For those of you who don’t know, D.A.R is a writing competition. They make it mandatory to do at my school, so I decided to work harder this year on my project, enabling myself to make it in the top five in my class. They change the topic each year, and this year’s topic was the pilgrims. Here is my D.A.R.

My name is William Bradford, and I am a colonist from England. I left my family and my country seeking a new life when I learnt a ship was sailing from England to Plymouth, Massachusetts. I aspired to attain religious freedom and as a result separated from the Anglican Church which had strict, controlling power, a form of dictatorship limiting the people’s freedom, their choices and beliefs. I was later referred a “Pilgrim” as I separated my ways with the Anglican Church. In my pursuit of this new voyage to America in a ship “The Mayflower”, I would be missing my entire family that includes my father, mother, wife, and my son. I bid them farewell and headed off to the ship, that waited ahead of me. Just for a last check, I made sure I packed all my food supplies such as salted beef, a dried biscuit called Hard Tack, vegetables, and beer. Also, I packed plenty of emergency supplies in case of a crisis situation such as a ship wreck. I was prepared as I knew this was my life’s hardest decision and would have to face many challenging obstacles on the way.

The Mayflower set sail accompanying another smaller ship, the Speedwell, on August 15^th, 1620 with Captain Christopher Jones and 102 passengers, including myself. There was a storm and the two ships were put to a halt due to the leaky conditions of the Speedwell. After recovery of the Speedwell, the two ships set sail one more time. However, the Speedwell sprung a leak again on September 2^nd, 1620 resulting in huge damage. Eventually the Mayflower had to sail alone, ditching the Speedwell.  Although this ship was of considerable size, it was crowded and extremely difficult to squeeze through places, requiring pushing and shoving.  In spite of this condition, many passengers sang, danced, and threw parties through this saga. Unlike I perceived, there were various sorts of people aboard the ship such as separatists, immigrants, adventurers, speculators, common sailors, regular workers, and many other types of colonists with different backgrounds and stories of their own. As we sailed through, many passengers were becoming seasick and catching contagious plagues and diseases by day. Fortunately, I didn’t catch any disease. One of my fellow passengers named William Butten passed away during the voyage. While alive, he was being cruel to the fellow passengers by mocking and insulting them, so the people later thought that God punished him with death. The colonists felt that he was well deserving of his death, because of his hurtful behavior and unacceptable actions of doing horrible things to his fellow passengers. Besides this sad and terrible news, I also experienced some great moments such as the birth of a newborn baby boy, he was named Oceanus since he was born while sailing through the ocean. Days were rough on the voyage, due to harsh weather conditions, it was becoming exceedingly difficult to continue the voyage. In fact, numerous people wanted to turn back. When we stopped at Plymouth Rock, people traded and purchased new food supplies to support for the rest of the voyage. Many folks disembarked at this stop as they were disinterested in continuing the voyage any further. A few of those were doubters, and they didn’t believe they would make it to the Plymouth colony, so out of fear they decided to discontinue the voyage. For those who persisted on continuing, such as myself, it turned out our voyage lasted for 66 days as we eventually reached Cape Cod, Plymouth on November 9^th, 1620.

            After landing in Plymouth, for the first few initial months, we went back and forth from the ship to establish a settlement. In March of the following year, we decided to move permanently ashore. Sadly, in our first winter it turned out that half of the population in the colony (45 people) were wiped out due to lack of shelter, a disease named scurvy, and many other illness and plagues. Eventually, we were introduced to a man named Squanto, he was extremely kind to help us and he translated many American words into the Native American language by helping build communal bonding. He was also the chief of the Massasoit tribe living there. In the fall of 1621, we all got together and celebrated our first Thanksgiving with loads of joy. Our first Thanksgiving was three days filled with complete fun, feasts, and games. It was a marked celebration with Squanto and other colonists.

         I went to Plymouth due to the fact that I was able to experience a totally different life such as having freedom to carry out my day to day dealings without government interference as compared to back home where we were held under a dictatorship with no freedom and unable to exercise basic human rights due to the fact that the Church exerted control on us. Personally, I was able to self-own my property in this new colony. We, settlers in unison, created our own government and elected John Carver as our Governor. Although the voyage was challenging, my mission to attain the religious freedom, to be free from a Church’s rule, and to be treated fairly were all fulfilled at the end of this long and treacherous journey. The only thing I regretted was the fact I did not bring my family along with me, since I missed them very dearly. Certainly, if not surely, they would have liked it more, if they too had accompanied me. I wish many other people back home such as my dear and close friends also had ventured out on this voyage seeking freedom to establish a permanent settlement in Plymouth due to the fact that there are more resources to enjoy in this new country, America as compared to back home in Europe.