PLYMOUTH, England—With a splash of Plymouth gin, the U.S. ambassador to Britain officially launched a ship named Mayflower on Sept. 16, 400 years to the day after a wooden vessel with that name sailed from an English port and changed the history of two continents.
Unlike the merchant ship that carried a group of European Puritan settlers to a new life across the Atlantic Ocean in 1620, the Mayflower christened by U.S. Ambassador Robert Wood Johnson has no crew or passengers. It will cross the sea powered by sun and wind, and steered by artificial intelligence.
