Last June, I accompanied our High School on a trip to a living history museum, which is a museum that recreates a specific time in history, bringing to life the challenges, lifestyle, political, social and economic sphere of the people who were there at that time. New England is graced with dozens of these museums, one being Sturbridge Village, which is an 1830’s inland New England town where you can meet the shoemaker, blacksmith, carder, schoolmaster, shopkeeper, banker, farmer, and millworker. Another such museum is Mystic Seaport, a seaside whaling town where you can go onboard the whaling ship, see the rope mill, and learn how trade and commerce happened.

Back in Time

The living history museum I went to this year was the best one I have been to yet. It was Plimoth Plantation, the location of the celebrated first Thanksgiving dinner. The museum featured an Indian village, where we went inside an Indian house that was covered with tree bark and lined inside with various furs, and strewn with hunting tools. We also saw how the Indians grew and cooked their food, and how they carved out their canoes with fire.

We saw the pilgrim’s neighborhood, where we went inside each house which was simply one open room furnished with a double bed, wooden table, wooden chest, a shelf, a table and chairs and a fireplace with a mantelpiece.

The highlight of this museum was the Mayflower II. The Mayflower II is a 1945 replica of a standard cargo ship at the time of the Mayflower, which was in fact, a cargo ship.

But before I tell you about the ship, I must mention the rock. On our way to see the ship we saw a glorious romanesque patio right on the shore. It housed Plymouth Rock, the unaccountable fame of which was the subject of discussion to several of us in the group. The famous rock contained there was chiseled with the year 1620, and had been in two pieces but cemented back together. From a ranger who filled us in on some missing history, we learned that it was one third the size it used to be due to its being broken in the process of relocation when the people of Plymouth tried to place it in the middle of town in the mid 1800’s. However, because of this unexpected fact, that there was interest in the rock more than 150 years ago, I began to think that there was a significance to this rock that I hadn’t yet realized, and I pursued my investigation on the ship based on another clue that he gave us.

All Aboard! (Yikes)

As I mentioned, the Mayflower was only a cargo ship, not built for human passengers traveling below deck, as passenger ships were not yet being built. This was the first in a string of facts I had never heard about the Pilgrim’s story.

The Mayflower was not owned by the pilgrims for the trip to the new land. There were originally two ships that the pilgrims were using, but one of them was leaking, so everyone had to board the Mayflower – all 102 of them. There were three levels on this cargo ship; top deck, below deck, where the Pilgrims lived, and the hold below them.

The level where they lived held not only the 102 Pilgrims, but their bedding, disassembled exploration boat, one or two stoves, the ship’s canons, all wrapped around the stairs leading up and down the levels of the ship. They were also sharing this living space with the livestock they brought with them – goats, pigs and chickens. It was roughly 30 meters long and 10 meters wide at the widest section, and only about 5 feet tall. The Mayflower II was built two feet taller at that level for the comfort of the tourists, but they had a marking on the wall where you could see the actual height of the Mayflower ceiling. The space suddenly seemed very small.

The pilgrims were not allowed on deck, but were restricted to the second level of their rented ship. Even though they had canons, the ports for the canons were not only closed, but were sealed shut with beeswax, and only opened in the event of a pirate attack.

The Pilgrims, being delayed in their arrival in late November, lived on the ship for four months through the winter. During this time, living under these awful conditions, fifty-two of the Pilgrims died. They anchored themselves a mile offshore and used their exploration boat for two weeks before finding the spot of an abandoned Indian village. This is where they built their town.

The men built the houses, and went back and forth from the shore to the ship where the rest were living. When someone died, they would bury the body at night so as not to reveal their weakened condition to the Indians that were nearby.

Realizing the grave nature of the living conditions these people were in, I likened it to a survival situation. Have you ever been lost in the woods? Anyone who has been, knows the significance of landmarks. The rock was a landmark. They had miles of coastline to look at to find the exact spot where they were building, and this rock made it so that they could go back and forth and easily find their place.

Sign here, please…

The highlight of our adventure was seeing the contract that was drawn up by the Pilgrims, the Mayflower Compact. In reading it on a wall on the dock after disembarking the ship, I realized the irony of the situation that these people were in, difficult as it was.

These were people that had left the Catholic faith, and had splintered themselves from the Bark of Peter, the Rock upon which Christ founded his Church. Every institution needs a visible head, with rules to unify those within the institution. It will have a head, a law. The Pope and the Laws of the Church were two things the Pilgrims stood in opposition to. This authority of the Church is for the spiritual life of souls.

With this in mind, and analyzing how they decided to band together to survive this journey, I learned that some of the pilgrims wanted to quit the excursion. Some wanted to splinter off and do their own thing. So what did they do? They drew up the Compact, binding all who signed it to stay together, to observe this law, under this governor, in order to live.

They had just broken themselves away from an organization, one that had a Head and a Law. They broke away from the True Rock and found their own rock (which broke by the way). They had their own ship, too, in which not everyone survived, if I may continue the analogy. Those who stay on Peter’s Bark survive.

I’ll sign here, thank you

So at our next Thanksgiving, when it is my turn to say what I am grateful for I will say, “I am grateful for rocks and ships, but especially the One that has PETER stamped on it.”