May Flower: The Pilgrim Fathers Expedition

The 180 tones May flower was originally built to carry wine and other cargoes, not people, and was cramped and uncomfortable. Living quarters of each of the 102 passengers were not bigger than single bed. Many of them were unprepared for their new life. One passenger died and a baby was born on the Voyage. How ever many did not survive the winter America.

On 21^st November 1620 a small ship anchored in the sheltered bay behind Cape Cod, on the east coast of America. The ship, the Mayflower contained 35 religious dissenters who wished to star a new life in America. So that they could worship the way they pleased. Sailing with them were 67 other emigrants; Together the voyagers known as the Pilgrim Fathers. It was their pilgrimage across the ocean that created the first successful European colony in North America. They called their settlement Plymouth, in what is not Massachusetts.

A third of the passengers were separatists. They rejected the Pomp and ceremony of the Church of England and wished to practice their own, simpler form of worship. They dressed in plain clothes and disapproved of frivolity and idleness, but later every one came to New England.

They are that pilgrims first settled became known as New England, members of the Wampanoag tribes already live there. Fortunately one of them spoke English and with him acting as a translator, the Wampanoag helped the colonists plant crops and hunt for food without their aid the pilgrims would not have survived their first year in the new land. The first house the pilgrims constructed were built roughly cut planks of wood from the local forests, the roofs ere coated with bark to keep the rain and snow out. Every pilgrim had to work hard to help clear the site and plant crops necessary for their survival.