Today, Plymouth is home to the largest naval base in western Europe, but it boasts a much longer maritime history. For centuries it served as a gateway to new worlds, launching ambitious expeditions towards distant horizons – voyages that brought prosperity to Britain, but which frequently signalled exploitation rather than exploration to the indigenous communities that they encountered. Francis Drake, Walter Raleigh, James Cook, and Charles Darwin all set sail from its port, and the city was the birthplace of another intrepid, if ill-fated adventurer: the polar explorer Robert Falcon Scott.
This year marks the 400th anniversary of another famous journey that set out from Plymouth docks: the sailing of the Mayflower in 1620, which carried the ‘Pilgrim Fathers’ across the Atlantic to found a colony in the New World – a settlement that they named ‘Plymouth Plantation’. This milestone is being marked by an exhibition, Mayflower 400: Legend and Legacy, at The Box, a new museum recently opened in Plymouth to tell the city’s story (see ‘further information’ box on p.55). What can we learn of the Plymouth that the Mayflower passengers knew?
A nuanced history
The Box’s permanent galleries house a host of artefacts reflecting the lives and interests of post-medieval Plymothians. These objects paint a picture, by the late 1500s, of a diverse mariner community with an eager appetite for new styles – they were early adopters of smoking tobacco, and gladly imported foreign fashions such as Venetian glass beads. In the 17th century, this was undeniably a seafaring town, with more than 600 sailors in residence, and with commercial contacts stretching all over the world. Plymouth’s Port Books document local, British, and international ships coming and going, as well as the cargoes they carried: Newfoundland cod and Irish beef, French wine and Dutch beer, Spanish wool and Italian glass.
