From the Mayflower Quarterly, v71 No.2 June 2005 [www.mayflower.org]
Excerpt from "Comparing Plymouth and Jamestown" by Robert Jennings Heinsohn
...In December 1608 a fleet if nine supply ships and hundreds of settlers left England. A storm scattered the fleet and one ship returned to England. The lead ship, Sea Venture, under the command of Lord George Somers with 140 passengers was shipwrecked in Bermuda. Three ships of the original fleet containing provisions and several hundred men, women and children arrived in Jamestown in the Spring of 1609. In addition to English gentlemen, the group included laborers, tradesmen, German glassmakers and Polish makers if outch, tar and potash. Within a few weeks a fire destroyed nearly all the colony's supplies. ...
Sir George Percy was only 29 but had served briefly, fighting in the Netherlands. As a nobleman Percy tried to bring the ways of London dress and dining to the colony even though feed stores were precariously low. ... Oercy sent a party of colonists under Radcliffe to trade fir fiid with Powhatan only to have the party, including Ratcliffe, captured and tortured to death. Percy found himself over his head. He had depleted supplies and was unable to obtain food from Powhatan. The period Oct.1609 to March 1610 became known as the starvation time. People were driven to eating cats, rats, mice, and after boiling, eating their leather boots. There was even recorded evidence of cannibalism. In the early spring 1610 only 60 of 500 colonists were alive. In April 1610 the Council once again decided to abandon Jamestown. As their ship sailed down the James River, it was met by Thomas West and his assistant Sir Thomas Gates and Sir Thomas Dale, abord three ships with 150 people and supplies. In June 1610 survivors of the shipwrecked Sea Venture arrived in Jamestown on two small ships that they had built in Bermuda. Among the survivors was Stephen Hopkins, who later returned to England and in 1620 joined the company of Pilgrims sailing aboard the Mayflower, The epic if the Sea Venture was background material for Shakespeare's play The Tempest...
Mayflower ships manifest [www.pilgrimhall.org] includes Stephen Hopkins: *Mr. Stephen Hopkins and Elizabeth his wife, and two children called Giles and Constanta (our McCotter ancester), a daughter, both by a former wife. And two more by this wife called Damaris and Oceanus; the last was born at sea. And two servants called Edward Doty and Edward Lester....
...Upon arriving at Provincetown Harbbor in November 1620 some ...in the company wanted to go off independently and settle, while the [Pilgrims] did not. Carver, Bradford and Brewster resolved the disagreement by composing the Mayflower Compact. These difficult negotiations were the first of many Bradford undertook to maintain peace with the Indians and mediate differences in the colony...
The patent granted to the Pilgrims required settlers to have all the rights and privileges as
Englishmen at home. However, unlike Jamestown, the Virginia company and King played no role in
Plymouth's governance. The Pilgrims were financially accountable to the Merchant Adventurers
[venture capitalists], but the governance of Plymouth was managed entirely by the Pilgrims.
The basis of government was the eloquently succinct passage in the
Mayflower Compact:
...combine ourselves together into a civil body politick for our better ordering...to enact...such
just and equal laws...and officers from time to time...for the general good...
In so doing they established the first fully represenative form of government in North America.