In addition to their small arms, the Pilgrims also brought some heavy ordnance. On a commanding hill overlooking the bay and landing site, they built a meeting house and fort with places for their cannon on an upper deck. On February 21, 1621, William Bradford and Edward Winslow relate how “the Master came on shore, with many of his saylors, and brought with him one of the great peeces, called a Minion, and helped us to draw it up the hill, with another peece that lay on shore, and mounted them, and a Saker and two Bases.” In 1627 Isaak De Rasieres visited Plymouth and noted that the Pilgrims had six cannon of unspecified types in their fort and four “patreros” mounted in front of the governor’s house at the intersection of the two streets of the town. [1] In the preparation of this section I am much indebted to Mr. Edwin N. Rich of Wellfleet, Mass., a life-long student of early artillery who prepared the drawings from which the cannon in the reconstructed fort were made. These guns were probably not new, and they may well have been part of the armament of the _Mayflower_ itself. The largest of the cannon mentioned by name was a minion. This would have been a brass gun, which weighed between 800 and 1200 pounds. It would have had a bore of about 2.9 inches diameter and fired an iron ball weighing 3½ pounds for distances up to 1600 yards. The saker was slightly smaller, probably weighing 650 to 800 pounds. It would have had a bore of about 2.7 inches in diameter and shot a 2¾ pound ball up to 1700 yards. Since cannon designations were used rather loosely by the artillerists of the time, there is room for considerable differences in these dimensions. On Burial Hill in Plymouth are two early English cannons, one a minion and the other a small saker or sakeret. These guns were used as the models for those mounted in Plimoth Plantation’s reconstruction of the original fort. Since it is presumed that the Pilgrims’ guns came from the armament of the _Mayflower_ and since they were dragged up the hill and mounted immediately, it has been assumed that they were placed on carriages from the ship, and so naval carriages of the period have been reproduced for the reconstructed fort. [Illustration: _Full scale model of a minion in Plimoth Plantation’s reconstruction of the first fort._]