Published: November 21, 2009 07:30 pm      

Brave vessel finds ‘harbor’ in England

Some ships are more than ships. Their names live on: the Santa Maria, the Constitution, the Victory, the Monitor, the Titanic, the Arizona …

But one of the most historic of all is the Mayflower, the wooden sailing vessel that brought the Pilgrims to Cape Cod in 1620. They were the same Pilgrims who celebrated the very first Thanksgiving Day, a holiday we will celebrate on Thursday.

Most old wooden ships vanished long ago. Some rotted away, some burned. Some were sunk in battle, others were lost at sea.

But the oaken bones of the Mayflower may still be with us. According to some experts, the 90-foot-long ribbed hull, turned upside down, forms the roof of a former barn in Jordans, a Buckinghamshire village about an hour’s drive from London.

According to information from the Alden House Historic Site in Duxbury, Mass., the Mayflower probably was built before 1606. She may have been involved in chasing the Spanish Armada up the English Channel in 1588.

Her home port was Harwich, and later London. According to some old records, she was used to import wine from France, and she hauled hats, hemp, Spanish salt, hops, vinegar and wine to Norway, returning to England with tar, pine planks and herring.

After the voyage to Cape Cod, she returned to England in 1621, and resumed her service in trade between London and France. By 1624, she was declared to be in ruins and valued at only 128 English pounds.

“There have been several claims advanced as to what happened to the Mayflower after she was scrapped. One is that the timbers of the ship were incorporated into the construction of a barn in Buckinghamshire,” says a skeptical statement from The Alden House.

Plimoth Plantation, the recreated circa-1620 village, takes the same tack. Its Web site says, simply, “Nobody knows for sure what happened to the original Mayflower. The last record of the ship was an assessment of her value in 1624. After that, she disappeared from maritime records. Several places in England claim to have a piece of the original ship, but there is no historical proof to support these claims.”

As usual, that all depends on whom you ask. It was common practice, in the old days, to recycle wood from wooden ships that were considered unfit for further sea service.

In the early 1900s, a Quaker historian named the Rev. J. Rendel Harris researched the legend that the Mayflower timbers wound up as part of the barn in Jordans, which later became the Quaker Meeting House. He researched old wills and deeds and concluded that the story was true.

There’s no doubt that the hull of a ship was used to build the barn roof, and the age of the barn coincides with the time at which the Mayflower likely was scrapped.

The whole story was told in 1982 by Henry N. Ferguson, in an article that appeared in The American Legion magazine.

On Dec. 21, 1620, the Mayflower, a ship of 180 tons, landed on Cape Cod after a rough, nine-week voyage from England. Thirty-three of the 102 passengers were children. Two people died during the voyage, and three babies were born.

By spring, more than half of the Pilgrims and much of the crew were dead. Christopher Jones, the ship’s captain and part owner, left Plymouth for England the following May.

Harris and other experts say that there’s ample evidence to show that the ribs of the ship still exist. They found a 350-year-old bill of sale that showed that the retired vessel was sold for $384 to a Buckinghamshire farmer named William Russell. The five anchors were sold for less than $100 and the sails fetched $45.

Russell later sold his farm and the barn to the Quakers, who have owned it ever since.

One of the more tantalizing bits of evidence is the fact that one of the beams has the letters “R HAR I” on it. Scholars say that is all that remains of the words, “MAYFLOWER HARWICH.”

Even more intriguing is the diary of William Bradford, leader of the Plymouth Colony, who recorded countless details of the Mayflower’s 1620 voyage. He described a harrowing storm that cracked one of the massive ship’s beams, and the ingenious use of a giant iron bolt from a printing press to mend it.

Sure enough, one of the roof beams in the Mayflower barn has a 15-foot-long crack that corresponds exactly with the description in Bradford’s diary. Another beam, which once formed a doorway in a ship, offers more proof: the carved figure of a mayflower.

According to Ferguson, Americans have tried repeatedly to buy the Quaker Meeting House and move it to the United States, but the Quakers refuse to sell.

“There are far worse places where the Mayflower might have ended her days,” Ferguson wrote. “In fact, looking at the English countryside falling away in all directions from the barn, one thinks the Pilgrims could hardly have wished for a more fitting ‘harbor’ for the brave little vessel that carried them safely to America more than 350 years ago.”

Danville native Kevin Cullen is a former Commercial-News reporter. Reach him at irishhiker@aol.com.