On 13 December 1577, Francis Drake sailed from Plymouth, England in what would be the first circumnavigation in over half a century.
During the voyage, Drake controversially accused his aristocratic colleague Thomas Doughty of being “a conjurer and a seditious person” and procured his execution for mutiny after a trial by crewmen.
Beyond the precedent of Magellan, Drake had no authority for his action and one historian has found in the event the birth of the idea that the captain was the ruler of the ship whatsoever the rank of the rest.
In an episode of the UK children’s show “Sir Francis Drake”, Drake is the hero. The show ran from 1961, as did “The Dick Van Dyke Show”.
Dick van Dyke was born on 13 December 1925 into a family going back to Mayflower passenger John Alden. Wikipedia records that the Plymouth Colony established trial by jury on 13 December 1623, but I do not think this is so. The best I can find is:
IT was ordained 17 day of [December] Ano 1623 by [the Court] then held that all Criminall facts, and also all [matters] of trespasses and debts betweene man [and] man should [be tried] by the verdict of twelve Honest men to be Impanelled by Authority in forme of a Jury upon their oaths.
A little to the north and 13 December 1636 is the traditional start day for what is now the National Guard. On that day, the Court of the colony of the Massachusetts Bay ordered “that all military men in this jurisdiction shalbee ranked into three regiments”.
One regiment included men from “Watertowne” and may have included recent immigrant Ralph Wheelock whose great-grandchild Eleazar founded Dartmouth College. Its charter issued on 13 December 1769.
Still further north, Acadia was established as a colony of New France in 1604. While it was conquered by the British just over a century later, its colonists retained an idiosyncratic and distinct identity.
During the French and Indian War, aka in Canada The Seven Years War, the British suspected Acadian loyalty and deported them to other colonies or expelled them to France. Many in the latter group re-settled into Louisiana and developed another idiosyncratic and distinct identity as Cajuns.
One deportation ship was the Duke William. It sank in the Atlantic on 13 December 1758 with the loss of over 360 lives. 13 December is celebrated as Acadian Remembrance Day.
Bordering on a new world.