I first watched a film about the first successful English colony at Jamestown, so I thought it only natural to find a movie about the Puritan Pilgrims who settled at Plymouth (in what is now Massachusetts). The Plymouth Adventure is not really about the colony itself (the early history of that settlement is covered briefly in the last ten minutes), but the voyage aboard the Mayflower. The first act concerns the Pilgrims trying to leave for America, with the majority of the rest of the film focusing on tensions between the rough-hewn sailors and the more polished Pilgrims, tensions which weren’t really much of a thing in real life.
The film gets points for featuring a cast virtually made up of real historical figures, though some are just faces put to names of the Mayflower’s list of crew and passengers. It’s more of an ensemble piece, but Spencer Tracy as Captain Christopher Jones does tend to command the screen. In real life Jones was easy to get along with and was a devoted family man, but to create drama the movie turns him into a womanizing and often drunk grouch who can’t stand the religious Puritans.
