On This Day Even More Immigrants Arrived Here

Two ships first set sail on August 5th, 1690 and ran into trouble. On August 17th 1620 two ships set sail a second time from England for America, the 'Mayflower' and the 'Speedwell'. There were 120 passengers and crew onboard the two ships.

Unfortunately both ships had to return to England because of bad weather along with the Speedwell being deemed unseaworthy. On the third attempt on September 6th, 1620 only the Mayflower set sail with it's 102 passengers and a crew of 30.

These people heading to America's shores to settle were not the first. The Jamestown settlement was formed in1607. Long prior in 1497 John Cabot explored North America and came across an area later called Newfoundland. This led to England claiming the entire East Coast of North America for it's own. Therefore the pilgrims first had to obtain legal rights to land from a company in England for the initial place they intended to settle, the Jamestown colony in Virginia.

At any rate it was actually Provincetown Harbor in which the Mayflower first anchored on November 11th, 1690 after being blown off course. It was at this time passengers pointed out this was not the land they held legal entitlement to. After futzing around the area and pissing off the local Indians by shooting at them and ripping off their stored corn, they thought it best to pull up anchor. This area they wound up in was first explored by Captain John Smith who coined the name "New England".

On December 16th they dropped anchor once again in what is known today as Plymouth Harbor. Before disembarking they sent scouts from the ship to check things out. Finally on this day, December 21st, 1620 the first landing party came ashore in what might be considered a second wave of immigrants to arrive in this country.

After a few years they made themselves as welcome to many of the 'Native Americans' as a boatload of Cubans landing on Miami Beach would today.


History- Like watching the same movie over and over again. Only rewriting of the scripts change.
Different eras.
Different characters.
Same old storyline.