On September 6, 1620—September 16 by today’s Gregorian calendar—the Mayflower departed Plymouth, England, on its historic transatlantic voyage. After its companion vessel, the Speedwell, proved unfit for the passage, passengers and cargo were consolidated aboard the Mayflower. The overcrowded ship carried 102 passengers and a crew generally estimated at roughly 25 to 30 men. Weeks of delays had already made the enterprise more costly and left the migrants facing an increasingly difficult Atlantic crossing.
The voyage began with what future Plymouth governor William Bradford called “a prosperous wind,” but it soon became an ordeal of sickness, confinement, and violent weather. Fierce storms battered the vessel, made its upper works leaky, and cracked a major beam amidships—damage serious enough to raise fears that the ship could not complete the journey. A large iron screw helped brace the beam, allowing the Mayflower to continue. After 66 days at sea, it reached Cape Cod in November 1620.
Bradford later preserved the experience in Of Plymouth Plantation, one of the central primary accounts of the colony’s founding. He recorded both the practical hazards of the voyage and the settlers’ religious interpretation of events. Among his most striking stories is that of a “proud and very profane young man,” a sailor who mocked and cursed the sick passengers, then died of disease before the ship had crossed halfway over the Atlantic. Bradford described the incident as evidence of divine justice—a revealing example of the providential worldview that shaped the Pilgrims’ understanding of survival, suffering, and settlement.
Image: The Mayflower at Sea, Granville Perkins, via the New York Public Library; no known restrictions.
