Saucepans at the ready when the Mayflower sailed again: Members of the 50/50 Club recount using pots to throw up in after setting sail to repeat the infamous 1620 Pilgrim voyage

• Peter Padfield recounts his 1957 voyage on board a replica of the Mayflower 
• As part of the 50/50 Club, he sailed from Plymouth to America after World War II
• The transatlantic crossing was inspired by the Pilgrims - English Puritans of 1620

MAYFLOWER II DIARY: SKETCHES FROM A LOST AGE  

by Peter Padfield (Casa Forte £16.95, 129 pp) 

In 1620, the Pilgrims — English Puritans seeking religious freedom — sailed from Plymouth to America on board the Mayflower.

Three hundred and thirty-seven years later, a group of young men set out to repeat the voyage on a replica of the original ship.

They called themselves the 50/50 Club, taking the name from an incident involving a Daily Mail reporter who had the temerity to suggest that Mayflower II had only a 50/50 chance of making it across the Atlantic. The crew ‘threw a sack over him, bound him to the foc’s’le doorpost and doused him with dishwater’.

One of the 50/50 Club members in 1957 was Peter Padfield, now in his late 80s and a distinguished naval historian. During the ‘life-changing’ experience, he kept a diary that he sent back home to his mother, now published in this slim volume.

The idea of the voyage was conceived by British entrepreneur Warwick Charlton, who had served in World War II and wanted an eye-catching way of thanking the U.S. for coming in on Britain’s side.

The plan was for the trip to be as close to the original as possible — there would be no squadron of back-up vessels, no airlifts of supplies, no radar and only the wind for power. The one concession to modernity was a radio. The crew were even persuaded to don Pilgrim clothing at regular Sunday services, though few enjoyed the ‘fancy dress’.

Padfield’s diary, which was written, as he tells his mother, ‘in great haste, on a table . . . tilting with the unpredictable rolling of the ship’, retains its freshness 62 years later. He describes the exhilaration of ‘swaying wildly’ in the rigging and ‘hanging on to the best available rope with the wind whistling about your face and clothes... I quite forgot to be scared stiff’.

Seasickness was an ongoing problem, even up in the rigging, where the sick flew ‘in aerodynamic curves over the foresail’ as the crew strove to do their duty in trying circumstances. One man always took his turn at the wheel with a saucepan strapped to his waist, into which he could throw up if necessary.

Amid all this, there was also great beauty. Padfield writes vividly of the glorious sunsets at sea: ‘Blazes of gold turning to flame orange and red and tipping receding layers of jaggedly topped cumulus clouds in concentric parallels for hundreds of miles down to the horizon of bright, steel-blue sea.’

The voyage of Mayflower II (pictured) was a big news story at the time. A large flotilla of dinghies, yachts and motorboats accompanied the ship as it sailed out of Plymouth at the start of its journey. As it neared America, aircraft circled it in welcome.

Today, the successful transatlantic crossing of the 50/50 Club is mostly forgotten, but it deserves to be remembered — and Padfield’s slight, but charming, diary brings it to life.