This commemorative stamp marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor. The stamp’s image is based on artwork of watercolor, acrylic and gouache, a method of painting that uses opaque pigments ground in water and thickened to a glue-like consistency. The painting was digitally refined to convey a scene of desolate beauty at the end of the Pilgrims’ long journey to an unfamiliar world.

William Bradford and Edward Winslow were the only Pilgrims to leave accounts of the Mayflower and the voyage from England to Cape Cod. Being landlubbers, the Pilgrims were nervous about their future welfare as well as the long voyage to reach their final destination. It is no wonder the accounts of Bradford and Winslow are filled with the negative aspects of the voyage. Their experiences had been fretful, troublesome, and full of doubt.

It is a puzzle how the Mayflower managed to accommodate 102 passengers and a crew of about 30. She was a merchant ship, not a passenger ship [there was no such thing as a passenger ship in those times]. Therefore, she was not equipped to take many passengers. Some passengers, we know, slept in the shallop, a large ship’s boat that was stowed on the gun deck.

The foods they ate on board–salted meat and fish, peas, beans, beer, and hard cheese–were not very different from what the country folk in England ate in winter or early spring.

There were 32 children or young people on the Mayflower. Of all the passengers, they were probably the most bored. They could play games or listen to someone read to them. When the weather was good, the sailors probably allowed them to go up on deck. In stormy weather they probably spent their time praying, being seasick, and trying to keep from being bruised and battered against the beams and walls of the ship, a common injury of passengers during a storm.