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Plymouth

3 stories from this place.

The Footnote June 27, 2026 · Deptford, London

The Devon Privateer Who Sailed Around the World in 1577-1580, Captured a Spanish Treasure Ship Off Peru, and Was Knighted Aboard His Own Vessel by Elizabeth I

Francis Drake left Plymouth on 13 December 1577 with five ships. He returned alone in the Golden Hind on 26 September 1580 with about £400,000 of captured Spanish silver from his Pacific raid — about half the English government's annual revenue. He was the first English captain to complete a circumnavigation. Elizabeth I knighted him aboard the Golden Hind at Deptford on 4 April 1581.

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The Footnote June 27, 2026 · Provincetown Harbor

The Sixty-Six-Foot Cargo Ship That Carried 102 English Separatists Across the Atlantic in 66 Days in 1620

The Mayflower sailed from Plymouth on 16 September 1620 with 102 passengers — about 41 of them religious Separatists from the Leiden Dutch exile community, the rest paying passengers — and 30 crew. The 66-day crossing landed at Provincetown Harbor on 21 November 1620. The Mayflower Compact was drafted aboard the ship the same day before the passengers disembarked.

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The Cabinet June 27, 2026 · Roanoke Island, North Carolina

The 115 English Colonists Found Gone Without Trace From an Island Off North Carolina in August 1590 With Only the Word CROATOAN Carved on a Tree

John White returned to the Roanoke colony on 18 August 1590 — three years after he had left for England to resupply — to find the entire 115-person colony gone. The houses were dismantled, the heavier equipment buried, and the word CROATOAN was carved on a post. White assumed the colonists had moved to the Croatoan tribe's island 50 miles south. He never returned to confirm. Their fate is unresolved.

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