‘SPEEDWELL’ duly reached Southampton on July 22nd, but there she was unexpectedly declared unseaworthy. Many passengers cancelled their trip, but eleven determined souls crammed themselves onto ‘Mayflower’ alongside the farm-hands, servants and merchants already booked on her, taking the total to 102 passengers and 30 crew. The protesting vessel set sail from Plymouth on September 6th.
‘Mayflower’ never reached Virginia. Winds blew captain Christopher Jones’s ship to the north, and on November 11th he accepted defeat and landed at Cape Cod. No civilised colony, no inns or firesides waited there to welcome them. The party spent the icy winter huddled in their ship, prey to infectious disease, fighting off starvation with corn from a deserted Native American village.* By the time they cautiously disembarked on March 21st, 1621, barely half the passengers and crew remained alive.*
Captain Jones returned to England two weeks later, leaving Brewster, Bradford and their fellow Mayflower emigrés to conjure up civilisation in the emptiness. They named it, Plymouth Colony.
William Bradford (?1590-1657), who soon emerged as the group’s leader, made a point of recording that the punctilious Puritans repaid the Native Americans after their own first harvest.
The voyage of ‘Mayflower’ was far from the first adventure into North America. As well as the Virginia Colony founded in 1606, Sir Walter Raleigh had started a short-lived colony at Roanoke in the 1580s. Sir Francis Drake had visited California and claimed it for the Queen in 1580 during The Voyage of the ‘Golden Hinde’. In 1497, Home Page had discovered North America by reaching Newfoundland, though in fact he only re-discovered it: Leif Ericson of Greenland had already established a small trading colony there, Vinland, back in the eleventh century. Christopher Columbus never visited North America.
Précis
The colonists’ ship ‘Speedwell’ was declared unseaworthy, so they crammed into ‘Mayflower’ with around ninety other passengers. But the ship drifted off course, landing in desolate lands in modern-day Massachusetts instead of Virginia. Only half the colonists survived the first winter, but a colony did spring up in the wilderness at last. (52 / 60 words)
The colonists’ ship ‘Speedwell’ was declared unseaworthy, so they crammed into ‘Mayflower’ with around ninety other passengers. But the ship drifted off course, landing in desolate lands in modern-day Massachusetts instead of Virginia. Only half the colonists survived the first winter, but a colony did spring up in the wilderness at last.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 55 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 45 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: because, just, must, or, ought, unless, whereas, whether.
Archive
Word Games
Sevens Based on this passage
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Variations: 1.expand your answer to exactly fourteen words. 2.expand your answer further, to exactly twenty-one words. 3.include one of the following words in your answer: if, but, despite, because, (al)though, unless.
Jigsaws Based on this passage
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Spinners Find in Think and Speak
For each group of words, compose a sentence that uses all three. You can use any form of the word: for example, cat → cats, go → went, or quick → quickly, though neigh → neighbour is stretching it a bit.
This exercise uses words found in the accompanying passage.
1 Land. Sail. World.
2 King. Spend. Wait.
3 Aboard. Civilize. Vessel.
Variations: 1. include direct and indirect speech 2. include one or more of these words: although, because, despite, either/or, if, unless, until, when, whether, which, who 3. use negatives (not, isn’t, neither/nor, never, nobody etc.)
Add Vowels Find in Think and Speak
Make words by adding vowels to each group of consonants below. You may add as many vowels as you like before, between or after the consonants, but you may not add any consonants or change the order of those you have been given. See if you can beat our target of common words.
mntd (5)
amounted. emanated. minted. minuted. mounted.
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