The Pilgrims, the men and women who fled religious persecution in Europe to start a new life in the “New World,” are often seen as a dour, serious, and fussy bunch who loved religion, religion, and more religion, and had little tolerance for much else. You may also think that the Pilgrims were a gang of teetotalers who avoided alcohol at all costs, but in fact, that was not true at all. In those days, almost everybody in England consumed beer throughout the day, according to Lancaster Brewery, at least in part because it contained lots of calories. Considering the sorry state of the diet of the average English worker at the time, a cheap source of “nutrition,” such as it was, was indispensable.

Further, bringing fresh water to drink on an ocean voyage — from England to the New World — was a fool’s game, considering that it could easily be polluted by seawater and become undrinkable. Instead, seafarers brought beer, and lots of it, at once solving the problem of giving their passengers calories and giving them unpolluted water to drink.

Unfortunately for the Pilgrims, a beer shortage set into motion a series of events that ended with over half of the passengers on the Mayflower dying.

Beer rations were running low

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