Listen, Pilgrim, Maybe It Should Be Called Harwich Rock

HARWICH, England—A disagreement between two sleepy English seaside towns could make a splash across the Atlantic: by forcing a rewrite of American history.

For 393 years, the southwest England town of Plymouth has been celebrated as the last port of call of the Mayflower before the ship carried the first Pilgrim settlers to what was to become the United States of America. But that is only part of the story.

Plymouth's fame has come at the expense of this tiny town to the northeast of London. The reason: The Mayflower was built and originally set sail from here before making an unscheduled stop at Plymouth. Now, after nearly four centuries, Harwich wants a slice of the historical action. It is building a $3.3 million replica of the Mayflower to send back across the Atlantic.

The project, spearheaded by retired oil executive Andrew March, is part of Harwich's campaign to reclaim its lost heritage by 2020, the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower's original journey. Using 400 tons of English oak and an army of young shipbuilders, Mr. March hopes to launch Harwich, pop. 15,000, onto the world stage.

The Mayflower returned to England from Plymouth Colony, arriving back on 9 May 1621. Christopher Jones took the ship out on a trading voyage to Rochelle, France, in October 1621, returning with a cargo of Bay salt. Christopher Jones, master and quarter-owner of the Mayflower, died and was buried at Rotherhithe, co. Surrey, England, on 5 March 1621/2. No further record of the Mayflower is found until May 1624, when it was appraised for the purposes of probate and was described as being in ruinis. The ship was almost certainly sold off as scrap.

The claim, first originating from J. Rendel Harris' book The Finding of the Mayflower (1920), that the Mayflower ended up as a barn in Jordans, England, is now widely discredited as being a figment of an overzealous imagination on the tercentenary anniversary of the Mayflower's voyage combined with a tainted oral history. None of the evidence has withstood subsequent investigation. Regardless of the complete lack of evidence for its authenticity, it has been featured in National Geographic on several occasions and is a tourist destination. It is important to realize that in 1624, when the ship was scrapped, it was not at all famous, and nobody would have thought twice about letting it rot away.

The "Mayflower Barn" in Jordans, England. This barn was identified in the 1920s as having been made from the remnants of the Mayflower. The evidence is entirely unconvincing, but that has not stopped it from becoming a tourist attraction nonetheless. Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons. [End of the Mayflower -- MayflowerHistory.com]

It was common practice many years ago in England to use unseaworthy ships' timber to build things. Dutch Elm disease had killed many of the trees of 17th century Great Britain and lumber was very scare. To preserve the number of oak tress from being cut for lumber, wood was priced quite high by the government, making any available timber, such as that in old ships, very desirable. Since the Mayflower wasn't an important ship to the people of Great Britain, this is the fate that most likely happened to the Pilgrim's ship.

In the early 1900s, a Quaker Historian , named Rendel Harris, found a document stating that the Mayflower had been determined to be unseaworthy in 1624. The ship's owners then sold the oak ship for its timber to make some money. Then, while attending a funeral at the Quaker Meeting House in Jordans, England, Harris heard someone say the barn had been built from wood of the Mayflower. That got Harris hunting through documents such as wills and deeds to try and find out whether this was true.

The age of the barn's timber dates back to the time of the Mayflower and the barn was said to have been built by one of the owner's of the Mayflower. If you go to the barn, you will notice that the main beam in the barn has a huge crack in it, just like the Mayflower got on its maiden voyage during a bad storm. The size and weight of the hull used in the barn's construction matches that of the Mayflower and at one time, the letters ER HAR were evident, perhaps, referring to "Mayflower, Harwich," the ship's home port.

One thing is certain, if you tilt your head upside down, you can see that a hull of a ship was used to build the roof of the barn...whether it was the Mayflower, that can't be certain. [Gail Skroback Hennessey, 1/2015 ]

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