The Mayflower’s second voyage recounted in ‘The Wicked Pilgrim’

There's a ship in friendship, and in the case of John Henley and Randal Charlton's lifelong bond, it's a big one. A square-rigged galleon with a 30-foot aft castle weighing 200 tons but much larger yet in historical significance.

The Mayflower. No, c'mon, John and Randal weren't on it. But Randal's father Warwick Charlton was. What?

Not the Mayflower exactly but the Mayflower II, an exact working replica. Warwick Charlton conceived and oversaw the building of it - and sailed on it - in the 1950s, which brings us to the crux of our business here but first ...

John, a Hamiltonian since 1968 via London, England, was recently hosting Randal, also from London (they went to school there together) and now living near Detroit.

Randal often visits Hamilton when taking in the plays at the Stratford Festival.

The theatre is in his blood. His paternal grandfather, also Randal Charlton, a familiar of King George V, was well-known in England in the early 20th century as the last of the Fleet Street dandies." He not only started and ran his own newspaper, the Tribune, but he served as its drama critic.

At 6'5" tall, he cut a dashing figure ... as he paraded in long frock coats, brocade waistcoats and top hat ..."

He married and then soon separated from the beautiful actress Birdie Courtney but not before they produced two children, including son Warwick.

Says Randal, it might have been the difficulty of registering an impression on such larger than life people as his parents that habituated Warwick to measuring out his life in a succession of grand gestures and schemes, sometimes impractical, sometimes successful, sometimes catastrophic, always interesting.

Warwick, like his father, was tall and handsome and, like his father, went into journalism but got fired within a week of starting his first newspaper job. Still he knew what got attention.

He managed to get himself on the front page, of the famous Daily Express," in uniform as one of the first British officers to ship out once the Second World War started. The photo showed him holding his new baby, Randal, one of the first babies born in London in 1940.

There I was," Randal tells me, with a laugh. The caption said, What will you tell him you did in the war?"

What Warwick did in the war was serve in Egypt under Montgomery (the famous Field Marshall Montgomery, hero of the British campaign in North Africa). Working his way onto Montgomery's personal staff, Warwick, with his knowledge of media, helped shape the general's public image.

At the time, using spoils-of-war equipment, Warwick was putting out newspapers, including the famous/infamous Eighth Army News." His writing in these, was, for all his commitment to victory, laceratingly critical of the bureaucracy, of Churchill himself. He was actually courtmartialed (but cleared) twice for allegedly divulging war secrets. Eventually Warwick's journals were shut down, despite Montgomery intercession.

Warwick's experience in North Africa left him with a keen appreciation for the help and friendship of the Canadians and Americans who fought alongside the Brits.

He was so impressed that he needed to recognize it somehow," says Randal.

Being Warwick, the gesture had to be outsized, grandiose, sensational. The idea incubated as life got re-normalized after the war but never faded - rebuild The Mayflower and gift it to the Americans.

In the 1950s, it happened. The effort mounted slowly, with false starts, and the ship took years to build but somehow, miraculously, scandalously, Warwick made it happen.

I say scandalously because in the effort to raise money and support, there were treachery, shady dealings, friends quickly made, as quickly alienated. Warwick was rubbing shoulders with some of the biggest names in Britain and America. The Churchills. Financiers.

Warwick had a prescient feel for media, and once the ship was built and the voyage from England to Cape Cod and then Plymouth was undertaken (Warwick was part of the crew), in 1956, the whole thing was shot by Life magazine and a top notch film team.

You can see the resulting short movie on YouTube. It documents the building of The Mayflower and the voyage from Britain to America in 1956 and was seen all over the world. The reception in the United States upon Mayflower II's arrival was full of fanfare but the subsequent fate of the project was gnarled by infighting and money troubles.

Several years ago Randal undertook to write a book about his father's astonishing, checkered adventure.

Called The Wicked Pilgrim," it did not get completed until 2019, almost 20 years after Warwick died. It was that complicated to write.

And this is where we circle back to the friendship. Randal and John wrote it. Randal's name is on the book cover but John virtually co-authored it with him, doing years of research and authentication.

Randal, who started as a journalist, like father and grandfather before him, became a successful entrepreneur and John, a magician, ran a thriving magic/games company in Hamilton called Inzani.

He certainly did magic in his work on this book," says Randal.

The book really began, in a way, back in school, where, as teenagers, John and Randal were transfixed by the news of Randal's father's Mayflower II initiative.

Warwick ended up as town crier in a small English village.

Here's the bigger epilogue. In 2020, a third version of The Mayflower, Mayflower 400 - a sci-fi-like drone - attempted a journey across the Atlantic to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the original voyage. Due to difficulties, the journey had to be aborted, but this summer it was completed - and, in the hold Mayflower 400? A copy of The Wicked Pilgrim."

Jeff Mahoney is a Hamilton-based reporter and columnist covering culture and lifestyle stories, commentary and humour for The Spectator.jmahoney@thespec.com