Pilgrims' Progress

It was a cold November day in 1620 when a band of Algonquin Indians looked up and saw the square-rigger Mayflower bobbing off the shores of Massachusetts. To their minds this, understandably, was an unexpected sight. Last week, as a reasonable facsimile of the ship sailed--or, more exactly, was towed (against the tide by a Coast Guard cutter)--into sight of thousands at Provincetown, on Cape Cod, there was no surprise, for the voyage of Mayflower II had for months been heralded in the land till many New Englanders grew bored or cynical. Yet, as Mayflower II picked up her mooring, even the cynics forgot their suspicions, jumped into their Pilgrim and Indian costumes and joined the celebration.

The new Mayflower had arrived as tempest-tossed as its namesake. Under the hand of oldtime Australian Skipper Alan Villiers, the 32-man crew had bounced along, wave-lashed in a peanut shell for 53 days (v. 66 days for the original

Mayflower), sleeping fitfully, crammed in their cubbyhole quarters, hoisting and furling the stubborn cotton sails with bursting muscle and grim stubbornness.

Once moored, Mayflower II stayed at Provincetown for only a brief ceremony, next morning set sail westward to Plymouth, where the townspeople, long accustomed to tourism, turned out (in Pilgrim costume) to give the ship and crew the publicity-tuned kind of welcome that made the proud Provincetown folk bitter. From Oklahoma came 40 genuine Indians led by former New York Yankee Pitcher Allie Reynolds (also in the group: part-time Indian Will Rogers Jr.); the local Mayflower Transit Co. pulled its vans into camera range; an airplane zoomed overhead trailing a banner exhorting the Pilgrims to dine at "The Leaning Tower of Pizza."

But the Pilgrims' pride was not wholly fulfilled. Before Mayflower II would dock permanently near the site of-Plymouth Rock, the ship would scud southward to New York harbor for the summer, there to become a tourist attraction (adults: 90-c- a head) for local investors. Though on the whole the voyage was duly applauded along the northeast coast, there were unstilled rumblings from the South. Celebrators of Virginia's great Jamestown festival, annoyed that Mayflower II had arrived just in time to steal the festival's thunderous publicity occasioned by an international naval review of 114 vessels from the U.S. and 17 foreign lands, charged trickery on the high seas. Huffed a Jamestown publicist: "It's just as though you started playing a piano and someone else set up a jazz band next door."

And the Indians, having seen this sort of pride-punctured squabbling before, turned with a sigh toward the quietude of their own homes.

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