Harbor Town Lays (Dubious) Mayflower Claim

We came to this harbor town on the channel coast of Essex for only one reason: to catch the ferry to Goteborg, Sweden.

But before we left, we found ourselves caught up in an ongoing local controversy over the origins and history of the Mayflower, the doughty little square-rigger that took the first settlers to New England in 1620.

We also found ourselves caught up in the many charms and attractions of Harwich, one of the cleanest and brightest of the English ferry ports.

Harwich (the natives pronounce it HARE-ridge) and its holiday suburb, Dovercourt, look over the English Channel from cliffs where many of the concrete bunkers built to repel Adolph Hitler’s armies still glower over the shingle beaches.

The Marine Parade, extending two miles along the front, has little of the commercialism one expects in a seaside resort. Except for a scattering of small hotels, restaurants and a children’s play park, the Parade and the many streets leading into it are staunchly residential in character. Queen Victoria, whose statue dominates the promenade, looks on approvingly.

From the Cliff, our hotel on the Marine Parade, we could watch a constant stream of vessels entering the harbor--the huge continental ferries, tankers, container ships and a bustle of yachts and fishing craft.

Yet Harwich is free of the noise, grime and congestion common to harbor cities because most of the incoming cargo ships berth across the estuary at Felixstowe. And the ferries from the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, carrying hundreds of huge lorries and a thousand or more passenger cars daily, dock at Parkeston Quays outside the town.

Harwich has a long seafaring history. Elizabeth’s great captains--Drake, Frobisher and Hawkins--set sail from its expansive natural harbor in the estuary of the rivers Stour and Orwell.

Samuel Pepys, the diarist and man of letters, was Harwich’s member of Parliament while serving in a high administrative position in the Royal Navy.

English ships--perhaps the Mayflower herself--left Harwich to do battle with the Spanish Armada. And the one fact on which all disputants in the Mayflower debate can agree is that her captain, Christopher Jones, had his home in Harwich.

Our first morning in town we met George Washington. He was watering a rose bed in front of his home on Fronks Road, just around the corner from our hotel.

Could he direct us to the old harbor? Washington, a sturdy septuagenarian with fading tattoos on his arms, was clearly a former sailor.

“Aye, steady as you go to the next turning,” he said. “Then bear to starboard and keep walking. But mind you, don’t walk too far or you’ll fall in the water.”

It was then that he told us his name was George Washington. “No relative of your Washington that I know of,” he said. It’s a common name in Essex.

“But you should look into the history of this town. We had a lot to do with settling America--and long before your General Washington and his revolution. Did you know that the Mayflower, her master and crew all came from Harwich?”

Then, smiling: “But of course you would know that. Doesn’t every last American claim to have had an ancestor on the Mayflower?”

Following his directions, we set off for the waterfront, strolling past courtyards with immaculate gardens and the staid Georgian residences of former sea captains.

Above the harbor entrance we found yet another reminder of Britain’s centuries-long fear of invasion--a huge circular redoubt built in 1809-1810 to counter the danger of a Napoleonic assault. Its cannons still point seaward, but the redoubt is now a historical museum.

We finally found the home of Christopher Jones at 21 King’s Head St., its facade bright with hanging baskets of fuchsia, geranium and lobelia.

The two-store Elizabethan structure was once directly on the water, but because the quay was successively built farther into the harbor, the house now stands half a block inland.

Across the street is a pub, the Alma Inn, once the home of Jones’ first wife, whose unlikely name was Sarah Twitt. It was a warm day and we couldn’t resist having a beer whose equally unlikely name was Tolly Cobbold.

An old-timer at the bar, weary of yet more Americans milling about to pay homage to the master of the Mayflower, spoke to us in a loud voice. “Didn’t know, did you, that Jones was a bloody pirate at one time and would have gone to prison if one of his lordly friends hadn’t spoken up for him?”

No, we didn’t know that, and the fact that no other denizen of the bar spoke up in Jones’ defense gave us pause.

But at the Pier Hotel, facing the main shipping channel, we found nothing but enthusiastic acceptance of all local claims relating to the Mayflower.

A man behind the desk agreed with George Washington that her captain and crew for the voyage to America were from her home port of Harwich. And that the Mayflower was actually built in the yard just across the road from this hotel.

Was he certain? “Absolutely. I can take you upstairs and from rooms one, two and three you can see the exact spot where her keel was laid.”

We went across the road to what is now the Navyard Wharf and found a plaque listing the 75 ships that had been built there. Most of them had names meant to intimidate an enemy--Conqueror, Alarm, Terror, Arrogant, Robust and Terrible.

But unlike the Mayflower, all were men-of-war and, to add to our suspicions of the hotel informant’s probity, all had been built long after the 1620 sailing of the Mayflower. In fact, the yard was not in operation before 1620.

Now adrift in a sea of confusion, we sought further enlightenment from yet another former seafarer, Reg Kenneisen, whom we met along the wharf, near a colorful jumble of channel buoys. He was watching an ancient Thames sailing barge working its way upriver under a canopy of brown sails.

In mid-channel, rusting at their moorings, was a flotilla of red lightships, made obsolete by electronic buoys.

Kenneisen, who wore an old Greek seaman’s cap and pea jacket, had been a journalist and an instructor in civil engineering in East Africa. But he had been drawn irresistibly to the sea, crewing on round-the-world freighters for many years.

Yes, he had heard that Harwich was the Mayflower’s home port, but when and for how long a time he didn’t know. Nor did he know if crew members, other than Jones, came from Harwich.

“I’ve heard stories, however, that they would careen the Mayflower on the mud banks over there near Felixstowe and scrape the barnacles from her bottom,” Kenneisen said.

He told us our best source of information would be a chap over at the Guildhall who serves as the local historian, and we left him to resume his musings over other ships and harbors he had known.

The route to the Guildhall on Church Street was through narrow streets and past innumerable pubs and an occasional shop dealing in old marine charts and antiques. A lofty gray brick lighthouse, no longer in use, rises like a church spire from the center of town.

Leonard T. Weaver, who could double for George Burns, was the former history master at the local high school, former mayor of Harwich and at present the town’s archivist and historian.

An energetic 84, he let us know within seconds of greeting us that “Most of what you’ve heard regarding the Mayflower is rubbish. It is either untrue or lacking historical evidence.”

His hand swept his cubbyhole of an office with its stacks of yellowing documents and wall cabinets full of bound volumes of the history of Harwich dating to AD 885.

“Until now,” he said, “you’ve heard nothing but bits and bobs of the story--most of it wrong. From me you’ll hear nothing but cast-iron fact.”

Weaver told us that there was no question that the Mayflower, then transporting wine from French ports to Britain, had early associations with Harwich.

He produced documents from the High Court of Admiralty for 1609 and 1610, referring to “X’p’ffer Jones of Harwich, Mr. (master) of the Mayflower of the same place.”

But nowhere, said Weaver, “are records showing where she was built. The fact is, Mayflower was a common name for ships along this coast. To attract American tourists, a number of towns in East Anglia claim she was built in their yards centuries ago.

“Up in Buckinghamshire, the town of Jordans charges you Yanks money to see a barn presumably built from the Mayflower’s timbers. It’s a fiddle.”

Did the crew at least come from Harwich? “I’m sorry can’t send you home with a better story,” said Weaver, “but there’s no evidence of that either.”

Taking us to the door, the archivist told us he was no stranger to America. He had made visits to New England, at the invitation of local historical societies, to lecture on early English settlements in the New World.

“The last time I was there,” he said, “a chap told me I could earn a hundred dollars a night repeating my lecture to church audiences. I told him I was not a believer, but for money like that I’d become another Billy Graham.”

Weaver saw us off down the street, the sun glinting from his thick, horn-rimmed glasses, lacking only one of George Burns’ favorite cigars.