Even in the best of times, meals were rough affairs. Once their private stores ran out, not long after the voyage began, Gates and Somers and all the other important men and women on the vessel were f...
All any on the flagship could do was hope the other vessels were safe, pray that the other ships and their crews and passengers would survive the storm.
The Virginia Company had floated an idea that all English pirates might be pardoned if they agreed to move to Virginia.
Have been built in East Anglia in about 1603, the Sea Venture was a three-masted vessel roughly a hundred feet long from the end of her bowsprit to her stern post. The vice admiral, or second-largest...
Within days of leaving port, the ship stank of vomit and garbage and food scraps and other foul leavings that were discharged or that seeped into the ballast area. The stench was made even worse by th...
They sit roughly 900 miles north and east of the Bahamas; roughly 600 miles east of Virginia; and about 3,500 miles south and west of London.
There had been no difficulty recruiting sailors willing, even anxious, to sign on for the voyage to the Chesapeake. Since the end of the war with Spain and the end of privateering, out-of-work sailors...
The passengers and crew gathered each morning and evening and each Sunday for prayers,
The Sea Venture, the admiral of the fleet, docked at Woolwich, the bustling royal dockyards about eight miles down the Thames from central London. There she and six other ships of the fleet—the Diamon...
Still, John Smith knew he had to have backing if he was to lead the colony successfully even for a few weeks. He would have deeply felt his responsibility to both the four hundred or so newcomers who...
Since the days of the earliest English voyages to the New World, ships crossing the Atlantic had typically followed a course that took them first to the Canary Islands, off the coast of Africa, and th...
Remarkably, all 150 men, women, and children on the ship were eventually brought safely to shore. Even the ship’s dog was saved.
Of course, he had heard of Virginia. He was obviously fond of the theater, fond enough to put some of his money at risk as a shareholder of the Blackfriars Theatre Company.
Of course, Sir George and Sir Thomas and Captain Newport had worries other than just food and water and shelter. They were bound, by duty and by desire, to fulfill their obligations to the Virginia Co...
Night after night, Strachey would sit by the fire, waiting and watching and hoping.24 Perhaps it was at this time that he began his long report on the shipwreck or perhaps he simply gazed seaward and...
Miraculously, though, the same coral heads that split the ship’s sides held the wounded vessel fast, upright as if she were in the jaws of a vise.
Like other ships of her time, the Sea Venture was built of long, thick planks laid flush, edge to edge and end to end over oak frames. These planks were laid just close enough to one another to allow...
John Smith, for one, knew the value of good food during an ocean voyage. The want of good food, he said, occasions the losse of more men, then in any English fleet hath bin slaine in any fight since 1...
It took no time at all for trouble to break out between the colonists sent north with West and the natives living near the falls on the James River, near the site of present-day Richmond. More interes...
In exchange for the parcel of land, Smith promised copper and gave Parahunt a teenaged English boy named Henry Spelman to serve as a translator. With the deal closed, Smith ordered West to move into t...