Talk:Plymouth Colony

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William Bradford-1590-1657

[edit] Voyages of the Mayflower

The article talks about the Mayflower leaving for a second time. Was there a first time that it tried to sail to America? This is ambigious... --Clarkbhm 17:38, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

It didn't make it very far from England on the first two attempts. Actually, at the moment, this article isn't very informative at all. Bleh. --iMb~Meow 22:24, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The charter, and the storms

They had a charter to settle in a different area and were driven by storms to plymouth, the article makes it sound like they planned to land there the whole time, without a charter.

Yeah, I know. The story you mention is one of those things that "everyone knows" because it's what they were taught in school, but there's no basis for it.

Mayflower was by all accounts hired to go to New England (which in those days was everything north of mid-New Jersey), and the Scrooby gang's old patent (which was abandoned after they started to deal with Thomas Weston) didn't cover even the Hudson. The boat was headed to a place where they didn't have a patent, period, no accident, no conspiracy.

I've been filling out the Pilgrims article with detailed, referenced information about all this. See especially the "Cape Cod conspiracy theories" section there for the usual wacky stories and why they don't add up.

But the most important bit is that Bradford was very clear that Weston told them to go to New England.--iMb~Meow 06:33, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

(Not putting this part in any articles, because it's just a musing on my part: I think that the accident/storm thing comes from a well-intentioned attempt to clean up the "pilgrim" story for children. It's inconvenient to suggest that these people did less-than-legal things, but they bribed their way out of England, Bradford was hiding from the law, amd one of the first things they did when they got to America was rob graves and houses. All that is left out of the traditional story too. --iMb~Meow 09:54, 8 June 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Superlatives

The "Context" section says: "Plymouth was the second permanent English settlement in the Americas, the first being Jamestown, Virginia. Earlier abandoned settlements include the Popham Colony (present-day Maine), the "Lost Colony" of Roanoke Island (present-day North Carolina), and Cuper's Cove and Bristol's Hope in present-day Newfoundland."

But Jamestown was not the only settlement in Virginia. Plantations in Virginia were settlements, and essentially villages unto themselves, complete with cottages and streets for laborers, stores, taverns, etc. A few pre-1620 permanent English settlements other than Jamestown, which have wikipedia pages, include: Henricus, Shirley Plantation, Berkeley Plantation, Varina, Virginia, Wolstenholme Towne, and Martin's Hundred. There were many others. Some might not quite qualify as "permanent", but some do, and there are many others not on wikipedia.

I've noticed an abundant use of superlatives on wikipedia. It seems like everything has to be the first of something or other, or ranked in a list of superlatives (Plymouth being the second after Jamestown, for example). Usually if one digs a bit deeper, the superlatives turn out false or at best highly qualified. Often they are misleading, as in this case -- suggesting that Jamestown was the only settlement in Virginia before 1620. Pfly 18:10, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Now the claim is "Plymouth was the third permanent European settlement in the Americas, the first being St. Augustine, Florida, settled by Spain, and Jamestown, Virginia also settled by the English." Which is even less true: Quebec City 1608; Santa Fe, New Mexico 1607-1610; Bermuda 1609; etc, etc. Pfly 17:29, 9 October 2006 (UTC)