The Mayflower left Plymouth, England on September 6, 1620, and anchored off the tip of Cape Cod on November 11.  During those two months crossing the Atlantic Ocean to America, many things happened on the Mayflower.

The first half of the voyage was actually fairly smooth.  The wind and weather were good for sailing, and they made good progress.  Aside from sea-sickness, the health of the passengers was generally very good.  One of the sailors, however, continually laughed and scoffed at the passengers, "cursing them daily" and saying that he hoped to throw their dead bodies overboard and take their belongings for himself.  But it turned out that this sailor would be the first to get sick and die: Passenger William Bradford wrote "it pleased God before they came half seas over, to smite this young man with a grievous disease, of which he died in a desperate manner, and so was himself the first that was thrown overboard.  Thus his curses light on his own head, ... for they noted it to be the just hand of God upon him."

Of the 102 passengers onboard the ship, three of them were pregnant women.  One of the women, Mrs. Elizabeth Hopkins, gave birth during the voyage.  Stephen and Elizabeth Hopkins named their newborn son Oceanus.  The other two women would give birth shortly after arrival.

After they had sailed more than half way to America, the Mayflower began to encounter a number of bad storms, which began to make the ship very leaky, causing many of the passengers below deck to be continually cold and damp.  During one of the storms, a main beam in the middle of the ship cracked, causing some of the passengers and crew to wonder if the ship was strong enough to make all the way to America.  But Master Christopher Jones felt his ship was strong, and so they fixed the main beam with a large screw, caulked the leaky decks as best they could, and continued on.

During another storm, a twenty-five year old man named John Howland came up on deck, but the ship suddenly rolled and he lost his balance and fell into the cold Atlantic ocean.  Luckily, he managed to grab a hold of a rope that was hanging down from one of the topsails, and held on as he sunk many feet below the surface of the water.  The Mayflower's crew hauled him back up to the surface with the rope, and then grabbed him with a boathook. 

Wet and cold and cramped in their small quarters, some of the passengers began to develop coughs and colds.  As the Mayflower finally began to approach America, one of the passengers, a young boy named William Butten, a servant to the passengers' doctor Samuel Fuller, died.  William Butten died on November 6, just three days before land was sighted.