Plymouth Points of Interest

A cruise on the Pilgrim Belle offers many excellent photo opportunities not possible from shore. Departing from the Mayflower II State Pier you get a mariner's view of Mayflower II and Plymouth Rock. In a few short minutes you will be cruising just off Plymouth Beach, home to Plymouth's Natural Bird Sanctuary.

A short time later, you will round the tip of Plymouth Beach and enter Cape Cod Bay where two lighthouses mark the entrance to the harbor. The Gurnet Point Lighthouse is the oldest wooden lighthouse in the US, as well as the first lighthouse to have had a female lighthouse keeper. It is also the only lighthouse in the US to have been struck by a cannon ball! The Duxbury Pier Lighthouse (known locally as the Bug Light) marks the entrance to the towns of Duxbury, Kingston and Plymouth.

Cruise past the beaches of Saquish and Duxbury as well as Clarks Island, named for the Mayflower's first mate.

Commercial fishing boats can be seen heading out in search of fish or lobster, or returning to land their day's catch.

Along the way, there are tales of shipwrecks, Indians, and what the Pilgrims faced that first winter in the New World. You'll learn why lobster was referred to as "poor man's food"; why the Duxbury Pier Lighthouse is called the Bug Light; and other interesting local oddities.

Returning, you can view Myles Standish Monument, named in honor of the military leader of the Pilgrims; Forefathers Monument, the prototype for the Statue of Liberty, dedicated to the Pilgrims; and Burial Hill, where the Pilgrims buried half their population that first winter -- it sits along the shore of the inner harbor.

Before docking you'll cruise past Plymouth's Town Wharf, home to the commercial fishing fleet and another opportunity for a unique photo.