Mayflower

We often mention the Pilgrims and their Mayflower voyage during the Thanksgiving season, but I never had a very deep knowledge of how they settled and then survived in the Massachusetts Bay area. This book was particularly informative of how the Pilgrims came to such a determined commitment to leave Europe and settle in the dangerous and unknown America. And once they arrived, their struggles seemed at times to be overwhelming. This was a great book about the beginnings of America.

Philbrick had me from his opening sentence: “We all want to know how it was in the beginning.” He makes a familiar history fresh, asking how fifty years of peace at Plymouth Rock between the Mayflower Pilgrims and local Wampanoags could end in war.

Within this overarching theme, it’s the small details I remember, such as how Philbrick interviewed Captain Alan Villiers who sailed a 1957 replica of the Mayflower. In a violent transatlantic storm, Villiers tested a Jacobean sailing technique that hadn’t been tried for centuries, furling the sails and securing the helm into the wind. Its boxy shape… show more.

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history, Philbrick’s book tells the extraordinary story of the first fifty-five years of the Plimoth Colony, beginning with the arduous and perilous journey of the little wooden ship Mayflower and ending in the bloody King Philip’s War, which nearly wiped out the New England colonists and the native populations as well. Philbrick's writing style is compelling and never boring. This book is full of factual information and makes an old story new.

Mayflower is a brilliant and comprehensive account of the first fifty years of Puritan settlement in New England, culminating in King Philip’s War, the bloodiest war, per capita, in American history. That conflict effectively marked the end of the English effort to live amicably with Native peoples and initiated a policy of subjection, domination, and erasure that continues to this day. In readable prose permeated with fascinating historical information, Mayflower presents a riveting account of the English colonization of New England.

Philbrick’s book provides a great overview of America’s New England beginning. The Pilgrims were a small group of 37 English religious separatists who had escaped to Holland after experiencing oppression by the Church of England. They had to mix with 65 other people they called “strangers,” who boarded the Mayflower at Plymouth, England on September 5, 1620—too late in the season to prepare for North American winters. After landing, about half of them, including my ancestor, Edward Fuller, died of disease, malnutrition, and exposure (his son, Dr. Mathew Fuller, came 20 years later, carrying on my genetic link). Philbrick documents… show more.