Read it through once

From the start events seemed to conspire against the Pilgrims as they prepared to depart from England. They were originally scheduled to sail in late summer on two ships, but difficulties with one of them resulted in their being crowded aboard the =Mayflower=, which finally put to sea in mid-September. The crossing itself was, for that time, successful; only one of the company perished. (Just two years before, another group of 180 dissenters had attempted to reach Virginia from Amsterdam; only forty-nine survived.) After sixty-six days at sea land was sighted off Cape Cod, and the weary band, much buffeted by ocean storms, must have indeed been glad to have arrived. But by then the year was old, and there was no hope of acquiring adequate sustenance from the land in the coming months.