┘On 21 November 1620, 102 English settlers landed on the coast of North America at Cape Cod, in what is now Massachusetts. Known to history as the "Pilgrim Fathers", half of these settlers died of scurvy the following winter. The colony they founded, however, was to be the cornerstone of New England. The Pilgrim Fathers were only one part of a complex process of colonization and exploration by which Europeans established themselves in the vast expanses of North America. ¼@The ºMayflowerº@
Puritans were English Protestants who objected to some practices of the Church of England, which they saw as too "Catholic". Suffering persecution in England in the early 17th century, a group of them obtained a licence to settle in Virginia, England's only colony in North America. In 1620 they set out across the Atlantic from Plymouth, Devon. Their three-masted ship, the ºMayflowerº, was only 27.5 m (90 feet) in length and it took 66 days to reach America. On board were 35 Puritans and a greater number of adventurers and soldiers of fortune. By mistake they missed Virginia, landing too far north. Instead, they ended up founding the colony of Massachusetts.
