 The group remained on board the ship through the next day , a Sunday , for prayer and worship . The immigrants finally set foot on land at what became Provincetown on November 13 . The first task was to rebuild a shallop , a shallow draft boat that had been built in England and disassembled for transport aboard the Mayflower . It would remain with the Pilgrims while the Mayflower returned to England . On November 15 , Captain Myles Standish led a party of sixteen men on an exploratory mission , during which they disturbed a Native American grave and located a buried cache of Indian corn . The following week , Susanna White gave birth to son Peregrine White on the Mayflower . He was the first English child born to the Pilgrims in the New World . The shallop was finished on November 27 , and a second expedition was undertaken using it , under the direction of Mayflower master Christopher Jones . Thirty @-@ four men went , but the expedition was beset by bad weather ; the only positive result was that they found a Native burial ground and corn that had been intended for the dead , taking the corn for future planting . A third expedition along Cape Cod left on December 6 ; it resulted in a skirmish with local Native Americans known as the " First Encounter " near modern @-@ day Eastham , Massachusetts . The colonists decided to look elsewhere , having failed to secure a proper site for their settlement , and fearing that they had angered the local Native Americans by robbing their corn stores and firing upon them . The Mayflower left Provincetown Harbor and set sail for Plymouth Harbor . 
