Mayflower Double Feature

The Atwood Museum and Hit and Run History Present...

DOUBLE FEATURE: The Turning Point (Lecture) and Stephano (Film Sneak Preview)

On: January 26, 2020 at 2 pm
At: Atwood Museum – Home of the Chatham Historical Society
347 Stage Harbor Road; Chatham, MA 02633

Join the Atwood on January 26 for a special event double feature where we will be commemorating different aspects of the Mayflower voyage and Mayflower passengers. We will begin at 2 pm with The Turning Point, a lecture about the crew of the Mayflower’s decision to stop their journey south to the Hudson River and instead turn back to Cape Cod. The lecture will be followed by a brief intermission with refreshments and discussion. Once the break is over, we will settle in for the SNEAK PREVIEW of the film, Stephano: The True Story of Shakespeare’s Shipwreck. The documentary follows the life of Stephen Hopkins, the only passenger on the Mayflower to have been to the New World before. 

Tickets are available at the door. Doors open at 1:15 pm and seating is limited. Sunday Lecture Series Admission: $10 for the lecture, Members are Free. 

Additional details on the lecture and film below.

The Turning Point:

Join the Atwood as we learn about the navigational decision that turned the tide of history. It is known that the English settlers aboard the Mayflower journeyed across the Atlantic Ocean and hoped to land near the Hudson River. But, they didn’t take into consideration how dangerous it would be to get over the bars off of Chatham. The decision to instead sail back up the coast of Cape Cod changed the course of history forever. William Horrocks, our speaker, will journey deeper into the factors, charts, and deliberations that went into this historic decision.

William (Bill) Horrocks, Jr. lives near the lighthouse in Chatham with his wife, Joan, an artist. They have summered there since 1975. Bill, born in New Jersey and reared in the Philadelphia area, was educated at Wesleyan and holds a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from MIT. Following a forty-year career of teaching and chemical research on the faculties of Princeton and Penn State, he retired and is currently serving as volunteer Curator of Charts at the Atwood Museum of the Chatham Historical Society.

Stephano: The True Story of Shakespeare’s Shipwreck

This documentary follows the story of Stephen Hopkins, the only passenger on the Mayflower to have been to the New World before. It was filmed on location in his boyhood home of Hampshire, the beach he wrecked on in Bermuda in 1609, Jamestown, London, Cape Cod, and Plymouth. The aforementioned shipwreck became the basis of Shakespeare’s final play, The Tempest. 

Filmmaker, documentary producer at WGBH, and Op Ed column writer for the Cape Cod Chronicle, Andrew Giles Buckley, lives in Chatham. His upcoming documentary chronicles the life of one of his distant relatives who survived the Mayflower journey.