Mayflower II is a replica of the ship that brought the Pilgrims to America in 1620. The oldest seagoing replica ship in existence today, millions visit it annually at its Plimoth Patuxet museum home.
“Project Mayflower: Building and Sailing a Seventeenth-Century Replica,” by Richard A. Stone tells the ship’s history from its 1950s conception to the present. It presents its construction and its 1957 transatlantic voyage.
Mayflower II was the brainchild of British newspaperman Warwick Charlton, a World War II veteran. He served in the British Eighth Army in North Africa, editing a soldier’s newsletter and serving as General Bernard Montgomery’s publicist. After the war, he wanted to find some way to express Britain’s gratitude to the United States for its assistance in World War II.
He read William Bradford’s “Of Plimoth Plantation,” a memoir of the founding of the Plymouth Colony. Fascinated, Charlton decided that building a replica of the ship that took the Pilgrims there and present it to the United States would be a fitting tribute. He wanted an authentic replica, built in England using 17th-century materials, design, and construction methods.
Simultaneously in Massachusetts, Henry Hornblower was building a reenactment village based on the Plimoth Plantation. He wanted a Mayflower replica for it. He even had plans for a ship drawn up, an accurate recreation.
Mr. Stone tells how the two got in contact and merged efforts. Plimoth Plantation donated their plans; Charlton would raise funds for the ship and build it. The finished replica would then cross the Atlantic and be presented to Plimoth Plantation. They agreed to maintain it thereafter.
Mr. Stone traces the struggles Charlton faced in getting the replica funded and built. He faced passive (and occasionally active) resistance from the British Foreign Office. (Charlton was not the well-born upper-crust gentry they felt should be running the project.) They objected to the commercialism of his fundraising efforts. Charlton prevailed and built an authentic replica.
Mr. Stone next relates the seven-week transatlantic voyage in 1957 following completion. Charlton hired Alan Villiers as captain. He assembled an all-star crew for the voyage. Stone shows how the voyage helped mend the rift between Britain and the US created by the Suez Crisis. He shows how Britain snubbed Charlton, the project’s architect, in awarding honors after its success, rewarding only Hornblower.
“Project Mayflower” gives readers a look at one of the first attempts to bring history to life using a historically-accurate ship replica. It is also a surprisingly personal look at the creative process.
