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
MEET WILLIAM BRADFORD The account of Howland’s near-drowning is found in a journal entitled Of Plymouth Plantation by one of the Pilgrim leaders William Bradford We will find out a lot more about Bradford and about his history of the Pilgrims throughout this book The document is a primary source that gives us important information about what happened to the Pilgrims Below is a brief extract from Bradford’s description of Howland’s adventure To make it easier to understand some spellings have been changed from the original For example shipe has been changed to ship and yonge to young In a mighty storm a lusty young man called John Howland was with a heel of the ship thrown into the sea but it pleased God that he caught hold of the top-sail halliards ropes which hung over board He held his hold and then with a boat hook and other means got into the ship again and his life saved
WHAT WAS THE MAYFLOWER Where did the ship come from that carried the Pilgrims across the Atlantic Ocean In the 16th and 17th centuries Mayflower was a very common name for ships in fact at that time there were Mayflowers sailing out of almost every port in England Ireland and Scotland It took some detective work in the early 1900s by a naval historian named R G Marsden to uncover which of the many Mayflowers was the correct one The home of Christopher Jones master of the Mayflower still stands in the town of Harwich on England’s east coast
