Sea Venture
Shipwreck, Survival, and the Salvation of Jamestown
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In one of the most triumphant high sea stories ever told, Kieran Doherty brings to life the true story of the ship that rescued the Jamestown settlement in 1610 and ensured England's place in the New World. When the Sea Venture left England in 1609, it was flagship in a fleet of nine bound for Jamestown with roughly 600 settlers and badly needed supplies aboard. But after four weeks at sea, as the voyage neared its end, a hurricane devastated the fleet, leaving the Sea Venture shipwrecked on the island of Bermuda. It took Sea Venture's passengers nearly a year and half to reach their destination. Awaiting them was not a thriving colony, but instead the remaining fifty colonists—beleaguered, desperate and hungry. But, the question remains, would the English have lost their place in the New World if the ship never arrived? A story of strife and triumph, but above all, endurance, Sea Venture begins and ends in hope and remains one of the greatest "What Ifs?" in history. With a bravado reminiscent of Patrick O'Brien's legendary sea sagas, Doherty braves the elements, delivering a powerful history willed by a people destined to change the New World forever.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 1609, the two-year-old English settlement in Jamestown was struggling to survive, having been decimated by hostile Native Americans, disease, political mismanagement and lack of food. Early in the summer, a fleet of nine ships and over 600 hopeful settlers left England to bring supplies and new life to the beleaguered colony. The flagship, Sea Venture, never made it to Jamestown: swept off course by a hurricane, it landed in Bermuda. Doherty, an author of biographies for young adults, vividly recreates the journey of the Sea Venture, the survival of its passengers and the eventual rebuilding of two new ships (Patience and Deliverance) from the Sea Venture's timbers. A year and a half after leaving England, the Sea Venture's passengers landed at the Virginia settlement only to find it on the verge of extinction. The ship's leaders refashioned the charter of the settlement, strove to establish new relationships with the Native Americans and restored the colony's agricultural fortunes, assuring the English a foothold in the New World. The most famous account of this shipwreck is Shakespeare's The Tempest, but Doherty's fast-paced and colorful blow-by-blow account is a swashbuckling tale of adventure in the age of exploration. 8 pages of b&w photos.
