From Pilgrims Pub:
"During the voyage of the Mayflower, the cooper who guarded the Pilgrims' casks of beer and pipes of gin and brandy was the famous John Alden. The supply was of no small importance to the Pilgrims. When the Puritans set sail, they were well freighted with astounding amounts of alcohol. In the hold of skip, the Arabella, which hit the seas for America in 1630, sloshed some 42 tuns of beer, 10,000 gallons of wine, and, "almost as an afterthought , fourteen tuns of fresh water," A tun of beer was a wooden barrel-like vessel and was also a unit of measurement, equal to about 252 gallons. Also aboard there were 120 hogshead of malt for brewing, since a hogshead is between 63 and 140 gallons, we are talking about 7,560 gallons at minimum. And note: This was just the official supply-most families brought their own backup barrels."
