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Researchers think they've found the last surviving Pilgrim ship
Researchers think they’ve found the last surviving Pilgrim ship
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Researchers think they’ve found the last surviving Pilgrim ship
In 1863, two men discovered what they believed was a 1626 shipwreck off Cape Cod. New research indicates they were right.
In 1863, two men discovered what they believed was a 1626 shipwreck off Cape Cod. New research indicates they were right.
Retropolis
Researchers think they’ve found the last surviving Pilgrim ship
By Dave Kindy
Yesterday at 7:00 a.m. EDT
On May 6, 1863, Solomon Linnell II and Alfred Rogers spotted the ribs of a ship’s hull poking through tidal flats at Nauset Beach on Cape Cod.
A recent storm had caused the sands to shift, revealing the shipwreck with its timbers jutting skyward like skeletal fingers reaching out from a long-forgotten grave. Linnell and Rogers were excited by their find. On the same day that Union forces were limping away from a bloody beating by Gen. Robert E. Lee’s troops 600 miles away at the Battle of Chancellorsville in Virginia, they believed they had located the “Holy Grail” of Pilgrim-era artifacts: the Sparrow-Hawk, an English ship that had run aground in 1626.
A century and a half later, we still don’t know for certain whether they were right. Nothing was ever found identifying the shipwreck’s provenance. Not even the boat’s real name is known; Sparrow-Hawk is what the discoverers dubbed the 1626 ship they thought they’d found.
But new research by scientists and historians indicates that the wreck just might be the fabled Pilgrim ship. That would make it the only surviving vessel that crossed the Atlantic Ocean as part of the Great Puritan Migration.
{snip}
By Dave Kindy
Dave Kindy is a journalist, freelance writer and book reviewer based in Plymouth, Mass. He writes about history, culture and other topics for Smithsonian, Air & Space and other publications.
Researchers think they’ve found the last surviving Pilgrim ship
By Dave Kindy
Yesterday at 7:00 a.m. EDT
On May 6, 1863, Solomon Linnell II and Alfred Rogers spotted the ribs of a ship’s hull poking through tidal flats at Nauset Beach on Cape Cod.
A recent storm had caused the sands to shift, revealing the shipwreck with its timbers jutting skyward like skeletal fingers reaching out from a long-forgotten grave. Linnell and Rogers were excited by their find. On the same day that Union forces were limping away from a bloody beating by Gen. Robert E. Lee’s troops 600 miles away at the Battle of Chancellorsville in Virginia, they believed they had located the “Holy Grail” of Pilgrim-era artifacts: the Sparrow-Hawk, an English ship that had run aground in 1626.
A century and a half later, we still don’t know for certain whether they were right. Nothing was ever found identifying the shipwreck’s provenance. Not even the boat’s real name is known; Sparrow-Hawk is what the discoverers dubbed the 1626 ship they thought they’d found.
But new research by scientists and historians indicates that the wreck just might be the fabled Pilgrim ship. That would make it the only surviving vessel that crossed the Atlantic Ocean as part of the Great Puritan Migration.
{snip}
By Dave Kindy
Dave Kindy is a journalist, freelance writer and book reviewer based in Plymouth, Mass. He writes about history, culture and other topics for Smithsonian, Air & Space and other publications.
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