4 ships – the Arbella, the Talbot, The Jewel and the Ambrose – left Yarmouth on 8th April 1630 on a famous voyage, carrying Puritan emigrants bound for America.
The fleet – led by John Winthrop – consisted of 11 ships in total, transporting around 700 hundred American colonists, with the remaining vessels leaving later.
The Puritans were escaping the religious persecution in England after the accession of King Charles I to the throne in 1625, prior to the English Civil War.
The 1st ship arrived in Salem, Massachusetts on 13th June 1630. 6 further ships of the fleet sailed in May and arrived in July.
About 200 Puritans would die soon after they arrived, and another 100 would return to England within the first few months on returning ships.
Before departure, Winthrop made his famous sermon, which has gone down in history as: A City upon a Hill.
Winthrop proclaimed:
“We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, ‘may the Lord make it like that of New England’.
Article continues below this advertisement “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.”
In his 1980 Election Eve speech, former United States president Ronald Reagan referred to Winthrop’s sermon when he said:
“American are every bit as committed to that vision of a shining city on a hill, as were those long ago settlers.”
On 7th September 1630, Winthrop and his fellow emigrants founded the city of Boston.
In 1634, some Puritan settlers from Winthrop’s fleet moved to what is now Virginia, and – in 1637 – their settlement became officially known as Isle of Wight County.
The native Americans should have sent them back.
History never ceases to surprise IOW before USA the original cork heads