Was it even called "Mayflower"?

Possibly not...among other things...

I wasn’t able to finish it this year, but I started another Pilgrim book this month and I liked what I found.

Azel Ames adds to the historical lore of the Mayflower with his book THE MAYFLOWER’S SHIP’S LOG, a more technical account of the 1620 voyage, its sponsors, passengers, and day-to-day operations, and whatever else we might want to know about it.

—Right out of the gate I was kind of surprised to realize that the moniker of “May-flower” may have been added to the ship after the fact. While having read OF PLYMOUTH PLANTATION, I never truly noticed that Bradford doesn’t call the ship by name. He just refers to it by what it is, and so does the captain. Was this ship so basic that it wasn’t properly named something? Like a semi-truck in a fleet, with an asset number on a roster somewhere, and nothing else? Ames explains how the name came to be (someone referred to it as the “May-flower of Delft-haven” back in England as he wrote an account of the expedition to the New World).

—Ames also refutes the commonly-known component of the Plymouth story that they tried collectivism, it failed, and then they tried individualism and that worked. I need to examine the specifics of that experiment more in detail, it’s something I’ve never fully understood in either direction. There’s always been the trope that “The Pilgrims tried communism, it didn’t work” but it doesn’t seem to be that simple.

—I can’t remember if it was Philbrick or Turner who also covered this, but Ames elaborates here that the Speedwell—the companion ship to the Mayflower—was leaking because it had too much mast for its small frame. Being “overmasted” caused them to take on too much wind, and mast would then pull against the deck and the frame of the ship, allowing seepage in through the hull. Despite delays, the ship couldn’t be fixed that season, and after waiting for 6-8 weeks, the Pilgrims decided to press on and leave many of their passengers in England for the next voyage. Bradford had a counter theory and thought that the ship’s delay was, at least in part, deliberate.

That’s about as far as I got. He offers some more details as to who was a stranger and who was a saint, as well as who was originally on the Speedwell and who was already on the Mayflower. In fact, Ames found one account that said there were three ships and two were left behind. So far this is the only book that says so, I’d have to find more sources about a potential third ship.

Anyway, what I’ve read has been good, and I’ll finish it next year. Happy Thanksgiving!