THE Mayflower 400 Dartmouth steering committee is inviting people to share their ideas for upcoming celebrations.

The committee is the group behind the commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower from Plymouth to America, and the part that Dartmouth played in the voyage.

Town councillor Gina Coles, committee secretary, said: ‘As soon as we began looking into the possibility of organising this event it became clear that there were going to be unprecedented opportunities to be gained for Dartmouth in so many different ways.

‘Not only are there the obvious benefits increased tourism would bring, but we are now looking at exciting schemes and creating important legacies for future generations.

‘Our involvement and meetings with the Americans who are organising the event from the other side of the world have shown us the enormity of the benefits open to us and just how big this anniversary is to them.

‘We are aiming to give our visitors something worth coming thousands of miles for but we need the help of the residents and businesses of Dartmouth to deliver such a package.

‘It is almost impossible to explain how important this event will be to Dartmouth. We need to get the infrastructure in place now so that we get full benefit from the massive number of visitors that will want to visit the area.

‘Anyone that wants to help in any way, from offering advice or a specialist skill to organising an event, is invited to the meeting, which takes place at the Guildhall at 6.30pm on Monday.

The Mayflower was the ship used to transport over 100 ‘pilgrims’ to the ‘New World’ in 1620. Having set off from Plymouth, the Mayflower had to pull back into Dartmouth when its fellow ship, the Speedwell, began leaking.

The travellers abandoned the Speedwell and squeezed themselves onto the May­flower, but the delay meant they crossed the Atlantic at the height of storm season.

Many spent the entire journey being seasick and one passenger was swept overboard and drowned. By the time they finally reached America two months later, they were in the wrong place.

They had intended to land in Virginia Company’s territory but instead ended up at Cape Cod. In order to establish themselves as a legitimate colony the colonists founded Ply­mouth.

Forty-one of the colonists drafted and signed a document they called the ‘Mayflower Compact’. This promised to create a ‘civil body politick’ governed by elected officials and ‘just and equal laws’. It also swore allegiance to the English king.

The colonists spent the first winter, which only 53 passengers and half the crew survived, living onboard the Mayflower before it sailed back to England in 1621.

Once they moved ashore, the colonists faced even more challenges. During their first winter in America, more than half of the Plymouth colonists died from malnutrition, disease and exposure to the harsh New England weather.

They settled in Pawtuxet, a Native American village that had been deserted years earlier after an outbreak of plague brought by European traders in 1616.

Without the help of the area’s native people, the colonists would never have survived.