Was the Mayflower Recycled as a Barn? Mary Medland (with John Fiske) F amously on Sept. 6, 1620, a ship called the Mayflower set sail from England. Sixty-six days later, after crossing the Atlantic at an average speed of two miles per hour, the Mayflower deposited some 102 men, women and children at what we now know as Plymouth, Mass. About half of the passengers were people commonly known as Pilgrims or Separatists — members of the Church of England who wished to separate from the mother church. Less famously, except among some, there is a barn in the English village of Jordans, about 25 miles northwest of London, called the Mayflower Barn because it was purportedly built from the timbers of the Mayflower when she was (apparently) sold for scrap in 1624. Every American child knows which ship brought the Pilgrims to America, “But in many ways,” said Carolyn Travers, the former research manager at Plimoth Plantation, “it is merely by coincidence that we know the name of the ship at The “Mayflower Barn,” Jordans, Buckinghamshire, England. Courtesy Jordans. all. It first came to light in 1623 when the colony’s communal system of planting corn was not working as planned. So they decided to allot each household an acre of land per person. “The land was assigned to various individuals based on which ship they arrived on,” Travers said. “What we know from The Records of Plimouth Colony, which is the first time the ship (MayFloure) was named, is that the first group of people to come over was the first to be assigned land. Until then, the name of the ship just wasn’t a bit of information that people thought was important to record.” But what ship was it? Mayflower was a popular name for ships at the time. Various historians thought that they had identified the ship. It was not until 1904 however that R. G. Marsden searched through the High Court of Admiralty records in England and narrowed the field down from dozens of candidates to six, and finally to just one. With the ship identified, historians could research its origins and career — though in fact very little has been learned. What historians do know is that the Pilgrim’s Mayflower was probably built before 1606, was captained by Christopher Jones, and was a merchant ship carrying Model in Provincetown Museum of the Pilgrims’ first sighting of land. A comfortable and uncrowded scene – myth or history? The shallop looks ready for use, contrary to Bradford’s account: “Monday, the 13th of November, we unshipped our shallop and drew her on land to mend and repair her, having been forced to cut her down in bestowing her betwixt the decks; and she was much opened with the people’s lying in her.” William Bradford and Edward Winslow: Mourts Relation, London, 1620. Courtesy author. [shallop: an open boat equipped with both sails and oars. much opened: leaking through the seams and between the planks] Page 36 ■ Antiques Journal ■ November 2009