After a long 66-day voyage, the passengers aboard the Mayflower stepped off the ship onto new, fresh land. Originally spotting land on November 6th, the pilgrims sailed over and finally got to take a break from being on the sea. Surprisingly, this trip wasn’t an all-inclusive two month long cruise. It was suffering on the water and almost nothing went to plan.
Originally, the Mayflower wasn’t supposed to set sail by itself. Its sister ship, the Speedwell, was intended to go alongside the Mayflower; however, it was deemed to be “unseaworthy” because of the constant leak that sprouted from it. This forced both ships to have to turn back to England. After another attempt to sail that ultimately failed, the Speedwell stayed at port while the Mayflower went on a journey to the new world on its own.
Thus, there were a total of 132 individuals who were on their way to America, 100 passengers and 30 crew members. These passengers were a mix of people who craved to practice their religions with freedom or who just wanted to start over with a new life in a new place. This ship isn’t as big as it’s portrayed to be in films. Even with the population of 102 passengers, not including the crew, this ship was only about 58 feet by 24 feet, forcing the population of the ship to constantly be jammed together.
Not to mention, they all stayed in the overcrowded gun deck of the ship, which was their designated cargo space. The conditions that they were living in were dark, unsanitary, and not forgiving with the temperature. The passengers were constantly cold, many of them being forced to sleep on the floor of the deck. They were also forced to share their living space with a large ship’s boat called a shallop and other items that were also stored down there. Families resorted to using small wooden dividers or curtains to try to get any privacy. On the Mayflower, privacy was almost impossible to obtain.
This trip was brutal. The Mayflower started its trek through the sea during the height of the storm season and spent most of their time trying to survive through harsh storms. These were very powerful North Atlantic autumn storms, which are widely known to have strong winds and freezing temperatures. The people on board had almost no protection from the storms since the Mayflower was just a cargo ship and wasn’t even built for passengers. The storms almost ripped the whole ship apart and at one point, the main beam cracked and buckled, threatening the ship itself. Fortunately, passenger William Brewster brought a giant iron screw from Holland since it was a part of his printing press and used it to hold the main beam together, saving the people on board.
There were constant leaks and severe seasickness from the rocking of the ship. Going weeks without fresh air, these passengers were trapped in a toxic cage. Because of these harsh winds, their intended route to Virginia was blown off course, landing them in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Within days, fresh food wasn’t an option anymore. They were forced to rely on preserved foods like dried fish and salted meat. Eventually, they had to live on whatever they could scrape up. Things like moldy cheese and a type of hard biscuit, hardtack, that would get infested with bugs and worms. The scarce amount of food combined with the sewer-smelling scent of the ship due to the lack of baths and the overflowing of chamber pots made it a difficult trip for everyone below beck.
As expected in cramped, musty conditions, disease broke out. Now, these diseases weren’t as bad as they grew to be after getting out on land but it still caused a casualty among the passengers on the Mayflower. William Buten, a young servant of Samuel Fuller, passed away on the ship due to sickness, near the coast of New England. He was the first and only passenger to die on the actual voyage. After landing, the first winter took out about half of the pilgrims. The harsh freezing temperatures, combined with cases of pneumonia and tuberculosis almost ended the colony before the flowers could even bloom.
Now, with only approximately 53 people out of the original 102 passengers, the first Thanksgiving meal was created as a celebration for surviving the first year, with the help of the Wampanoag people, who occupied the land before the pilgrims arrived. This feast produced a symbolic event that is still seen in many households today.
