David S. Reynolds’ “Two Ships” revisits Mayflower and the White Lion as twin origin stories for America’s founding era

A new book by historian David S. Reynolds, recently reviewed by NPR, places the Mayflower and the White Lion side by side as a framework for re-examining the story Americans often tell about their origins. Reynolds’ approach centers on a contrast that is also a connection: the Mayflower, which brought the Pilgrims to Plymouth in 1620, and the White Lion, which brought enslaved Africans to Virginia in 1619, years before the better-known Plymouth landing entered public memory as a founding touchstone.

In the review, NPR describes Reynolds’ “Two Ships” premise as a way of treating two separate voyages as linked chapters in the early English North America that became the United States. The book’s organizing idea is that both arrivals shaped political culture, law, labor systems, and the racial order that would later be codified across the colonies, even though they are remembered differently in common retellings.

Reynolds’ White Lion thread aligns with longstanding historical accounts of the 1619 landing near Jamestown. According to, the White Lion was an English privateer commanded by John Jope that sailed into Point Comfort in late August 1619 and anchored in the James River area, where it dropped off a group of Africans later described by historians and in records as enslaved. NPR’s review similarly highlights the White Lion as the vessel associated with the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to Virginia in 1619.

The book’s Mayflower component follows the commonly cited timeline of 1620, when the Pilgrims traveled on the Mayflower to reach Plymouth. In Reynolds’ framing, that later, widely commemorated journey and the earlier Virginia arrival help explain how a single continental expansion project could produce both a narrative of religious settlement and an economic system built on racial slavery.

The release arrives amid rising public attention to the United States’ 250th anniversary of independence and a broader wave of nonfiction exploring how the country remembers itself. Publishers Weekly has reported on a set of new books aimed at helping readers understand America at 250, with authors revisiting formative episodes, institutions, and legacies that connect the Revolutionary era to earlier colonial foundations.

Reynolds’ book also engages a wider debate about whether American history can be reduced to a small set of unifying stories. The premise of “two ships” has been discussed in other long-form commentary about whether competing national narratives can be held together without flattening their differences, according to The Atlantic’s coverage of the “two ships” theory of American history.

For readers and institutions planning 250th-anniversary programming, Reynolds’ “Two Ships” book adds a prominent, academically grounded option that explicitly pairs the Mayflower tradition with the record of early enslaved arrivals. The practical effect is that museum educators, course planners, and general audiences looking for clear narrative anchors may find more pressure to address both voyages in the same lesson rather than treating slavery as an offshoot that can be discussed separately from “founding” myths.

As the book circulates, the key question for publishers and educators will be how to present the evidence behind each ship within a single storyline. The debate is unlikely to be confined to one title, but Reynolds’ approach ensures that the White Lion and the Mayflower remain in the same frame as Americans mark anniversary milestones and update public-facing history materials.