents such as wills or lists or from more recent times photographs or films This is an artist’s impression of the Mayflower at sea No pictures of the ship exist so historians and artists rely on descriptions from primary sources
