Mayflower II (Brixham, 1957)

One of the boldest commemorations of the Mayflower, and not just in Britain but the USA too, happened in a non-anniversary year. This was the Mayflower II, a reconstruction of what the original ship may have looked like, and its retracing of an approximation of the voyage of the Pilgrims in the spring and summer of 1957.

The project was the brainchild of Warwick Charlton, an ambitious and erudite Fleet Street man who wanted to acknowledge the American contribution during the Second World War. In North Africa, he had served as a press officer to General Montgomery, alongside other Americans. He apparently got the idea to build a replica of the Mayflower as a symbol of Anglo-American good-feeling after coming across a copy of William Bradford’s 17^th century History of Plymouth Plantation. ‘Something more permanent yet less official was needed’, Charlton remembered, ‘some measure or plan that would perhaps link the hearts and minds of the peoples and not merely the governmental parties’. When the voyage was completed, and an exhibition in New York wrapped up, the ship was to be donated to the Plimoth Plantation (a ‘living village’ near the site of the original colony, created in 1947).

Charlton told his public relations partner, John Lowe, and the two began to drum up support around the high society of London, from meeting Ambassador Winthrop Aldrich at the House of Commons to Lord Mountbatten in the Albert Hall. In 1954, Charlton was put in touch with Felix Fenston – a wealthy London property owner and keen amateur yachtsman – who put up the initial £500 to get the Mayflower Project underway. Rather than launching a public appeal for funds, however, financing came from commerce and industry. Companies across Britain that caught the Mayflower II bug gave materials and products – their generosity then rewarded with exposure in magazines and the press. The main source of income, however, was sponsored ‘treasure chests’ filled with examples of British craftmanship (carried on board the ship and sold in the USA at the New York exhibition).

JWA Upham Ltd’s shipyard in Brixham, in Devon, was chosen as the place to construct the vessel. Upham’s had been building wooden ships for more than 150 years. William A. Baker, an American naval architect, had already undertaken five years of research into what the Mayflower may have looked like. Using a varied historical approach, he pieced together the scant information about the Mayflower in Pilgrim documents like Bradford’s History and Mourt’s Relation (1622), and added details from contemporary paintings and descriptions of other ships, such as in Walter Raleigh’s Judicious and Select Essays and Observations (1650). When Charlton found out about Baker’s designs, and Plimoth Plantation’s desire to use them to build a replica, a new relationship was forged between all three.

There was a striving for a sense of historical accuracy in other ways. Original shipwrights’ tools of a similar design to the 17^th century were used – though there were some electrical drills and saws in action too. Furniture on board the ship was also designed from examples surviving from the period. When the ship was launched in Brixham in September 1956, 17^th century procedures were followed. A short religious service was held, in this case carried out by Reverend H.T. Yeomans, the Vicar of Brixham, with added sea-based hymns and a prayer from the inauguration speech of Abraham Lincoln. A golden ‘loving cup’ was also used to toast the voyage, before being thrown into the sea for a hardy swimmer to retrieve. Some of the crew also dressed up in ‘period’ costume – the ‘black Pilgrims’ hats, sober suits and buckled shoes’ commonly believed (if not necessarily accurately) to be what the Puritan settlers wore at the time.

Indeed, total historical accuracy is never truly possible – and the Mayflower II had its modern quirks. A ship’s radio, for example, was required by law, as were inflatable rubber life-rafts. As the Times put it, ‘The re-enaction… [was] beset by anachronisms, the modern mingling with the Jacobean at every turn.’ Newsreel, cameras and television ‘emphasized’ that ‘modern touch’. A stranger departure from the historical record, and not one that could be viewed as especially modern, was the banning of women passengers or crew. Alan Villiers had taken on the role of captain; as a greatly experienced sailor and author of naval themed memoirs, an understandable choice. But his views on women were antiquated to say the least. There was no place for ‘glamour pusses’, he said: ‘in those days, women were chattels. They’re not now. They talk back and you can’t handle them. No! No women.’ Thousands that had applied were thus disappointed.

Despite this narrow mindedness, lots of positivity was whipped up by the press. In the context of the creeping Cold War, and popular enthusiasm for the Anglo-American ‘special relationship’ lauded by Winston Churchill and others, the adventurous project became a mainstay of the news cycle. An exhibition at the shipyard in Brixham, complete with a ‘Pilgrim house’, was visited by 250,000 people between 1955-7. Letters of support and goodwill poured in from the US, like the note penned by the Governor of Massachusetts who was ‘stirred by the spirit of good will that prompted your people to give so generously to a craft that will soon sail far away’.

If the spectacle was capturing the public’s attention, the proponents of the Mayflower II still stressed that it was an educational rather than commercial undertaking. Certainly, a lot of the Project’s officers went to speak to young people at schools and youth clubs, and invited them to see the ship under construction. The Mayflower Mail, a promotional newsletter, also included articles about the history of the ship and the Pilgrims. But, in Britain, not everyone was convinced. Anglo-American diplomatic organisations, like the Pilgrims and the English-Speaking Union, were wary because of the commercial element – and none too happy when they found out that Lowe was name-dropping them as supporters when they were nothing of the sort. Behind closed doors, both the British Foreign Office and US Embassy in London were also suspicious, worrying that Charlton’s plan was renegade and possibly damaging rather than helping build Anglo-American relationships. In both cases, official support was weak – and even actively sabotaging - and only came at all when it became clear that, one way or another, the voyage would go ahead.

Others, speaking more publicly, were also unhappy about the commercial taint. Reverend Frank Quick of the Sherwell Congregational Church in Plymouth, for example, lamented in the parish magazine that the ‘spiritual side’ had been ‘sadly neglected’; and Lord Fraser, originally a great supporter of the Project, eventually withdrew after having a change of heart at how the plans were unfolding. In some ways this criticism was fair; there was a commercial undercurrent to the project, and religious ideals sunk into the background with the fun and adventure of building the replica taking centre stage. But it is worth noting that  shipyard religious services were held throughout the time the Mayflower II was under construction; these were popular, with representatives of ‘all denominations’ coming together. Various reverends who preached at these services saw themselves as modern examples of the Pilgrims spirit of ‘toleration’ – a noble cause, if a slight misunderstanding of the original Pilgrim and wider Puritan ethos.

In the months leading up to the voyage, there was also a series of conflicts that undermined the spirit of the Project. Originally, Charlton had also planned to call at Southampton before finally departing Plymouth – like the original ship had done (though not by choice!). When, however, he had to inform the two Southampton MPs on the Board of Patrons that a tight schedule meant this would no longer be possible, they resigned, and not without telling the press all about their anger and disgust – ‘an affront to the town which we represent’, as they put it.

Other difficulties also arose: a shipbuilders strike threatened at one point to shut the project down (averted at the last moment after Charlton cleverly convinced the Union it would be bad publicity); the Suez Crisis, and American response, which led to an outburst of anti-Americanism in Britain; the withdrawal of a number of firms in the final months; and many doubters (or ‘land lubbers’ as they were dubbed by the Project), who were asking questions about the safety of the ship and the risk it might never reach the US (not helped when the ship almost keeled over the first time it was launched in 1956).

In the end, the doubters were indubitably proved wrong. The Mayflower II departed Plymouth, Devon, on the 20^th April 1957 after a civic ceremony held at the Pilgrim Fathers memorial (built in the 1930s) on the Barbican. Tens of thousands crowed the harbour to see her off. The Mayflower II sailed 4,000 miles in 54 days, and arrived into Plymouth, MA on 13 June 1957, where she was welcomed with the peal of church bells, helicopters flying overhead, a shallop (manned by descendants of the original Pilgrims in period costume), and several thousand people on the waterside. Many excited Americans had been waiting patiently in the town for weeks to catch a glimpse of the replica. On board the ship, before entering Plymouth, the ship’s crew re-enacted the signing of the Mayflower Compact. Later that year, Charlton published his memoir and ships log for the voyage – a charming and romantic story of the whole venture – and many newspaper supplements commemorated the endeavour with extensive photographs.

However, in spite of this triumphant ending, there had been other troubles brewing too. As the ship was nearing the coast of the USA, disputes about unpaid bills were coming to the surface. Some 45 years later the Times claimed that these debts – amounting to some £74,000 – forced the project into liquidation (thus putting an end to the proposed scholarship scheme that was meant to be established with any profits). There was also conflict between Charlton and his backer Fenston, seemingly about the whens and hows of the donation of the ship to the Plimoth Plantation. On the American side of the Atlantic, local politicians in Plymouth MA were none too happy about the prospect of the Mayflower II’s stay in the town being cut short so the ship could hot-foot it to New York (where the potential for profit was much greater). Villiers, for his part, was also not thrilled that the coastguard insisted the ship had to be towed the final length of the journey into the harbour – a damage to his ego, it seems.

In the end, this wrangling has not damaged the legacy of the Mayflower II. After a recent refurbishment, she still stands proudly at Plimoth Plantation and has, in many ways, become the most recognisable depiction of the Mayflower in popular culture on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Brixham Heritage Museum holds an extensive collection of material relating to the voyage. Particuarly useful for filling in the details are:

‘Mayflower II – a ship which symbolises goodwill between two great peoples of the world’, The Western Morning News: Mayflower Supplement (13 April 1957), p 1

‘An ABC of the Mayflower Project’, 22nd September 1956 - 34.3 A/MAY

William A. Baker, ‘The Arrangement and Construction of Early Seventeenth Century Ships’ in The American Neptune, vol. xv. 4 (1955).

Mayflower Mail – various issues in 1956 and 1957.

Ted R Bromund, ‘“This somewhat embarrassing ship”: the British Foreign Office and the Mayflower II, 1954-1957’, New England Quarterly, 72, 1 (1999).

Jeremy Greenaway, ‘In wake of the Pilgrim Fathers’, Western Morning News (21 April 1997), 31.

Warwick Charlton, The Voyage of Mayflower II (London, 1957).

‘Obituary: Warwick Charlton’, The Times (24 Dec 2002), 26.

‘MPs resign from Mayflower Project’, Birmingham Daily Post (19th March 1957), 11.

‘Slow start for Mayflower II’, The Times (22nd April 1957), 4.