The Mayflower and Her Log; July 15, 1620-May 6, 1621 — Volume 1

In the summer of 1620, a battered merchant ship called the Mayflower set sail from Plymouth, England, carrying 102 passengers fleeing religious persecution and seeking a new world. What followed was a treacherous Atlantic crossing marked by storms, mechanical failures, and a ship full of quarrelsome passengers who nearly mutinied. Ames reconstructs this foundational American saga with the precision of a naval historian and the storytelling instinct of a novelist. He details the tragic felling of the Speedwell, the overcrowding and disease that plagued the voyage, and the fifty-three grueling days lost to contrary winds. But this is more than a sea story: Ames excavates the messy humanity of the Pilgrims themselves, the religious radicals, the secular opportunists, the servants and strangers bound together by desperation. He corrects centuries of mythology while capturing what actually happened when these exhausted, bedeviled travelers finally sighted the New World and had to figure out how to survive it. For anyone who wants the real story behind the legend, this remains an indispensable account.