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...
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...
Vessels in the fleet endured after leaving the company of the Sea Venture. The first thing that happened—and this was reported by every witness—was that the ships scattered. Contact was soon lost and...
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...
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.
The spy also warned his monarch that the English would set about converting the Indians not to the Roman Catholic faith, but to the hated Protestant faith. The preparations they are making here are th...
Passengers were crowded together, forced to live and sleep and eat in intolerably cramped conditions. There was almost no privacy, no water for washing, no break in the tedium as the ship rolled and p...
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—...
More than 650 individuals became shareholders along with fifty-six city companies and guilds, including the Company of Drapers, the Company of Grocers, the Company of Brewers, and the Company of Poult...
In mid-1608, or at about the time that Strachey started thinking of emigrating, Captain John Smith, the Virginia settler, had written a long letter to a friend about conditions in Jamestown.
As he walked the eight miles to where the Sea Venture lay docked, passing from his old life to his new, it would have been perfectly natural for him to wonder if he would ever again see the bustling,...
As challenging as the islands were to mariners, a few Spanish and Portuguese and, later, English sailors did make their way to stand on one of Bermuda’s beaches or to climb its rocks or investigate it...
The balance of the fleet—other than the little ketch that was lost after separating from Sea Venture in the early hours of the storm—had survived the tempest, if barely. On August 10, four of those sh...
Within a week or two weeks of their grounding, Gates and the others knew that the other ships in the fleet had either been lost in the storm or had sailed on to Jamestown. If any of the other sea capt...
Johnson praised Virginia for its uncivilized yet friendly natives and argued that the English settlers’ goals included the betterment of the savages. Of course, the truth was different, as Johnson and...
Though the ship seemed secure, the steady wearing of the waves or a sudden squall could easily send her sliding off the reef or batter her to pieces, scattering the valuable supplies still in her hold...