The Mayflower and Her Log

The ship that carried the Pilgrims across the Atlantic sails through their earliest writings without a name. Azel Ames points to the first authentic record calling her the Mayflower: a land-allotment document made three years after the voyage.

In 1620, the Mayflower set out for New England with the Speedwell meant to sail beside her. But even the ships’ names—and the story of how they were procured—are tangled in gaps, errors, and conflicting accounts. Writing in the early twentieth century, Ames sifts old records to recover the details behind the voyage, from its financing to the smaller vessel whose troubles helped delay the departure. How much of the familiar story can the surviving evidence truly prove?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.