The Mayflower landed on the coast of Cape Cod, in modern-day Massachusetts, on November 11, 1620. Its target had been the area around the Hudson River, north of the then extant Virginia Colony, and hundreds of miles from where it ended up. The explanation passed down by the Pilgrims was that a serious storm had blown the Mayflower off course, and that they had arrived in America too late in the year to correct themselves.
It is a plausible explanation, yet many on the Mayflower had much to gain from their faulty navigation. Leaders of the group were seeking religious independence in America, and above all a freedom from the corrupting influences that were ever-present in England or in Leiden. They were not in close religious alignment with the Anglicans of Virginia, and may have justly feared that tensions and a loss of freedom might have arisen had they settled in that colony.
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