Mayflower Pilgrim Beer

Cecilie Vavasour - 12/07/2010

This beer was brewed and bottled in Devon in 1970 by Courage (Western) Breweries to commemorate 150 years since the Pilgrim Fathers left Plymouth to start a new life in America in 1820.

The link I have with this bottle of beer is that my family were Calvinists at the time of my great grandfather. The other link with my Calvinist family history is that two of my relatives were persecuted by the Catholics and there is a memorial to them in East Sussex, because they were burnt at the stake because they were Calvinists with very Puritanical ideas.

So my great grandfather was a young apprentice and a Calvinist himself at the time the Pilgrim Fathers set sail. While my great grandfather stayed in Britain the Pilgrim Fathers experienced terrible weather but eventually landed in what they named New Plymouth on December 25th. They built inadequate housing and it is said that half of the Pilgrim Fathers died.