Twitter Ye Not - The Mayflower.
A regular piece for the Daily Mail Weekend magazine about how figures in history might have twittered or tweeted or whatever, had they the chance, inclination and technology.
On what is in the modern Gregorian calendar 21 November 1620, The Mayflower dropped anchor in Cape Cod Bay, at the end of a 66 day journey across the Atlantic from Plymouth. Here, we imagine the Twitter feed of that fateful time.
In April 1621 the Mayflower, a privately commissioned vessel, returned to England. In 1623, a year after the death of Captain Christopher Jones, the ship was dismantled for scrap timber at Rotherhithe, London. There is a barn in the village of Jordans, near Chalfont St Giles in Buckingham-shire, also the final resting place of William Penn (as in Pennsylvania), said to be made of the Mayflower's wood!
On the left is William Bradford, leader of the new community, and credited with inventing Thanksgiving - Turkeys, pumpkin pie, all that stuff.
Opposite him stands Tisquantum, more commonly known as Squanto, the Patuxet indian who assisted the pilgrims after their first winter in the New World, and who was integral to their survival. Behind him stands an alarmed turkey.
Between them stands the famous ship.
It is commonly believed that the pilgrim fathers left England for the New World to escape religious persecution, but in fact they received little in a time when puritanism was steadily gaining ground. No, the reason they set up home in Americky was so that they were free themselves to religiously persecute! (Discuss).
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