On September 16, 1620, a ship called the Mayflower was chartered for a group of religious separatists, the so-called Pilgrim Fathers, in Plymouth, England. Since there are said to have been four different Mayflowers this year, it is no longer possible to determine exactly which sailing ship she sailed to America on November 11, 1620.
On board the Mayflower there were 102 passengers and a crew of thirty under Captain CHRISTOPHER JONES.
The Pilgrim Fathers were a small group of highly religious separatists who wanted to break away from the English Church of the time and had fled into exile in Holland as early as 1607/08.
What is immigration
The term immigration (immigration) means immigration; d. This means that a person changes his place of residence and relocates to another country. An immigrant or immigrant has therefore left a country beforehand for economic, social, political or religious reasons.
Reasons for immigration
According to ebizdir, there can be many different reasons for immigration.
The most common, however, is probably the hope of better job opportunities and a general increase in living standards. People often immigrate for political reasons, if there is a conflict in their own country or a violent or repressive regime.
Another drive can be of a religious or linguistic-cultural nature, but also that of family reunification after many years.
However, extremely serious motives can also be used become motives for immigration. So people are especially in particularly dangerous situations such as B. in times of war, famine, displacement or enslavement to refugees.
On September 16, 1620 ship named was Mayflower for a group of religious separatists, known as Pilgrims (Pilgrim Fathers) chartered in the English Plymouth. The Pilgrim Fathers were a small group of highly religious separatists who wanted to break away from the English Church of the time (Anglican Church) and had fled into exile in Holland as early as 1607/08. These separatists as Puritans (puritans) referred. Since they were British who could not return to England, they decided to emigrate to what was then the British colonies of North America.
They signed a contract with English merchants who chartered two ships for the pilgrims and financed the trip. In return, the emigrants were supposed to send loads of fish, furs and wood back to England. The emigrants (emigrants) went on July 22, 1620 in the Dutch port of Delftshaven on board the 60 ton ship Speedwell and drove with him to Southampton, where they transferred to the larger Mayflower. In Southampton both ships were supposed to sail to America together, which happened on August 5, 1620.
Both ships ran out, but returned shortly after departure to Dartmouth, there on the Speedwell Leakage from seepage was detected, forcing both ships to turn around and take a two-week repair. Only then could they try again and sail out. Nonetheless, the Speedwell was still leaking and both ships had to start their voyages home again and, this time to Plymouth, turn around. In Plymouth, all of the Speedwell’s provisions and goods were transferred to the Mayflower, so that the Speedwell was abandoned and left in England.
On September 16, the Mayflower finally left the port of Plymouth with 101 passengers, 31 of whom were children. Since autumn storms were raging now, they had full sailing equipment for light, medium and heavy weather stowed on board and were prepared for everything. There was even a 9.15 m long dinghy in the hold, which could be used for exploratory trips.
The Mayflower had to withstand numerous severe storms that shook passengers below deck quite a bit.
On November 9th, land was finally in sight, so that the Mayflower was able to anchor two days later near what is now Provincetown in Cape Cod Bay. However, they soon found that the country was empty and barren and that they also did not find the climatic conditions of the familiar England. In the new home it was cold and it was snowing and there were Indians , who were not well disposed towards them.
Under the leadership of Captain MILES STANDISH, numerous exploratory trips were carried out with the dinghy that had been brought along. The scouts came across a place with freshwater streams and fertile land on which one could even grow grain.
Immigrants settled aboard the Mayflower during the cold winter, which allowed them to defeat the weather but also gave diseases the chance to spread instantly. Infectious diseases such as scurvy, pneumonia and tuberculosis ultimately only left 53 people alive; that was just under half of the Pilgrim Fathers and half of the original crew. In the spring, the settlers built huts so that the surviving passengers of the Mayflower could disembark on March 21.
