the boat

the boat (uncountable)

1. (informal, often capitalized) In US history and genealogy, a nickname for The Mayflower, the ship on which the Pilgrims sailed from England to Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620.

   Angela Davis, longtime revolutionary and former member of the Communist Party, was stunned to learn that she, of all people, could trace her ancestry back to the boat.

   • 2020, Josephine de la Bruyere, “The Duality of Being a Mayflower Descendant”, in The Provincetown Independent‎:

     Bit by bit, she learned the stories of her ancestors and of Cape Cod. And it occurred to her: “These people,” she said, “probably went all the way back to The Boat.”

   • 2020, Bill Kemp, “Polk Mayflower descendants talk about 400th anniversary of landing”, in The Ledger‎:

     “So, I started working on that particular individual where the error occurred and found out almost immediately that we did descend from William Brewster," Wheaton said. “The story I always tell, when I found the error, I walked over to where my friends were sitting and said, ‘Well, I am off the boat.’ They commiserated and then I went back to work and was eventually able to say, ‘I am back on the boat again.’”