Strachey, no doubt hungry for firsthand information about the colony, would have passed the bookseller a few coins, snapped up a copy of Smith’s brief report, and hurried home to read it voraciously a...
Somers and Newport, too, knew there was no way to bring the Sea Venture to anchor. Her hull was so open, her planks so sprung, that the ship would sink like one of the cannon they’d already jettisoned...
Somehow, though, Strachey and others on the vessel found the will to keep struggling, to fight for their lives though it seemed all was lost. Terrified now, the passengers forgot all class pretensions...
Remarkably, all 150 men, women, and children on the ship were eventually brought safely to shore. Even the ship’s dog was saved.
Passengers in need of toilet facilities were forced to use slop buckets that soon spilled over and added to the general miasma below or to climb into the beak—all the way forward beneath the bowsprit—...
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.
Now Archer and Ratcliffe and, to a lesser degree, John Martin, another of the original settlers whose laziness had angered Smith in the colony’s early days, and who had departed in 1608 only to return...
In reality, Smith, the man of action who had won respect as a soldier in Europe, would not have had to expend much in the way of bribes or feasting to earn the mariners’ support. They certainly knew t...
In fact, it is unlikely that all the men on the island went in search of food and water. While some went foraging, others would have set about building rough shelters, thatched with palm fronds, above...
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...
In addition to the stored foods, livestock—chickens and pigs and probably a few goats and geese—were penned on Sea Venture’s deck, both to provide fresh meat during the voyage and to help stock Jamest...
For that voyage, Frobisher packed one pound of biscuit and one gallon of beer per man per day, one pound of salt meat (beef or pork) per man for each flesh day, as well as one dried codfish for every...
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...
By late February 1609, three months before the new charter was signed by King James I, Pedro de Zúñiga, a savvy Spanish spy on the lookout for unusual activity in the capital, knew of England’s plans...
After a moment, Jourdain reported, Somers urged the men on the ship not to give up. He urged them to get back to the pumps and continue bailing. The men, spent with long fasting and continuance of the...
The settlers in the little fort on the banks of the James must have been dismayed when they discovered that the admiral bearing Sir Thomas and Sir George was missing in action along with the lion’s sh...
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...
William Strachey, who would later write the most detailed account of the storm, must have made his way from his quarters to the deck so he could see conditions for himself.
William Strachey and the others who had battled for four days to survive the hurricane threw themselves to the sand above the high-water mark to rest and to dry their sodden clothing.