September 16 1620, the Mayflower Sets Sail for the New World
…and beer makes American history
They had started out with two ships. The Mayflower and the Speedwell. Their trip was difficult before they even hit open water. They’d had to turn back more than once due to leaks. They’d spent a week getting repairs and had been forced to sell their belongings to pay for them and dock fees. They had been swindled and conned. On another attempt, they made it past Land’s End, but the Speedwell was taking on water. In the end, the Speedwell was ditched, eleven passengers transferred to the Mayflower, and they set sail for the New World.
Contrary to the pictures we saw in elementary school of cheery pilgrims in buckled hats and shoes joyously praying in a ship’s cozy quarters, this was not the case. The passage was difficult and took just under two months. Everyone aboard – soldiers, adventurers, separatists, and crew – subsisted on salted beef and hardtack made of flour and water. Seasickness was rampant, quarters were cramped and wet and uncomfortable. Before the voyage to the New World, the Mayflower had run wine barrels up the Atlantic coast of Europe. Most people, unless you happen to be related to me, are a bit taller than a wine barrel. So the quarters were about five feet high and most of the men could not stand upright.
Their concerns were manifold. The stormy and rough Atlantic could quite possibly split apart their rickety ship and send them all into the frigid waters. Electrifying that fear were the creatures – real and imagined – lurking beneath the surface. But it was terrifying enough knowing that if their ship went down they would die, because in terms of unpleasantness, dying in the middle of the ocean has remained pretty uniform. Another source of anxiety was their destination. If they arrived alive or at all, they were in for a hard life, one which had an alarmingly good chance of ending by freezing to death, starving to death, or getting hacked with a tomahawk to death. The crossing wasn’t their only problem, it was the beginning of their problems.
So when they spotted Cape Cod on November 9, it was with mixed feelings. On the one hand, land meant not dying in the ocean. On the other, Cape Cod wasn’t their destination. They had legally obtained permission to settle in the Colony of Virginia and so had expected the lush forests of Virginia, not the sand dunes of Cape Cod. Between where they were and where they were supposed to be they had to first navigate the Pollock Rip, a maze of notoriously dangerous shoals, hard breakers, and terrible undercurrents that had (and has) trashed countless ships. One estimate claims that half of all shipwrecks on the east coast lie within this stretch. Still, Captain Jones headed south but they encountered problems almost immediately from breakers and undercurrents, so Captain Jones made the call and turned back. Illegal or not, the pilgrims would settle in Cape Cod. The pilgrims landed, established Plymouth Colony, and became buckled characters in every future history book in America.
The role that beer played in the pilgrim’s saga is one we’re not told in school. We get Thanksgiving and buckled hats. But on the Mayflower voyage, every person – man, woman, child, crewman, soldier, and adventurer – was pretty well toasted every day. For the generations of Americans to come, the pilgrims would represent the first Americans, but many of them were, for the time being anyway, English. This means they were awkward in social situations, said “sorry” a lot, and drank beer and not water. Water in English cities was putrid. The water on the Mayflower was so putrid it eventually grew algae, a thing you don’t want on something you’re planning to put in your mouth. Beer was the 17th century’s water. It was full of nutrients, vitamins, and flavor. And, above all, it wouldn’t propel you to an explosive diarrheal death.
It has been argued that Captain Jones decided to land in Cape Cod because the Mayflower was almost out of beer. Dwindling beer supply late in the voyage forced Captain Jones to ration beer. Soon after, the health of those on board suddenly began to suffer. People came down with scurvy and stomach ailments. Moreover, beer was not only nutritious and healthy, it lightened the mood, steeled the spirit, and helped the passengers bond with those they didn’t know. Remove beer from the picture and suddenly you have 132 sober people bent over in cramped quarters puking on each other. By the time they spotted Cape Cod, they desperately needed to brew beer.
Also, while there was indeed a bad storm that threw them off course early in the voyage, it’s very possible that one of the reasons they were so off course was beer. The Captain and crew would have each had about a gallon of beer a day, which means the captain was likely navigating and sailing impaired. This is before we take into account the shots of aqua vitae and rum they’d have fortified themselves with daily. Captain Jones’s sole navigational tool was a backstaff, which he would use by lining up with the sun to chart a course. After a few beers most men’s aim can’t find a pub’s urinal, so what chance did Captain Jones have of finding the Colony of Virginia 3,000 miles across open water while drunk?
The story we learn about Plymouth Colony is one of intrepid adventurers, strife, struggle, perseverance, and Thanksgiving. Add the beer and it stays that way but gets even better. Half of the pilgrims died in the first winter from sickness, starvation, or exposure. Though it’s probably unrelated, they ran out of beer in December. Maybe it’s not out of the realm of possibility that they’d lost the will to live without beer. It wouldn’t be the first or the last time, I’m sure. Nevertheless, they persevered. With the help of local indigenous peoples, the pilgrims were able to cultivate crops. This included barley, which allowed them to add alcohol back to their daily lives. They brewed beer with what they had – barley, oats, spruce, pumpkin, even corn and carrots. Their first barley crop had produced well so beer was drunk at the first Thanksgiving. Among the first structures built by the pilgrims was a brew house, for they needed beer, and then a tavern, for they needed a place to drink that beer while bitching about their bosses away from their wives and kids.
The beer version of the Mayflower story sees the pilgrims deciding to land in Cape Cod, an act which made them outlaws, in a hostile area, where the winter would decimate them and some of the local peoples would kill them. All because they needed beer. Why this isn’t the theme of the National Anthem I do not know.
Celebrate with beer, but what kind? There’s not a definitive answer on what the beer was like on the Mayflower, but later the pilgrims brewed beer from various ingredients available to them in the New World. Among those, you could try spruce beer, which incorporates the needles and buds of spruce trees in the brewing process. A spruce beer could be floral, citrusy, fruity, piney, or a bunch of other adjectives that are usually used to describe bathroom air fresheners. You could have a pumpkin beer. The pilgrims used pumpkin for fermentable sugar because good malt was not available. These weren’t like the pumpkin beers that flood the Instagrams of your more, uh, basic friends at this time of year. The pilgrims would have used the basic guts of the pumpkin. In any event, here’s a link to the 16 pumpkin beers to try this season (I won’t tell if you won’t). For the much more adventurous, or slightly deranged, you could try a cock ale, which isn’t quite as bad as you think, but is still pretty bad. It’s a beer brewed using a whole chicken. Gross? Yes. But it’s still probably better than the algae water on the Mayflower. And no explosive diarrheal death, either.
Another great story from my favorite writer. I am always amazed how you unearth all these facts and present a narrative that is absolutely fascinating. Keep them coming I am learning so much and no I will not be trying the pumpkin beer. I have learned to enjoy a dark beer courtesy of my son and your friend