“On the 25th of August 1620
From the West Quay near this spot
The famous Mayflower began her voyage
Carrying the little company of
Pilgrim Fathers
Who were destined to be the founders
Of the New England States of America.”
Memorial tablet at Southampton, England. Placed by the Massachusetts Society of the Colonial Dames of America.
At Provincetown:
“They established and maintained on the bleak and barren edge of a vast wilderness, a state without a king or a noble, a church without a bishop or a priest, a democratic commonwealth the members of which were ‘straightly tied to all care of each other’s good, and for the whole by every one.’
“With long suffering devotion and sober resolution they illustrated for the first time in history the principles of civic and religious liberty and the practices of a genuine democracy.
“Therefore the remembrance of them shall be perpetual in the vast republic that has inherited their ideals.”
From the inscription written by Dr. Charles W. Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard, for the Memorial Monument to the Pilgrims in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Exploration:
While the Mayflower lay at anchor in Cape Cod bay, two exploring parties had been sent out to search for a suitable place for a settlement.
On Wednesday, Dec. 16 (N.S.) the third expedition sailed along the shore in the shallop owned by the Pilgrim company. There were eighteen men on board: two officers, the master-gunner, and three seamen from the Mayflower, and ten Pilgrim volunteers. These were Gov. Carver, Capt. Standish, William Bradford, Edward Winslow, John Tilley, Edward Tilley, John Howland, Stephen Hopkins, Edward Dotey, Richard Warren, and two of the Pilgrims’ own seamen, John Allerton and Thomas English.