Project Mayflower: The Story of Mayflower II

1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:09,360
In September of 1620, about 130 passengers and crew departed from Plymouth, England in

2
00:00:09,360 --> 00:00:13,440
the relatively small sailing ship, the Mayflower.

3
00:00:13,440 --> 00:00:18,680
Some were religious separatists looking to practice their religion without persecution.

4
00:00:18,680 --> 00:00:23,160
Others were entrepreneurs looking for a fresh start in the new world.

5
00:00:23,160 --> 00:00:27,840
The men, women, and children endured dark, cramped, and uncomfortable quarters below

6
00:00:27,840 --> 00:00:28,840
deck.

7
00:00:28,840 --> 00:00:33,840
Delays in England had resulted in rations being dangerously low, although many unborded

8
00:00:33,840 --> 00:00:37,960
suffered greatly from sea sickness and could eat little.

9
00:00:37,960 --> 00:00:43,120
Fear set land extorbs battered the ship with wind and waves, causing it to drift helplessly

10
00:00:43,120 --> 00:00:46,280
for days while riding out the storm.

11
00:00:46,280 --> 00:00:50,840
One man died during the voyage, and one child was born.

12
00:00:50,840 --> 00:00:55,400
Intending to land at the Hudson River, they had been blown far off course in the storms

13
00:00:55,400 --> 00:00:58,600
and found themselves at Cape Cod.

14
00:00:58,600 --> 00:01:03,560
Before making their landing, the men of the separatists, who called themselves fathers, met

15
00:01:03,560 --> 00:01:07,440
with the men among the entrepreneurs, whom they called strangers.

16
00:01:07,440 --> 00:01:14,080
Together, they agreed to form a self-governing community, with rules and discipline.

17
00:01:14,080 --> 00:01:18,640
The challenges would be great and conditions harsh, and only by working together could

18
00:01:18,640 --> 00:01:21,120
they make this new settlement thrive.

19
00:01:21,120 --> 00:01:25,640
They agreed to work through strife and to compromise and uphold the rules set forth in

20
00:01:25,640 --> 00:01:27,880
their document.

21
00:01:27,880 --> 00:01:32,840
While stand-ish, a military advisor hired by the separatists was chosen to enforce these

22
00:01:32,840 --> 00:01:34,200
rules.

23
00:01:34,200 --> 00:01:38,680
This historic document became known as the Mayflower Compact, and provided the basic

24
00:01:38,680 --> 00:01:44,040
principles that would later influence the United States Constitution.

25
00:01:44,040 --> 00:01:48,800
With this structure in place, they anchored at Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod's

26
00:01:48,800 --> 00:01:49,880
hook.

27
00:01:49,880 --> 00:01:53,800
From here, they explored the peninsula and surrounding area for a suitable place for

28
00:01:53,800 --> 00:01:55,720
their settlement.

29
00:01:55,720 --> 00:02:00,920
On December 18, the Mayflower anchored in Plymouth Harbor, and the first of the settlers set

30
00:02:00,920 --> 00:02:03,680
foot at what would become their new home.

31
00:02:03,680 --> 00:02:08,880
However, the passengers remained on board the ship throughout the harsh winter.

32
00:02:08,880 --> 00:02:15,760
Outbreaks of scurvy, tuberculosis, and pneumonia ran rampant, and only 53 passengers survived.

33
00:02:15,760 --> 00:02:19,560
Half of the crew perished as well.

34
00:02:19,560 --> 00:02:24,320
More would die in the coming months of disease and starvation, but those who survived

35
00:02:24,320 --> 00:02:31,680
established a new colony to be called Plymouth Plantation, and created a spark for a new nation.

36
00:02:31,680 --> 00:02:36,520
Their ship, the Mayflower, returned to England and was soon sold for scrap and was lost to

37
00:02:36,520 --> 00:02:38,640
history.

38
00:02:38,640 --> 00:02:45,520
In 1956, two men on opposite sides of the Atlantic simultaneously had the same idea to build

39
00:02:45,520 --> 00:02:48,320
a replica of the historic ship.

40
00:02:48,320 --> 00:02:53,040
They didn't know it, but they would soon collaborate on a triumphant recreation of one

41
00:02:53,040 --> 00:03:00,640
of the USA's most cherished symbols and celebrate the bonds of friendship shared by two nations.

42
00:03:00,640 --> 00:03:07,120
Project Mayflower, the story of the Mayflower too, today on Shipwrecks and Sea Dogs.

43
00:03:08,120 --> 00:03:11,120
[Music]

44
00:03:11,120 --> 00:03:39,120
[Music]

45
00:03:39,120 --> 00:03:44,720
Hello and welcome to Shipwrecks and Sea Dogs, Tales of Mishaps, Misfortune, and Misadventure.

46
00:03:44,720 --> 00:03:47,120
I'm your host, Rich Napolitano.

47
00:03:47,120 --> 00:03:54,320
Today, I am very pleased to have with me author, Richard A. Stone, who has a new book out called Project Mayflower,

48
00:03:54,320 --> 00:03:57,920
building and sailing a 17th century replica.

49
00:03:57,920 --> 00:04:03,520
Now, this is not the usual Shipwreck story that you would hear on this podcast, however,

50
00:04:03,520 --> 00:04:10,640
it's a really delightful story of a generous offer from the United Kingdom to create a replica

51
00:04:10,640 --> 00:04:16,720
in partnership with some folks over here in the United States. Richard, thank you so much for joining me.

52
00:04:16,720 --> 00:04:18,720
Well, thank you for having me.

53
00:04:18,720 --> 00:04:22,560
First of all, let's talk a little bit about how you got involved in this story.

54
00:04:22,560 --> 00:04:24,560
What really gained your interest?

55
00:04:24,560 --> 00:04:28,480
It was a total serendipitous moment.

56
00:04:29,280 --> 00:04:34,160
I had done some work for the people that owned the ship. It's a museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts,

57
00:04:34,160 --> 00:04:39,680
called Plymouth, but Tuxas. It's called Plymouth Plantation at the time. They had redone the ship,

58
00:04:39,680 --> 00:04:45,680
so the ship is made of wood. This is a wooden ship. Not made of fiberglass, like most ships nowadays.

59
00:04:45,680 --> 00:04:52,080
Being of wood, it suffers the ravages of time. It had to go in for a complete reconstruction.

60
00:04:53,120 --> 00:05:00,000
It had to replicate the replica when it was finally put back in the water. Some people at Plymouth said,

61
00:05:00,000 --> 00:05:03,520
"Well, you should go to Mystic because there's someone there that you might find interesting."

62
00:05:03,520 --> 00:05:08,080
You can tell you something about the Mayflower II. I drove up to Mystic, Connecticut,

63
00:05:08,080 --> 00:05:12,720
found a man named Randall Charlton, and I said, "So Randall, what can you tell me about the

64
00:05:12,720 --> 00:05:18,640
Mayflower II that I might not know?" He said, "Well, not much. My father's the guy that built it

65
00:05:18,640 --> 00:05:23,520
in Gaby, to America." I said, "Nah, I had to get out of here. Your dad didn't build this. It's a gift from

66
00:05:23,520 --> 00:05:29,040
the British government, from the British people, like the Statue of Liberty." He said, "No, it was just my

67
00:05:29,040 --> 00:05:37,520
dad and some World War II veterans, and they got together to build this ship as a thank you gift

68
00:05:37,520 --> 00:05:42,960
to the United States, the people of the United States, or the sacrifices the nation had suffered

69
00:05:42,960 --> 00:05:49,040
during a World War II." I thought, "Well, that's pretty amazing. I had been in the sports business,

70
00:05:49,040 --> 00:05:55,680
and it instantly struck me as an underdog story." I thought, "Here's a guy that I had never heard of.

71
00:05:55,680 --> 00:06:00,880
I mean, assuming most people had not heard of him, and it's like the person that catches the

72
00:06:00,880 --> 00:06:08,480
winning touchdown in the championship game, everybody cheers the quarterback, and no one ever hears

73
00:06:08,480 --> 00:06:15,200
of the man that made it possible." That got me looking into it, and as I delved further,

74
00:06:15,200 --> 00:06:22,800
I discovered quite an interesting story. What really inspired the token of appreciation to begin with?

75
00:06:22,800 --> 00:06:30,480
So the man behind it, fellow named Warwick Charlton, he was a soldier during World War II,

76
00:06:30,480 --> 00:06:37,360
he was a newsman, a press man, and he was on the staff of a General Bernard Montgomery,

77
00:06:37,360 --> 00:06:44,480
Monty, who was perhaps the most famous British General in World War II in Europe. He was with him

78
00:06:44,480 --> 00:06:50,080
in North Africa during the siege of Tabruk, and then subsequently the battles of El Alamein.

79
00:06:50,080 --> 00:06:58,080
During that period, the Germans, they were opposite Erwut-Rommel, the desert fox. They were beaten

80
00:06:58,080 --> 00:07:02,960
up because they had better equipment. The US then entered the scene. This is before we got in,

81
00:07:02,960 --> 00:07:09,760
to the war formally, by sending sermon tanks to the British Aether Army. That changed, and they were

82
00:07:09,760 --> 00:07:17,040
able to then push Rommel back, stop his effort to seize the oil fields of Arabia, and then subsequent

83
00:07:17,040 --> 00:07:22,960
to that, he was transferred to Asia, where he worked on personal staff of Lord Lewis Montbaton,

84
00:07:22,960 --> 00:07:29,600
perhaps the most famous naval man in World War II. Prince Phillips' uncle, Queen Elizabeth,

85
00:07:29,600 --> 00:07:35,120
the second-use-like, like calling him Uncle Dickie, and because of his proximity to those men,

86
00:07:35,120 --> 00:07:40,480
he thought, "Wow, this is the US, really, we should thank them," and then he got back to Europe.

87
00:07:40,480 --> 00:07:45,360
They have, well, what is Britain ever done? We've given them a couple of briar pipes,

88
00:07:45,360 --> 00:07:50,800
see how we tweet code. We look at the French, they give them the statue of liberty. We should do

89
00:07:50,800 --> 00:07:56,800
something, but what can you do for the richest country on earth? This was the richest country,

90
00:07:56,800 --> 00:08:02,320
US can buy everything. What do you give someone that has everything? And as he thought about it,

91
00:08:02,320 --> 00:08:07,600
that, you know, what I can do is give them a piece of their lost history. I'm going to rebuild

92
00:08:07,600 --> 00:08:14,640
the Mayflow, the ship that brought those pilgrims in 1620, inspired thanksgiving, and with the

93
00:08:14,640 --> 00:08:19,840
send loss to the scrapyard, because after the propped off the pilgrims that went back, and a couple years

94
00:08:19,840 --> 00:08:25,920
later, it was declared in ruins and sold for scrap. He said, "I'm going to rebuild that ship,

95
00:08:25,920 --> 00:08:30,720
and I'm going to rebuild it exactly as it would have been built in 1600s. I'm going to use old

96
00:08:30,720 --> 00:08:36,400
materials, no modern tools, and then I'm going to get a crew, we'll find them somewhere,

97
00:08:36,400 --> 00:08:43,040
and we're going to sail it across the Atlantic." So that was his dream, and he had this idea of this

98
00:08:43,040 --> 00:08:49,200
this grand adventure. That was his point of view. So he's now on the British side, because he didn't

99
00:08:49,200 --> 00:08:53,840
know much about sailing, he declared himself, I didn't know anything about the sea, the sailing,

100
00:08:53,840 --> 00:09:00,080
or anything, but he had a great tutor. So he found a man named Dr. Roger Charles Anderson of the

101
00:09:00,080 --> 00:09:07,680
Greenwich Museum in London, and Anderson was reading articles as he was tutoring Warwick,

102
00:09:07,680 --> 00:09:14,080
and he found a story, a couple of articles about a group in Massachusetts that was also developing

103
00:09:14,080 --> 00:09:19,120
a replica. And it sounded like he'd worked at Warwick wanted to do, and he thus sent a letter of

104
00:09:19,120 --> 00:09:26,560
introduction, Charles then met up and joined forces with Harry Hornblore. A Harry Hornblore was the

105
00:09:26,560 --> 00:09:33,920
son of a financial man, they owned a investment house, and from his earliest childhood, he had seen

106
00:09:33,920 --> 00:09:42,000
groups like the Rockefellers doing Williamsburg and the Forerords Greenfield village in Michigan,

107
00:09:42,000 --> 00:09:46,800
and he thought, "You know, I shouldn't really do something like that. I would like to start a museum

108
00:09:46,800 --> 00:09:51,920
that will really introduce a new way of teaching American history. When people walk through its gates,

109
00:09:51,920 --> 00:09:57,520
they're going to step back in time, and I'm going to have costume dozens who will speak as they would

110
00:09:57,520 --> 00:10:05,520
have in 1620, and it'll be a different experience." As he did that, he realized that the story of those

111
00:10:05,520 --> 00:10:12,320
pilgrims was made possible by a ship, the Mayflower, and thus he had an idea to also build it, so he had

112
00:10:12,320 --> 00:10:20,080
an Englishman and American, both with desire to build the 17th century ship simultaneously,

113
00:10:20,080 --> 00:10:23,120
and then they joined forces, and that's really where the story begins.

114
00:10:23,120 --> 00:10:30,640
I think it's quite ironic that the gentleman's name was Hornblore. It just seems perfectly suited

115
00:10:30,640 --> 00:10:36,960
since the famous TV series of and books Horatio Hornblore. I'm sure that wasn't lost on you either.

116
00:10:37,520 --> 00:10:43,680
Well, actually, it wasn't lost on the crowd, so you're exactly right. So Horatio Hornblore has this

117
00:10:43,680 --> 00:10:49,440
famous character. When the ship was launched in in Devon, England, Hornblore couldn't go to everybody

118
00:10:49,440 --> 00:10:53,840
said a note, you know, saying, "Good luck with it," and when his name was announced to the crowd,

119
00:10:53,840 --> 00:11:00,320
they all broke into laughter saying, "Wow, a smistical guy is coming out, but it was not Horatio. It was

120
00:11:00,320 --> 00:11:06,480
hairy." It was quite remarkable. Originally, I believe from your book, he said that he wanted to build a

121
00:11:06,480 --> 00:11:11,920
ship, but then realized that it wasn't going to be possible because of the depth of the channel.

122
00:11:11,920 --> 00:11:18,240
There's a lot of serendipity and just good fortune that goes in with this. So Hornblore is

123
00:11:18,240 --> 00:11:23,600
his team of executives. They initially wanted to build a ship that would float, so they would have

124
00:11:23,600 --> 00:11:29,120
it anchored in Plymouth Bay. Plymouth Bay, by the way, is Cape Cod. So if you think of Cape Cod,

125
00:11:29,120 --> 00:11:35,760
an insula, Plymouth is at the beginning of it, and then Cape Cod hooks around like a finger,

126
00:11:35,760 --> 00:11:41,520
and the Bay is Cape Cod, and Plymouth is on one side of it. So they were going to anchor a ship

127
00:11:41,520 --> 00:11:47,040
in Plymouth, but there was issues about public safety, and there had been some hurricanes, so that

128
00:11:47,040 --> 00:11:52,960
was scrapped at which point they decided to build what they called a water, a waterline model,

129
00:11:52,960 --> 00:12:00,320
which would be a frame of a ship on a concrete slab, and it would be very similar to what Walt Disney

130
00:12:00,320 --> 00:12:07,920
had done at exactly the same time with the Captain Hook pirate ship and the chicken of the sea restaurant

131
00:12:07,920 --> 00:12:13,440
and out in Disneyland in Anaheim, California. That was the plan. So we're just going to build a

132
00:12:13,440 --> 00:12:18,800
stationary water-based model, and that'll work. Nonetheless, they hired this famous architect. The

133
00:12:18,800 --> 00:12:25,760
architect develops this incredible plan, these designs, which in itself is pretty amazing because

134
00:12:25,760 --> 00:12:32,800
there weren't any plans from the 17th century. People would make a ship, but they wouldn't necessarily

135
00:12:32,800 --> 00:12:37,840
keep track of how, but the architectural design was. So if he had to work backwards to figure out what

136
00:12:37,840 --> 00:12:43,760
the, what it might look like, its shape, size, and all of that, and he had nothing to go on other than

137
00:12:43,760 --> 00:12:49,920
a description of its weight. So when the pilgrims came over, a book was written about that,

138
00:12:50,480 --> 00:12:57,280
called of Plymouth Plantation, and here go the name of the museum, and in the book, they don't even call

139
00:12:57,280 --> 00:13:04,240
the ship the Mayflower. They just said we came over on a ship. It was 180 tons of burden, and it had

140
00:13:04,240 --> 00:13:09,680
at least one top set. That's all the William Baker, the architect, had to go on. And then working

141
00:13:09,680 --> 00:13:17,440
backwards, he was able to discover records dating back to Elizabethan times, which he was able to

142
00:13:17,440 --> 00:13:23,760
then redesign come up with this plant. He then presents it to the people of Plymouth. They spent $2,400

143
00:13:23,760 --> 00:13:29,200
for these designs, which is a lot of money at the time. And he figured, you know, it'll just kind of

144
00:13:29,200 --> 00:13:33,680
sit in a museum archive, great plans, but they're not going to go anywhere. And it was pure

145
00:13:33,680 --> 00:13:42,240
chance, fate that Charlton called at exactly the moment that he was delivering those plans to the

146
00:13:42,240 --> 00:13:47,920
Hornblower team, and they thought, wow, this is, this is something. There was an issue that Hornblower

147
00:13:47,920 --> 00:13:53,360
didn't want to spend the money to build the ship. He thought, where am I going to get the financing?

148
00:13:53,360 --> 00:13:59,760
And all I need is something that will be an artifact to support my museum. Charlton, on the other hand,

149
00:13:59,760 --> 00:14:05,680
but, you know, I don't care what this costs, I will organize this. I will somehow find the money,

150
00:14:05,680 --> 00:14:10,480
because we're going to build this ship because we need to thank America for its sacrifices,

151
00:14:10,480 --> 00:14:17,440
and thus he began his undertaking, which itself was pretty fraught, because at that time,

152
00:14:17,440 --> 00:14:23,600
this is now the early, the mid-1950s. President Eisenhower is finishing up his first term.

153
00:14:23,600 --> 00:14:29,920
And he was a great believer in a principle of what they call soft power and cultural diplomacy.

154
00:14:29,920 --> 00:14:36,720
I could see war, if he was the general, that guided us and the United Forces of Europe against

155
00:14:36,720 --> 00:14:42,080
the Nazis. And so he was a great proponent of soft power, and we should really find ways to do some

156
00:14:42,080 --> 00:14:49,280
cultural diplomacy, find common points of interest that connect our two nations. And just shortly,

157
00:14:49,280 --> 00:14:54,560
before all, he was thinking about that, certainly Winston Churchill was thinking of it. And even the

158
00:14:54,560 --> 00:15:01,280
war ended a year afterwards, he gave a very famous speech in Missouri, which he used two words that

159
00:15:01,280 --> 00:15:08,960
became central to the Cold War era, one of them was the Iron Curtain and the other one is special

160
00:15:08,960 --> 00:15:15,280
relationship. So in 1946, while Warwick is still in uniform, Churchill is giving the speech out

161
00:15:15,280 --> 00:15:21,280
in Missouri and he says, you know, the world is experiencing something very bad, the communists

162
00:15:21,280 --> 00:15:28,880
have dropped an Iron Curtain across Europe. But there is a counterweight to that, a special relationship

163
00:15:28,880 --> 00:15:33,920
between the United Kingdom and the United States. And that will defend democracy. And the

164
00:15:33,920 --> 00:15:39,760
ribbon by is desired to thank America for its sacrifices and then given kind of a framework of a

165
00:15:39,760 --> 00:15:44,960
special relationship that Charlton moved forward. I'll describe a little bit of a hiccup that he

166
00:15:44,960 --> 00:15:49,760
had with this too, because the British government also wanted to move forward with this. So they like

167
00:15:49,760 --> 00:15:54,080
this idea of a special relationship. We're going to find a bond between our two countries,

168
00:15:54,720 --> 00:16:00,880
but they had a different approach. Charlton is just a commoner, just a yoke who happened to be a veteran

169
00:16:00,880 --> 00:16:07,760
and a journalist, but the foreign office, but you know, what we need is a connection between our upper

170
00:16:07,760 --> 00:16:12,960
class and the Americans upper class. You know, those aristocratic families in New England and

171
00:16:12,960 --> 00:16:19,120
the long the coast, and they'll match up with us. When Charlton started looking for funding,

172
00:16:19,120 --> 00:16:24,320
he went to those very groups to see if they might be interested in supporting his effort to

173
00:16:24,320 --> 00:16:30,720
build a second Mayflower. When the foreign office found out about it, they did not like it. And they

174
00:16:30,720 --> 00:16:36,240
saw him as a competitor, though they contacted people like the English-speaking union, the pilgrim

175
00:16:36,240 --> 00:16:42,560
society, and said, you know, these people, Charlton and his associate, they're really not the right

176
00:16:42,560 --> 00:16:48,480
source. And I think you should stand clear of them. So there was a sense of competition between the

177
00:16:48,480 --> 00:16:56,240
foreign office and Warwick Charlton. Nonetheless, just regular people in England got wind of this

178
00:16:56,240 --> 00:17:02,240
construction going on in Bricksems, so Bricksems in Southern England and Devon. And it was the largest

179
00:17:02,240 --> 00:17:09,120
wooden shipbuilding project of the century. And it is part of the British imagination. So people

180
00:17:09,120 --> 00:17:15,200
started flocking to Bricksems the way they used to go to Paris to look at this statue of liberty before

181
00:17:15,200 --> 00:17:21,600
it was disassembled and brought over here. So public support became up and he was able to get some

182
00:17:21,600 --> 00:17:26,480
funding and they were thus able to move forward despite the foreign offices efforts to interfere

183
00:17:26,480 --> 00:17:32,160
with his efforts. That was an unexpected speed bump. Am I correct that even the United States

184
00:17:32,160 --> 00:17:38,240
government had some issues with this effort? Yes. And they just thought it was a publicity stunt.

185
00:17:38,240 --> 00:17:43,360
So they, again, they're thinking they have Walt Disney. He's built a chicken of the sea. They

186
00:17:43,360 --> 00:17:48,800
got Disney land. They know about that. And here's a guy in England's claims he wants to build a

187
00:17:48,800 --> 00:17:55,600
Mayflower too. They don't have much need for it. And they, they kind of see him as a somewhat of a

188
00:17:55,600 --> 00:18:01,200
Huckster, a promoter, and that they were not particularly interested. They had shared a feeling

189
00:18:01,200 --> 00:18:05,040
with the British foreign office about this effort by Warwick Charlton to build a ship.

190
00:18:05,040 --> 00:18:11,200
So at first, the fundraising was difficult, but eventually that was overcome.

191
00:18:11,920 --> 00:18:18,720
What kind of people were hired to build a ship, especially one that was built 300 years prior in a

192
00:18:18,720 --> 00:18:24,640
style that nobody's really familiar with? Right. This all required in a set by you might call men

193
00:18:24,640 --> 00:18:30,720
born out of their time. So from the shipbuilding side, they found a man they steered up them,

194
00:18:30,720 --> 00:18:36,880
up them shipyard in Brickson. And they had been building wooden ships for 300 years. And during

195
00:18:36,880 --> 00:18:42,720
World War II, they built a lot of wooden minesweepers for the British Admiralty. It's one thing

196
00:18:42,720 --> 00:18:49,920
building a ship who in the world is going to sail it. By chance shortly before all of this began,

197
00:18:49,920 --> 00:18:56,560
there was a great movie of Movedec starring Gregory Peck and Ursula Wells that was shot in the North Sea.

198
00:18:56,560 --> 00:19:01,600
And the captain of this ship during the shooting had to be an Australian captain,

199
00:19:01,600 --> 00:19:08,560
sea captain named Alan Villiers. And Alan Villiers organized a crew so John Houston could have

200
00:19:08,560 --> 00:19:16,720
dramatic scenes really set at sea to tell the Movedec story. So when the word got out about Warwick's

201
00:19:16,720 --> 00:19:23,120
plan, there was some press about it. So the people in Brickson, up them just happened to call them saying,

202
00:19:23,120 --> 00:19:28,160
"You know, I read about your desire to build a wooden ship. Could I do it for you?" And thus they

203
00:19:28,160 --> 00:19:36,400
started using up them. News of that then was told in the US by the US press, the New York Times,

204
00:19:36,400 --> 00:19:40,640
the Boston Globe, everybody that started to talk about this. And one of the people that

205
00:19:40,640 --> 00:19:46,960
heard about it was the editor of National Geographic, Man in Mel Grove. And as he's reading these

206
00:19:46,960 --> 00:19:53,120
articles, he's thinking of a man who's provided a lot of great stories for them. Alan Villiers. So Alan

207
00:19:53,120 --> 00:19:59,760
Villiers is a very prolific writer in addition to being a great sea captain. And he had regularly

208
00:19:59,760 --> 00:20:04,800
he had written like 20 books about the high seas and tall ships in the years leading up to

209
00:20:04,800 --> 00:20:10,960
to this moment. And so Grovener sends a note to Alan Villiers in England. This is Alan, you know,

210
00:20:10,960 --> 00:20:16,640
you probably have seen in the paper, they're organizing a group to build a Mayflower and sail it across.

211
00:20:16,640 --> 00:20:21,600
I think it'd be a good story for the National Geographic. Why don't you go down and check it out.

212
00:20:21,600 --> 00:20:29,040
So Alan goes down to Brickson beats up with Warwick and he sends a note back to Grovener. He said,

213
00:20:29,040 --> 00:20:34,960
you know, you're not going to believe this. They want me to be the captain of the ship. So you had

214
00:20:34,960 --> 00:20:42,960
this against serendipity that National Geographic wants to write a story about Mayflower too. They

215
00:20:42,960 --> 00:20:49,360
send their best writer Alan Villiers who then gets hired to captain the ship. So he's now soon

216
00:20:49,360 --> 00:20:55,120
going to be holding a pen in one hand in the ship's wheel and the other. And luckily he had stayed

217
00:20:55,120 --> 00:21:01,040
in touch with the men, the crew, who had worked with him on the Moby Dick project. And so he called

218
00:21:01,040 --> 00:21:10,400
those men back. So he had a core team of tall ship veterans who could sail it. And then after that,

219
00:21:10,400 --> 00:21:17,120
so that was that was the key escus is his mates is first second and third mate is Bosen. And thus the

220
00:21:17,120 --> 00:21:23,360
other men that became the crew and there were total of 33 people on the ship plus a cat. They had a

221
00:21:23,360 --> 00:21:30,240
cat named Felix, but the these older experienced men taught the younger guys how to sail. And because

222
00:21:30,240 --> 00:21:38,560
of that, they were able to successfully navigate from England, to limit the USA. Yeah. And you mentioned

223
00:21:38,560 --> 00:21:44,320
earlier about how they were essentially going to have to reverse engineer the design of the Mayflower

224
00:21:44,320 --> 00:21:50,560
from whatever records they could find. What challenges did they face as the ship progressed from keel

225
00:21:50,560 --> 00:21:55,840
to being completed? Very good question. First of all, you have to, where do you find the plans? So again,

226
00:21:55,840 --> 00:22:03,280
he reversed engineer looking at the weight. So how do you determine weight? There was a formula in the

227
00:22:03,280 --> 00:22:09,600
Queen's Admiralty department that described basically a form of the Archimedes principle that has to

228
00:22:09,600 --> 00:22:16,800
do with displacement of water. So using 180 tons of burden, he could go backwards because their design

229
00:22:16,800 --> 00:22:22,960
said, well, if you're keel is X and the whole Brith is Y, you can kind of figure out what it might be.

230
00:22:22,960 --> 00:22:28,640
And that's how he was able to put it together the the plans for it. Once you do get the plans,

231
00:22:28,640 --> 00:22:34,000
then the issue is where in the world you get the what? Because the people in the US when when Charlton

232
00:22:34,000 --> 00:22:39,040
sent his associate over there, the climate folks ought to take about two years to come up with enough

233
00:22:39,040 --> 00:22:48,400
the live oak to build the ship. Luckily for Brickson, they were near a very famous source of what

234
00:22:48,400 --> 00:22:55,360
called the Wisement Wood in the Dartmoor, the Moor is a Dartmoor. And in fact, it was so famous

235
00:22:55,360 --> 00:23:03,520
that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the Hound to the Vaskerville sets that in Devon. So he would go out and

236
00:23:03,520 --> 00:23:10,480
that's where he found tons and tons of live oak. So live oak is a very strong wood,

237
00:23:10,480 --> 00:23:16,240
but it grows in every direction except straight. So it's crooked and bent and looks horrible.

238
00:23:16,240 --> 00:23:21,840
Perfect for a ship like this because there was nothing straight in the ship. When you got to the

239
00:23:21,840 --> 00:23:26,640
mast, so where do you find the mast, he went to Canada. So he then once the ship is in the water,

240
00:23:26,640 --> 00:23:32,640
he goes to Canada finds tall Oregon pines. And they would could be as you know, have a diameter

241
00:23:32,640 --> 00:23:40,480
four feet or more. And that's the source of the the masts and the spars. But the oak came from

242
00:23:40,480 --> 00:23:48,080
the moor is a dartboard in Devon. And then they had to cut these by hand. So the challenge then was

243
00:23:48,080 --> 00:23:52,480
for Warwick, he said, well, if we're doing this the way they did back then, where are the sauce,

244
00:23:52,480 --> 00:23:58,960
where are the axes? They had to go back and find these old tools and old guys, you know,

245
00:23:58,960 --> 00:24:05,520
they were in their 80s who could teach younger people how to use them. And thus they built this without

246
00:24:05,520 --> 00:24:10,240
any modern devices, which is pretty amazing when you think of that alone. But that's how they

247
00:24:10,240 --> 00:24:16,640
constructed the ship and found the wood and then put it together to create it. I thought it was

248
00:24:16,640 --> 00:24:22,880
really interesting in your book when you're describing this process and using techniques and tools

249
00:24:22,880 --> 00:24:31,760
that they had in the 1600s, everything from like you said, the keel and the masts and the spars to even

250
00:24:31,760 --> 00:24:39,440
the galley designing the rigging. That was interesting too of how a scale model was designed. The optimal

251
00:24:39,440 --> 00:24:44,320
rigging was determined kind of by fussing around with this model. Can you describe that a little bit?

252
00:24:44,320 --> 00:24:51,200
I can. So the rigging are the ropes for people. You know, your audience knows this. But there's running

253
00:24:51,200 --> 00:24:57,360
rigging and standing rigging. So standing rigging is what you wrap around the mass to keep the mass in

254
00:24:57,360 --> 00:25:03,840
place. The running rigging goes through dead eyes and it holds the ship together. But putting that in

255
00:25:03,840 --> 00:25:09,840
in the right order within the ship so the lines don't interfere with each other, just imagine,

256
00:25:09,840 --> 00:25:15,600
you know, when you pull a cord out of the, when you get ready for Christmas lights, lay it in a month

257
00:25:15,600 --> 00:25:20,880
and they're all twisted together. Rigging is the same way. So you have to put it so each one is

258
00:25:20,880 --> 00:25:27,520
separate to do that. Steward up them who the owner of the shipyard went to a place called an abbey

259
00:25:27,520 --> 00:25:33,440
near Bricksem where there was a model of the golden hind. So the golden hind was the ship used the

260
00:25:33,440 --> 00:25:39,840
circumnavigate the world. Anyway, he rigged his little ship in a model. He rigged that with a wire

261
00:25:39,840 --> 00:25:46,000
and then he used a little bigger cord and then he used a wider cord and put in little dead eyes. But he

262
00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:51,840
rigged the model. So imagine if you're at home and you're rigging a model of a ship, you're making

263
00:25:51,840 --> 00:25:58,560
a little ship. That's what they used for the, as the design, the connect, you know, miles of rigging

264
00:25:58,560 --> 00:26:04,960
with the mass and the the yard arms in terms of life on the ship. So, you know, it's hard for us to

265
00:26:04,960 --> 00:26:11,920
imagine and when they had this over, this ship was exactly as it was in 1620, which meant there was

266
00:26:11,920 --> 00:26:18,160
no electricity, no refrigeration, no running water. The head was the head. It's a hole at the front of

267
00:26:18,160 --> 00:26:22,560
the ship and you go up and you do your business and hopefully a big wave didn't come and splash on

268
00:26:22,560 --> 00:26:30,400
you. But it was a, it was a very crude ship. So people have asked me, so how big was it? How, what

269
00:26:30,400 --> 00:26:37,440
are we talking about here? So just so you're suddenly confined to a large dining room or a meeting room

270
00:26:37,440 --> 00:26:43,760
that might be 100 by 25 feet. That's the full length of the deck of this, of the ship. So you now have a

271
00:26:43,760 --> 00:26:54,240
large conference room and you have 140 people in the conference room for 66 days. Can't get out,

272
00:26:54,240 --> 00:27:00,880
can't bathe, there's no running water. Pretty miserable. And that's, that was life there. They were

273
00:27:00,880 --> 00:27:06,560
stuck there for 66 days. That alone is amazing. And as, as the crew went over, they were, they were

274
00:27:06,560 --> 00:27:12,720
only 33 men on this ship. And they were, they just couldn't quite imagine what it must have been like

275
00:27:12,720 --> 00:27:19,920
400 years earlier for those original pilgrims, but they were driven by two core drivers for all of

276
00:27:19,920 --> 00:27:27,120
us. One happens to be faith in something. Half of them were very religious and wanted to see if they

277
00:27:27,120 --> 00:27:31,680
could set up a place where they could, could worship as they wanted to without the government interfering.

278
00:27:31,680 --> 00:27:35,760
And the other half that people were just business guys, they can, you know, this is the land of

279
00:27:35,760 --> 00:27:41,520
opportunity. I want to go there and, and, and make a start. It's supposed to be great in the new world.

280
00:27:41,520 --> 00:27:47,840
I want to get there. And so you had these two very different groups of people. Let's see,

281
00:27:47,840 --> 00:27:53,520
there's split roughly 50, 50. So you got half the group in this large conference room that you're

282
00:27:53,520 --> 00:27:58,640
stuck in for 66 days with no running water and no electricity. And you're kind of smelly and kind

283
00:27:58,640 --> 00:28:04,480
of whatever. But you now finally get to the, to the promised land, you make landfall. And they were

284
00:28:04,480 --> 00:28:09,280
at each other's throats by this time. They were pushing and shoving it. They really wanted to, who knows,

285
00:28:09,280 --> 00:28:16,080
this is get off this ship. But they didn't leave so fast. And what they did say is, look, when we get off

286
00:28:16,080 --> 00:28:22,400
this, this ship, when we get off of the Mayflower and the steppe shore for the first time, we could scatter.

287
00:28:22,400 --> 00:28:29,200
Hopefully we won't, but we might scatter. So let's now agree to disagree before we get off. And

288
00:28:29,200 --> 00:28:34,400
thus they wrote an agreement. They said, you know, let's make a body politic. We're going to call

289
00:28:34,400 --> 00:28:37,920
the people in this room. We're going to call us a body of people. We're going to call it a body

290
00:28:37,920 --> 00:28:44,160
politic. And once we agreed to disagree, we do know that we want one thing in common. And then

291
00:28:44,160 --> 00:28:50,560
as we don't like to have kind of just an equal laws for our general good. So by politic,

292
00:28:50,560 --> 00:28:55,920
just an equal laws, and they rate that down. Now, when they did write it down, what was kind of

293
00:28:55,920 --> 00:29:02,560
interesting, the man they were fleeing and doing this in opposition to at the time, not initially

294
00:29:02,560 --> 00:29:08,640
planning to, but now they realize they were beyond the king's reach. And that king, King James,

295
00:29:08,640 --> 00:29:14,800
had told people that it, you disagree with me. It's sedition. So, you know, you're going to risk your

296
00:29:14,800 --> 00:29:22,080
life and limb by writing your name on that document. Anyway, the document becomes known as the Mayflower

297
00:29:22,080 --> 00:29:30,160
Compact. It in turn becomes the prequel for what we know 150 years later as the Declaration of

298
00:29:30,160 --> 00:29:35,920
Independence and the US Constitution, where they're going to willing to sacrifice their life and liberty

299
00:29:35,920 --> 00:29:42,240
for those principles. So as you think about this story and the people on this ship,

300
00:29:42,240 --> 00:29:49,200
but they went through the decision to agree to disagree, it's really the prequel to Ken Burns

301
00:29:49,200 --> 00:29:55,280
the American Revolution. It began here. And this, anyway, that warwick didn't know quite that when

302
00:29:55,280 --> 00:29:58,960
he was starting it, but he wanted to build that ship because he thought it was a piece of America's

303
00:29:58,960 --> 00:30:05,520
lost history and it knew was important to the Americans. As Americans, we learn this story from the time

304
00:30:05,520 --> 00:30:11,200
where young children about the pilgrims coming over on the Mayflower and setting up the Plymouth

305
00:30:11,200 --> 00:30:18,400
Colony and leading to what we call the first Thanksgiving. And then later the celebration of that

306
00:30:18,400 --> 00:30:23,840
first Thanksgiving as a national holiday. But I have a lot of listeners from other parts of the world

307
00:30:23,840 --> 00:30:30,000
that probably don't know this story or unfamiliar with the Mayflower. Although it was more or less

308
00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:36,240
an unremarkable ship itself that has great significance to American history just as a symbol.

309
00:30:36,240 --> 00:30:42,080
You are correct. And so friends of mine would say, you know, why in the world do you remember this ship?

310
00:30:42,080 --> 00:30:48,720
Literally there were tens of thousands of ships that came over in those years from Europe,

311
00:30:48,720 --> 00:30:54,800
particularly from England, but elsewhere that came here. Why in the world did they remember this ship?

312
00:30:54,800 --> 00:31:00,320
There was Jamestown. Jamestown was before this. That was England's first big colony in the new world.

313
00:31:00,320 --> 00:31:07,040
But they remembered it because its passengers who got blown off course happened to write down

314
00:31:07,040 --> 00:31:12,560
on a piece of parchment what they wanted. That's the only reason that it's remembered. They just

315
00:31:12,560 --> 00:31:20,480
happened to write that down. And then subsequently when they survived that first year so they make it the

316
00:31:20,480 --> 00:31:26,640
the Wampana, the Native Americans that were here helped them. So they worked together in Unison.

317
00:31:26,640 --> 00:31:32,400
And so they land in November, a year later the harvest is there and they think, wow, we should have

318
00:31:32,400 --> 00:31:38,800
a, we should thank each other for what we've done. And they have a great celebration. And the Indian

319
00:31:38,800 --> 00:31:45,280
chiefs come, the colonists are there. All of that is described by a guy, Bradford, the same guy that

320
00:31:45,280 --> 00:31:50,880
wrote a, of climate plantation and he describes it to people back in England. And he does it for two

321
00:31:50,880 --> 00:31:57,120
reasons. One is he wants to tell them a wonderful it was that we've worked in unity for a common purpose.

322
00:31:57,120 --> 00:32:02,160
And that's also the sales pitch because you know, the government wants people to know how great it is

323
00:32:02,160 --> 00:32:07,520
in the new world because we were still in the new world. So but that's why they remembered this

324
00:32:07,520 --> 00:32:14,640
particular ship because people wrote those words down. None of those words appear in America's

325
00:32:14,640 --> 00:32:20,000
constitutional documents, the declaration of independence, the constitution, but the aspirational

326
00:32:20,000 --> 00:32:27,280
goal of what they sought was the driving force. And one of the passengers, a woman named Priscilla

327
00:32:27,280 --> 00:32:33,040
Mullins, she had a couple of kids, a lot of kids, but their grandkids and great-grandkids became

328
00:32:33,680 --> 00:32:38,720
John Adams and John Quincy Adams. And of course, we know they went on to be president of the United

329
00:32:38,720 --> 00:32:43,920
States. So there's a lot of connection between this group and the signers of the Declaration of

330
00:32:43,920 --> 00:32:49,440
Independence and our nation's core history, the values that got us going. That's why people

331
00:32:49,440 --> 00:32:53,760
remember the ship. That was only one of 10,000 otherwise, yeah, wouldn't remember it at all.

332
00:32:53,760 --> 00:33:01,200
And it's a good timing this episode because it will come out the week of Thanksgiving, 2025.

333
00:33:02,640 --> 00:33:09,600
So this is a good time to be talking about the story. What's the ship is completed? There's a lot

334
00:33:09,600 --> 00:33:15,200
of excitement and people are like you said coming to Brickson and seeing the ship. What was the plan

335
00:33:15,200 --> 00:33:22,240
as far as what course they would take and when were they going to leave? The billiards original plan

336
00:33:22,240 --> 00:33:29,440
because you wanted to be historically accurate was to a sale across a basically 40 degrees north

337
00:33:29,440 --> 00:33:35,440
which is the North Atlantic kind of a straight line. However, the British maritime authorities

338
00:33:35,440 --> 00:33:40,800
were warning of rough weather and possibly ice at sea because following the Titanic,

339
00:33:40,800 --> 00:33:48,000
they would keep track of icebergs and things like that. So five days out from from Plymouth,

340
00:33:48,000 --> 00:33:53,760
he decided to take a different route. He took the path of columns to avoid that watery thing.

341
00:33:53,760 --> 00:34:01,680
So it extended the the voyage by 2,000 miles or he had gone straight 40 degrees to be about 3,500 miles.

342
00:34:01,680 --> 00:34:10,080
The route he ended up taking was about 5,500 and that route goes south. It goes through the Canary Islands,

343
00:34:10,080 --> 00:34:15,840
you go off the coast of Africa and then you catch the trade winds at about 20 degrees north.

344
00:34:15,840 --> 00:34:22,000
That then blows you west. So then take that across. The trade winds are carrying them over.

345
00:34:22,000 --> 00:34:28,560
You get to Bermuda, the Sargasso Sea, you turn right, you go north and then they went north,

346
00:34:28,560 --> 00:34:35,520
they go a little west of Bermuda and they go on to Massachusetts. We all know that

347
00:34:35,520 --> 00:34:42,880
your tails of sailing in that part of the ocean, the waters get very warm and it can be very

348
00:34:42,880 --> 00:34:51,120
treacherous and can change overnight. So while the bulk of the voyage, the original voyage took 66 days,

349
00:34:51,120 --> 00:34:57,440
which was 3,500 miles, 66 days, this is 2,000 miles longer and they did it in 55 days because they had

350
00:34:57,440 --> 00:35:03,360
the winds with them. But when they got to Bermuda, they ran into this incredibly bad weather,

351
00:35:03,360 --> 00:35:09,760
bad weather being a, you know, a gale force 8 in the Beaufort scale, 50, 60 mile an hour gales

352
00:35:09,760 --> 00:35:16,400
and billiards in that dramatic moment as they're going forward, he's thinking, wow, what am I going to do

353
00:35:16,400 --> 00:35:22,400
and what does other ships do? Well, what the ships back then did and what he did was they call Maya Hall.

354
00:35:22,400 --> 00:35:27,840
So some people say when you lie a hall, it's what you do when sailing becomes a matter of survival.

355
00:35:27,840 --> 00:35:34,640
You pull up the sails, you'll cinch them down, you batten the hatches, you hold the wheel hard to

356
00:35:34,640 --> 00:35:41,840
the right to starboard, you lash it down and you let the wind blow you wherever it might. So that's

357
00:35:41,840 --> 00:35:47,360
what they did and they luckily were able to survive that story, which is pretty remarkable because

358
00:35:47,360 --> 00:35:54,640
when Charlton began and the architect Baker commented on this, he said, you know, when he started,

359
00:35:54,640 --> 00:36:00,240
people were saying you'll never find the plans, but he did find them. Then they said, well, you know,

360
00:36:00,240 --> 00:36:05,040
you found the plans, but you'll never find a shipyard that can build that kind of a ship, but he did.

361
00:36:05,040 --> 00:36:09,200
And they said, well, you know, you never, you got the plan, you got the built, you'll never find a

362
00:36:09,200 --> 00:36:15,600
crew, did find the crew pretty remarkably. Thank you, John Houston and the Piquad diventure.

363
00:36:15,600 --> 00:36:22,080
And then it, whether this gigantic storm, which really to the extent that anyone might have doubted

364
00:36:22,080 --> 00:36:28,800
the sea worthiness of this replica versus the original, it survived it and came through with

365
00:36:28,800 --> 00:36:34,560
really the flying colors given all they could. It went 38 degrees, you know, over, nearly and

366
00:36:34,560 --> 00:36:40,480
so it up was not a rat liner. Somebody would kind of mass, but so it up was on the ship during the

367
00:36:40,480 --> 00:36:46,240
voyage and he knew what 38 degrees is and a few more degrees. He'd be tumbling to the bottom of the

368
00:36:46,240 --> 00:36:51,200
ocean's floor, but, but they made it and there's some certainly dramatic scenes in the book of the

369
00:36:51,200 --> 00:36:57,760
story getting those sales in, but, and then they arrived. It was just a remarkable voyage. Yeah,

370
00:36:57,760 --> 00:37:03,360
I don't recall now. I know on the ship they had a radio and some other safety equipment,

371
00:37:04,000 --> 00:37:08,880
but was there anybody any other ships trailing them or are keeping an eye on them or they were just

372
00:37:08,880 --> 00:37:13,680
on the road? They're on their own. Sometimes it wouldn't see people for days, it wouldn't see

373
00:37:13,680 --> 00:37:19,200
a ship for days. They would just be by themselves and it's truly a dot if you consider

374
00:37:19,200 --> 00:37:27,280
100 by, it's the ships 100 feet long, 25 feet wide. That's a quirk in the sea. And, no, they were,

375
00:37:27,280 --> 00:37:32,960
they were by themselves with it. They had a radio because the maritime authorities in Britain

376
00:37:32,960 --> 00:37:38,720
mandated they had to carry a radio. So they had that for emergency purposes. They had life rafts,

377
00:37:38,720 --> 00:37:45,280
which again, they were mandated to carry, but that was it, a radio and a couple life rafts.

378
00:37:45,280 --> 00:37:49,680
Good luck. So when they hit that storm, they coast guards in our planes to look for them because they

379
00:37:49,680 --> 00:37:55,920
were blowing about 60 miles off course, but no one has blown overboard. So that was, that was good.

380
00:37:55,920 --> 00:38:01,520
But they were, they were on their own. So 55 days, they make it across and what kind of

381
00:38:01,520 --> 00:38:08,000
reception do they receive in Plymouth? Fabulous. People are so glad to see them. So,

382
00:38:08,000 --> 00:38:12,400
must have been quite a size. It was a great, it was quite a size, but it's, what's funny is so,

383
00:38:12,400 --> 00:38:18,400
during the writing of this, I, in addition to meeting a Randall with Warwick Charlton's son,

384
00:38:18,400 --> 00:38:25,440
I also got to know Hatsi Hornblower. Hatsi is Harry Hornblower's daughter. So at one point,

385
00:38:25,440 --> 00:38:30,960
Hatsi said, "Well, you know, my dad said there was a mutiny on the ship. Do you know anything about

386
00:38:30,960 --> 00:38:37,920
a mutiny? What's that about?" I said, "Well, there wasn't a mutiny, however, after that storm, so they

387
00:38:37,920 --> 00:38:45,040
get to this tremendous storm offer, Bermuda, Gail Force 8, 38 degree rolls, they make it."

388
00:38:45,040 --> 00:38:51,600
And then there suddenly be a call. There's like the wind dies. They're just sitting there. Nothing

389
00:38:51,600 --> 00:38:59,440
happens. And out of the blue pops a periscope. Looks around as its eyepiece turned to the ship,

390
00:38:59,440 --> 00:39:06,320
and before they know it an entire submarine comes on. And the captain says, "You want a tow?"

391
00:39:06,320 --> 00:39:15,360
And Billiars goes, "Yeah!" And the crew said, "No!" And so, anyway, there was a moment there where he

392
00:39:15,360 --> 00:39:23,440
had the gear pulled out, and he was thinking, "Let's have a tow." Men said, "No!" By good fortune, the

393
00:39:23,440 --> 00:39:29,840
Coast Guard flew over and dropped over a few dozen cans of beer, so the guys had a drink while

394
00:39:29,840 --> 00:39:35,760
they were waiting for the captain to say, "But it was only the captain's choice on what would be done

395
00:39:35,760 --> 00:39:43,200
unless the God somehow intervened." And they did. So the next morning, after being be called,

396
00:39:43,200 --> 00:39:49,440
and fighting off that periscope submarine, the wind came up, and they were able to get moving. And

397
00:39:49,440 --> 00:39:55,360
again, just serendipitously, the queen herself shows up in the form of the Queen Elizabeth

398
00:39:55,360 --> 00:40:01,920
Ocean Liner. And in the opposite direction comes the US's most magnificent

399
00:40:01,920 --> 00:40:07,840
taut ship, the eagle on its annual training crew. So you got the queen on one side, the eagle on

400
00:40:07,840 --> 00:40:14,320
the other, the eagles captain, Carl Zittle, who used to sail with billiars, sails over. He

401
00:40:14,320 --> 00:40:22,640
shouts out the mariner's classic "What ship?" And billiars shouts back the Mayflower, 350 years out of

402
00:40:22,640 --> 00:40:29,760
London. And it was fabulous. Anyway, they then gave directions to that tucket, they made it,

403
00:40:29,760 --> 00:40:36,960
and then when they arrived, it was a huge celebration in the inclimuth. So it was a dramatic and the

404
00:40:36,960 --> 00:40:42,240
people just went nuts. And of course, when they walked ashore, the first person that greased them says

405
00:40:42,240 --> 00:40:49,200
"Welcome to America." So they made it. What's on the cover of the book? And what really got the

406
00:40:49,200 --> 00:40:55,760
world's attention even more than inclimuth? So when I first saw the image on the cover, which shows

407
00:40:55,760 --> 00:41:02,800
that ship going into New York Harbor, I thought it was a fake. I thought it was a photo shot. And

408
00:41:02,800 --> 00:41:08,640
it turns out it wasn't, it isn't. It was taken by National Geographic's most renowned photographer

409
00:41:08,640 --> 00:41:14,720
of the era. I fell in a B Anthony Stewart. Anyway, it goes into New York, tremendous ceremony.

410
00:41:14,720 --> 00:41:21,360
One of the people that loved this story and loved sailing was Jack Kennedy. So when the ship was in

411
00:41:21,360 --> 00:41:26,800
plymouth, John, president of Kennedy in the future, when the plymouth was when the ship was in plymouth

412
00:41:26,800 --> 00:41:32,240
after it landed, he was on a campaign tour, getting an early start on the presidential run.

413
00:41:33,120 --> 00:41:38,720
And he was in plymouth speaking to the, I think the Massachusetts Bar Association or something.

414
00:41:38,720 --> 00:41:43,920
But before leaving town, he went over to the Mayflower. And there's images of him on the ship,

415
00:41:43,920 --> 00:41:47,760
holding the wheel, kind of guiding it, you know, maybe the ship of state for the future.

416
00:41:47,760 --> 00:41:55,520
He liked it so much that a few days later, the ship appears now in New York Harbor on July 1,

417
00:41:55,520 --> 00:42:04,640
1957, July 4, 1957. Future president John F. Kennedy read the full text of the Declaration of

418
00:42:04,640 --> 00:42:12,000
Independence on WQXR Radio. And you can still find that. It's incredibly story. So his connection to

419
00:42:12,000 --> 00:42:17,120
that ship, the ship going into New York Harbor, a lot of people think that the tall ships that

420
00:42:17,120 --> 00:42:23,360
eventually became Operation Sail began with this entrance. And of course, Kennedy was a great

421
00:42:23,360 --> 00:42:30,000
proponent of Operation Sail. They had met with him, you know, in the early part of 1963.

422
00:42:30,000 --> 00:42:36,080
But he was assassinated before the first hot sail could happen. But it was carried on in his name.

423
00:42:36,080 --> 00:42:42,240
And I like to think that part of its head-a-gree is this ship that's shown on the front of my book.

424
00:42:42,240 --> 00:42:47,840
And the National Geographic took a great picture of them. Describe at the moment as the photo of the

425
00:42:47,840 --> 00:42:52,960
century is hit even to this day. It looks like a photo shop. I just can't quite believe it's really

426
00:42:52,960 --> 00:43:00,320
there, but it really was. Yeah, it makes it even more awe-inspiring that there's a US Army blimp in the photo.

427
00:43:00,320 --> 00:43:08,400
Well, the blimp is there. I don't want to give too much about the story, but so that when they built

428
00:43:08,400 --> 00:43:15,200
this ship, the warwick's goal was to give this as a thank you gift for America. The foreign

429
00:43:15,200 --> 00:43:19,600
office didn't like what he was doing. They wanted to do something else. Nonetheless, he's able to

430
00:43:19,600 --> 00:43:27,920
get it in the water. It's launched in September in September 1956. And at that moment, he

431
00:43:27,920 --> 00:43:33,440
and Stuart Uppum and Alan Villiers are thinking, "Wow, despite all the problems we've had,

432
00:43:33,440 --> 00:43:37,680
the ship's going to make it. It's going to be really good. It's going to celebrate the special

433
00:43:37,680 --> 00:43:42,240
relationship." Well, a month later, the special relationship went into the toilet,

434
00:43:42,240 --> 00:43:49,200
written in Gehudes with France, and Israel started a war in the Middle East that became known as

435
00:43:49,200 --> 00:43:56,320
the Suez crisis. It was in the middle of Eisenhower's campaigning. He was running as a peace candidate.

436
00:43:56,320 --> 00:44:04,960
Anyway, Brits start a war in the Middle East. Watching that happen is Russia. So, Russia is thinking,

437
00:44:04,960 --> 00:44:10,080
you know, with Britain, France, if they get a tax start a war in the Middle East, I'm going to go

438
00:44:10,080 --> 00:44:16,480
attack the guy next to me because I'm kind of like his territory. The Soviet Union attacks Ukraine's

439
00:44:16,480 --> 00:44:22,720
neighbor, Hungary, and viciously crushes the Hungarian Revolution a month after Suez. So,

440
00:44:22,720 --> 00:44:28,160
you have the ship in the water in September. The next month you have Suez. The month after that,

441
00:44:28,160 --> 00:44:35,680
you have Russia invading its neighbor. Anyway, it's the US and Britain, or now it had loggerheads,

442
00:44:35,680 --> 00:44:42,880
but a meeting was held in Bermuda in March, and the US and Britain are trying to get their,

443
00:44:42,880 --> 00:44:47,440
you know, let the world know that they're friendly again. I mean, how in the world can you tell the world

444
00:44:47,440 --> 00:44:55,680
that we're friends beyond what they've been trying to do? And it occurs to them that a symbol of unity

445
00:44:55,680 --> 00:45:01,440
would perhaps be the best way to tell the Russians and everybody else that the United States

446
00:45:01,440 --> 00:45:09,920
and Great Britain stand as one, and that thing was the ship. So, the Mayflower too suddenly went from a

447
00:45:09,920 --> 00:45:18,320
token of past sacrifice to a diplomatic ambassador, uniting the United States and the UK at a moment

448
00:45:18,320 --> 00:45:25,920
when it needed it the most. And this story captivated the world's attention as nobody does the

449
00:45:25,920 --> 00:45:33,280
conquering amount ever stood a few years earlier. It was the story of 1957, and it described unity

450
00:45:33,280 --> 00:45:38,000
between the two countries. And following that conference in Bermuda, Eisenhower,

451
00:45:39,040 --> 00:45:44,080
that's why he had the blimp there. They said, you know, something, I guess this isn't such a publicity stunt.

452
00:45:44,080 --> 00:45:49,840
And the British foreign office said, no, for all this guy being a, not a diplomat, he certainly did

453
00:45:49,840 --> 00:45:55,440
something pretty remarkable. And thus the blimp is there. And it's so, I guess they see the

454
00:45:55,440 --> 00:46:01,280
rest of history, but it's a pretty amazing story that's relevant today. Again, particularly if you

455
00:46:01,280 --> 00:46:06,800
consider the document that was signed in the main cabinet of that ship, but again, which is

456
00:46:06,800 --> 00:46:10,400
sitting up in Plymouth, that's where they think they signed in that Mayflower compact.

457
00:46:10,400 --> 00:46:16,480
And the great, great, great grandchildren of the people that signed that document were then

458
00:46:16,480 --> 00:46:21,120
involved with the declaration of independence 150 years later. So there's a great connection

459
00:46:21,120 --> 00:46:28,160
between this story, America's 250th anniversary that makes it very relevant in part because it's

460
00:46:28,160 --> 00:46:34,640
going to be sailing in a year. So next summer, tall ships are coming back. The people in New York

461
00:46:34,640 --> 00:46:39,920
tried their darned us to get the ship to come back to New York to relive that entrance, which is

462
00:46:39,920 --> 00:46:44,800
fabulous. The ship is not going to be able to get to New York, but it will be in Boston harbor.

463
00:46:44,800 --> 00:46:50,320
So for people that are in Boston next summer in July, the Mayflower too will be sailing in that

464
00:46:50,320 --> 00:46:56,560
harbor, along with other tall ships, the US as Eagle Coast Guard Eagle and other ships. It'll

465
00:46:56,560 --> 00:47:01,680
be a sight to be safe. Had his horn blower put the Mayflower too into use at Plymouth plantation,

466
00:47:01,680 --> 00:47:06,160
as part of his overall vision of the museum that he's building there.

467
00:47:06,160 --> 00:47:13,200
So it becomes central to the museum, it's central to the museum to this day. So that again,

468
00:47:13,200 --> 00:47:20,000
you have this ship of immigrants, the Mayflower lands and once they land on Plymouth Rock,

469
00:47:20,000 --> 00:47:25,120
they start a colony and that colony is called a Plymouth plantation. And so the two go hand in glove.

470
00:47:25,120 --> 00:47:32,400
So the ship is there today docked at the harbor side and the plantation is located

471
00:47:32,400 --> 00:47:37,360
the museum where the Plymouth, where the pilgrims originally were, which is by the eel river

472
00:47:37,360 --> 00:47:45,280
about five miles from town. And just by coincidence, it's exactly on the spot where the people were

473
00:47:45,280 --> 00:47:51,760
400 years ago. It's pretty amazing, but they go together and it's a story. It's an origin story.

474
00:47:51,760 --> 00:47:59,600
So it was America considers who we are and where we come from, a big part of that origin story

475
00:47:59,600 --> 00:48:06,080
connects back to this ship and where they decided to settle, which was in the Massachusetts.

476
00:48:06,080 --> 00:48:11,040
And of course, when they spread out every place else, again, the only reason you remember any of that

477
00:48:11,040 --> 00:48:16,720
is that they got lost and they decided to write an agreement before they got off the ship,

478
00:48:16,720 --> 00:48:21,040
a green to disagree and it was called the Mayflower Compact.

479
00:48:22,000 --> 00:48:27,920
And that Plymouth plantation, that museum now, I believe it's been renamed to Plymouth Patoxit,

480
00:48:27,920 --> 00:48:28,960
is that correct?

481
00:48:28,960 --> 00:48:36,240
It's correct. So it was its name Plymouth Patoxit. They renamed it in 2020, five years ago,

482
00:48:36,240 --> 00:48:42,640
following the, it was a 400th anniversary of the sailing and the United States government,

483
00:48:42,640 --> 00:48:48,960
the Department of the Interior, honored the ship by declaring it a national historic site,

484
00:48:48,960 --> 00:48:54,560
saying that it had made a great contribution to the nation, to educating people about our past.

485
00:48:54,560 --> 00:48:59,440
And also in recognition of that, the museum chain tit's name to the original

486
00:48:59,440 --> 00:49:06,480
location's name, which was Patoxit. So instead of being Plymouth Patoxit, Plymouth Patoxit,

487
00:49:06,480 --> 00:49:08,160
museums, whatever it's now called.

488
00:49:08,160 --> 00:49:14,080
And that's open to the public to visit people can tour the ship, I believe, still?

489
00:49:14,080 --> 00:49:18,480
It's a, it's a great family vacation. So where is it and how do you get there?

490
00:49:19,280 --> 00:49:23,520
Certainly this time of the year, a lot of people are thinking about Thanksgiving, but anytime of

491
00:49:23,520 --> 00:49:27,920
the year, particularly in the spring and summer, it's open, it's always open to the public.

492
00:49:27,920 --> 00:49:33,280
So Plymouth, an hour south of Boston, the ship itself is at the harbor side,

493
00:49:33,280 --> 00:49:39,280
and then the museum, the buildings, and one of the, the hornblower centers where you enter

494
00:49:39,280 --> 00:49:45,920
is about five miles out of town and you'll find costume docents telling the history, you'll find

495
00:49:45,920 --> 00:49:51,280
people on the ship telling the history. When you get off the ship, there's a lot going on because

496
00:49:51,280 --> 00:49:57,360
of hundreds of yards from that is Plymouth Rock. So you think about Plymouth Rock and the jokes and

497
00:49:57,360 --> 00:50:02,160
songs that have been written about it. There really is a Plymouth Rock and it's near the ship.

498
00:50:02,160 --> 00:50:06,560
And just up the street from that is the oldest museum in the country called Pilgrim Hall.

499
00:50:06,560 --> 00:50:12,640
There's lots to do, great dining, great, great beaches. So you think of all the people to go to

500
00:50:12,640 --> 00:50:19,040
Cape Cod, they're right there. So if you're driving the Cape Cod, you put yourself to go by and see

501
00:50:19,040 --> 00:50:23,920
the Mayflower, which is in fact seen by a lot of people annually. So since it arrived, I think more

502
00:50:23,920 --> 00:50:29,760
than 25 million people have actually gone on board it. It's one of the top tourist attractions of

503
00:50:29,760 --> 00:50:35,840
Massachusetts and New England. And I was reading about this too that it went underwent some repairs and

504
00:50:35,840 --> 00:50:42,960
some maintenance over the last, uh, some recent years, including at the Mystic Seaport Restoration

505
00:50:42,960 --> 00:50:49,280
Shipyard. That's correct. So in the mid teens, it was discovered that the wood, because it is a

506
00:50:49,280 --> 00:50:55,600
wooden ship. So it had the maintenance discovered some wood right. So it was determined that it needed a

507
00:50:55,600 --> 00:51:03,840
major renovation. They really needed to replicate the replica. And of that 70% of the wood was replaced.

508
00:51:03,840 --> 00:51:11,040
The original keel is still there, but 70% of the framing ship the whole thing was was redone.

509
00:51:11,040 --> 00:51:16,000
So one of the interesting stories is where in the world you find those live oaks today and they came

510
00:51:16,000 --> 00:51:22,000
from various parts of the United States, you know, from the south, they came from a royal Danish forest

511
00:51:22,000 --> 00:51:28,960
where they sent over live oak to be done. The yard arms they redid, but the main mask instead of

512
00:51:28,960 --> 00:51:38,320
being a Oregon pine single tree, it is now a laminated, Douglas fir spire. So it's Douglas fir

513
00:51:38,320 --> 00:51:44,000
laminated. They expected the last longer, but beyond that, everything on it is pretty much as

514
00:51:44,000 --> 00:51:53,120
originally done with two notable exceptions. One are the sails. So the sails in 1957 were made with

515
00:51:53,120 --> 00:52:00,720
flax canvas. So flax is a fiber thinner than a human hair. And it has been used to make the wind

516
00:52:00,720 --> 00:52:06,880
catchers since the great tea clipper days for people to go sailing from London to Bombay and Calcutta

517
00:52:06,880 --> 00:52:14,320
to get tea. That was the sale. Years later when they were doing the renovation, flax became very

518
00:52:14,320 --> 00:52:20,640
difficult and expensive to find. And it was also heavy. So they came up with a new substance. It was,

519
00:52:20,640 --> 00:52:26,000
you know, kind of poly had to shrink the polyester, the feel of cotton. And that, though that became

520
00:52:26,000 --> 00:52:32,400
the sort of became known as oceanis made by north sails of New England. And those are the sails that

521
00:52:32,400 --> 00:52:39,120
are on the ship. Similarly, when they did the renovation back in the day, they being centuries ago,

522
00:52:39,120 --> 00:52:44,960
they would use hemp. And hemp was the material used to make these the rigging, standing and running.

523
00:52:44,960 --> 00:52:51,360
50 years later, very difficult to find hemp. And so they used a new thing called dinema,

524
00:52:51,360 --> 00:52:59,840
which is a special cordage that has many times a strength of steel, lighter weight than hemp. So

525
00:52:59,840 --> 00:53:06,640
they changed things with stronger lightweight materials, stronger lighter weight sails, stronger

526
00:53:06,640 --> 00:53:12,320
lighter weight rigging. And then to counter that, because if it gets too light above, you know,

527
00:53:12,320 --> 00:53:18,800
get tippy, they read the ballast in the ship. So it originally had 130 tons of old rail

528
00:53:18,800 --> 00:53:25,760
irons and steel and cement. They took that out and they replaced it with a well ventilated lead

529
00:53:25,760 --> 00:53:30,240
at the bottom. So it's, the ship looks great. It looks fabulous.

530
00:53:30,240 --> 00:53:37,840
The book is called Project Mayflower, building and sailing a 17th century replica by Richard A. Stone.

531
00:53:37,840 --> 00:53:43,440
And where can everybody find your book? It's available wherever books are sold. The quick plug for

532
00:53:43,440 --> 00:53:50,160
the book is published by Alliance Press, a division of a low peak watt. It's distributed by Simon

533
00:53:50,160 --> 00:53:56,160
and Schuster. It's a hard copy and ebook. An audio edition will be out by the end of the year.

534
00:53:56,160 --> 00:54:01,120
And the book not only has gotten good reviews here in England at the Imperial War Museum,

535
00:54:01,600 --> 00:54:07,520
to home of the church of libraries, they cite the work for its contributions to understanding the

536
00:54:07,520 --> 00:54:13,280
Suez crisis and what was going on. And if you go to the London's Greenwich Museum,

537
00:54:13,280 --> 00:54:18,080
cared library, you'll find a copy of the book. So people seem to have liked it and hopefully

538
00:54:18,080 --> 00:54:22,160
readers will like it if they, and they get it. And if they don't want to read it, they can wait a month

539
00:54:22,160 --> 00:54:28,240
and listen to it. I liked it tremendously. It's a delightful book. And of course, there's a lot more

540
00:54:28,240 --> 00:54:33,120
detail in the book, especially about the building of it, the international tensions at the point of

541
00:54:33,120 --> 00:54:40,240
the war that broke out, the voyage across the sea, a lot more about the people involved. So I highly

542
00:54:40,240 --> 00:54:46,000
recommend it. And Richard, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to talk to me today.

543
00:54:46,000 --> 00:54:49,360
Well, thank you for let me join you. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

544
00:54:49,360 --> 00:54:55,440
You as well. That's going to do it for Project Mayflower, the story of the Mayflower too.

545
00:54:55,440 --> 00:55:00,400
Thank you so much for listening. Shipwrax and Sea Dogs is written, edited, and produced by me,

546
00:55:00,400 --> 00:55:06,720
Rich Napolitano. Original theme music is by Sean Sigfried and you can find him at SeanSigFree.com.

547
00:55:06,720 --> 00:55:12,160
All episodes, show notes, and show merchandise can be found at shipwraxandseadogs.com.

548
00:55:12,160 --> 00:55:18,880
For ad free listening, please join the officers club on Patreon. At patreon.com/shipwraxpop.

549
00:55:18,880 --> 00:55:23,040
For just $5 a month, you will get at least two bonus episodes every month,

550
00:55:23,040 --> 00:55:30,400
and all episodes are ad free. That's patreon.com/shipwraxpop. Please do me a huge favor and leave a rating

551
00:55:30,400 --> 00:55:35,840
and review of the show in your podcast app. It costs nothing, only takes a moment, and would help me

552
00:55:35,840 --> 00:55:41,840
out tremendously. I would greatly appreciate it. Please join me again next time, but until then,

553
00:55:41,840 --> 00:55:48,320
don't forget to wear your life jackets.