On September 6, 1620, by the calendar then used in England, the Mayflower cleared Plymouth harbour carrying 102 passengers, among them a band of religious Separatists later remembered as the Pilgrims. They had set out weeks earlier with a second ship, the Speedwell, but it leaked so badly that both vessels turned back twice. Crammed into one ship late in the sailing season, the colonists faced a stormy crossing of more than two months before sighting Cape Cod in November.
The voyage had nearly collapsed before it began. The Mayflower and the smaller Speedwell left Southampton in August 1620, but the Speedwell took on water, sending both ships into Dartmouth for repairs and then, after a second attempt, back to Plymouth. There the organisers abandoned the Speedwell, squeezed as many passengers as they could onto the Mayflower, and sent the rest home.
Under her master, Christopher Jones, the Mayflower left Plymouth on September 6 with 102 passengers and a crew of around thirty. Autumn gales cracked a main beam in mid-ocean, and the ship was saved, by the colonists' own account, with a great iron screw brought from Holland. One passenger died at sea, and a baby, aptly named Oceanus Hopkins, was born on the way.
The ship reached Cape Cod on November 9, far north of its intended destination in Virginia. Before going ashore, the men signed the Mayflower Compact, agreeing to govern themselves by majority rule. Half of those who made the crossing did not survive the first winter at Plymouth.
Key people: Christopher Jones, William Bradford