In the mid-1620s, a colony of English emigrants called the Pilgrim Fathers emigrated aboard the myflower, bound for Virginia in the United States, from the city of Amsterdam in the Netherlands along with other emigrants.
However, due to the inclement conditions suffered during the journey, they finally arrived at what is now the port of Playmouth, constituting what would eventually become the most important group of English settlers to arrive in North America, of which it is estimated that more than ten million current Americans descend.
The Pilgrim Fathers, as they called themselves a group of religious Puritans who left England fleeing the persecution to which they were subjected for their religious beliefs during the first decade of the 1600s, first migrating to the Netherlands and later to North America, where they sought to find a free world that would allow them to maintain their religious beliefs and practices based on the separatist ideas expressed by John Calvin and his Protestant Reformation.
During the 1590s and early 1600s, separatist churches were persecuted by the Church of England, which had become a hierarchical structure, persecuting separatists much as the Catholic Church had previously done with Protestants.
Thus, taking advantage of the English colonization of North America initiated by Queen Elizabeth I of England, the group of religious pilgrims decided to embark on the adventure that would take them to the new world.
The MayFlower, built in 1607 for trade between France and England, was selected along with the Speedwell to take a group of pilgrims to the North American coast, however the continuous breakdowns in the latter forced all its crew to accommodate themselves as best they could. on the MayFlower, a small ship 29 meters long and 7 meters wide, known as a carraca, with three masts with square sails on the mainmast, and three decks that crossed the North Atlantic, guided by some not very reliable and two small compasses, braving the raging waves and violent storms for more than fifty days, the time it took to see the coasts of Massachusetts.
With his crew distributed on the upper and middle decks, with goods and animals in the cargo hold, without latrines or private rooms, Captain Christopher Jones in command of 30 men and 102 passengers under his care, arrived on North American shores more than 400 years ago.
The migrant pilgrims landed on the coast and were able to come into contact with the indigenous people who initially fled in the presence of the strange white men.
However, faced with the low temperatures, the lack of food and their lack of knowledge to survive in a wild and harsh environment, as they had always been citizens accustomed to the comforts of cities, they suffered numerous human losses in the first months, devastated by diseases such as tuberculosis and pneumonia.
In the spring of 1621, the surviving migrants, with the help of two indigenous Indians who, accustomed to trading with the English, had learned the language, learned to hunt, fish and plant, thus managing to survive. and form a small colony that would later become what is now Massachusetts.
In the month of November 1921, with the arrival of the first harvest, the pilgrims and a group of Indians celebrated with a banquet the fruit of the hard work they had done, giving rise to the festival that would eventually become the day of Thanksgiving, a pre-Christmas holiday celebrated throughout the United States.
However, previously, and in order to ensure the permanence of their religious customs and establish a form of government appropriate for all crew members and members of the community, the adult men signed the so-called MyFlower Pact, a document through which They committed to founding a free and autonomous community guided by the religious and moral conditions of the pilgrim fathers, establishing the creation of future rules and collecting a code of legal norms whose pact said…
“In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are written below, loyal subjects of our fearsome Sovereign Lord, King James, by the Grace of God, of England, France and Ireland, King, Defender of Faith. Having undertaken for the Glory of God, the Advancement of the Christian Faith and the Honor of our King and Country, a journey to plant the first colony in northern Virginia; we present make a solemn pact mutually, in the Presence of God and ours, and together we form a Civil Political Body for our order, preservation and promotion of the aforementioned purposes; and by virtue of this we establish, approve, constitute and formulate just and equitable laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions and Offices, of from time to time, as may be considered appropriate and convenient for the General Welfare of the Colony, to which we promise all due obedience and submission. In witness whereof we have subscribed our names at Cape Cod, the eleventh day of November, in the Kingdom of Our Sovereign Lord, King James of England, France and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland, the fifty-fourth. Year of Our Lord, 1620.”Mayflower Compact in the play “Of Plymouth Plantation” |
The MayFlower Compact or Mayflower Compact is considered the first document to establish a form of government and a set of laws in North America.
The MyFlower was the ship that allowed one of the many settlements that occurred in the following years, one of them becoming the city of Boston, which survived thanks to agriculture, fishing and the trade of wood and skins.
In 1956 in the city of Devon in England, a replica of the myflower was built.
