HistoryUnited StatesUnited States: Colonial to 1860
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“A rip-snortin’ story of shipwreck, intrigue, horror, courage, risk, luck and will . . . gripping.”—Publishers Weekly
The English were latecomers to America, and their initial attempts to establish an overseas empire met with dismal failure. In 1609, another disaster set the final course of this dramatic history, when the Sea Venture, the ship dispatched by London investors to rescue the starving settlers at Jamestown, collided with a ferocious hurricane and was shipwrecked off the coast of Bermuda. This riveting historical narrative describes how the 150 castaways were seduced by the island’s unexpected pleasures for almost a year and were later riven by mutinies when ordered to continue on to Virginia. Ultimately they built boats with their own hands and arrived safely in Jamestown to face the daunting task of rebuilding America’s first permanent colony.
“In this gripping account of shipwreck, mutiny, perseverance, and deliverance, the epic story of the wreck of the Sea Venture and its consequences for the survival of Jamestown, England's first successful colony in the New World, is told for the first time. Glover and Smith persuasively make the case that in saving themselves, the 150 castaways stranded for nearly a year on the remote island of Bermuda ultimately saved English America.”—James Horn, author of A Land As God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America
Lorri Glover is the author of two books on the early South, including Southern Sons: Becoming Men in the New Nation. She is a professor of early American history at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
Daniel Blake Smith is the author of Inside the Great House: Planter Family Life in 18th-Century Chesapeake Society and many articles on early-American history. He is a professor of colonial American history at the University of Kentucky.
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