Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service with me, Tim Halford,

with a programme that scrutinises statistics not just in the present day, but sometimes in history too.

It's just over four centuries since the ship, the Mayflower,

sailed from Plymouth in the UK to the shores of America.

Carrying with it, a group of travellers who would go down in American history.

The names of Miles Standish and Richard Warren,

may ring some vague bells around the world, but in America these are legendary figures,

synonymous with the birth of the United States.

The 400th anniversary celebrations are going ahead, a year late, thanks to Covid,

and so today, on more or less, we're trying to solve a genealogical mystery which was raised by

loyal listener William Middleton. Today, 30 million Americans claimed some lineage to people who

are on board the Mayflower. Surely I must have misunderstood the claim.

Well William, the 30 million number is indeed one of the claims out there, but there are even

higher estimates. The general society of Mayflower descendants says there are 35 million descendants

in the world today. So what do we make of these numbers? Can we say anything with any certainty

or is the truth lost in the swirl of the past? Before we go through the maths,

let's have a history lesson first. Dr Misha Ewan is a historian who specialises in English and

North American colonial history. So 102 passengers set sail in September 1620.

But only around 37 of them were individuals who were fleeing religious persecution in England,

and those are the people that have come down to us in history as the pilgrims.

But the rest of the passengers were made up of around 30 crew and also other families who were

migrating to North America in search of a better life in search of trade. So they set sail

...