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Title details for The Shipwreck That Saved Jamestown by Lorri Glover - Available

The Shipwreck That Saved Jamestown

The Sea Venture Castaways and the Fate of America

by Lorri Glover
Daniel Blake Smith
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
The English had long dreamed of colonizing America, especially after Sir Francis Drake brought home Spanish treasure and dramatic tales from his raids in the Caribbean. Ambitions of finding gold and planting a New World colony seemed within reach when, in 1606, Thomas Smythe extended overseas trade with the launch of the Virginia Company. But from the beginning the American enterprise was a disaster. Within two years, warfare with Indians and dissent among the settlers threatened to destroy Smythe's Jamestown just as it had Raleigh's Roanoke a generation earlier.


To rescue the doomed colonists and restore order, the company chose a new leader, Thomas Gates. Nine ships left Plymouth in the summer of 1609—the largest fleet England had ever assembled—and sailed into the teeth of a storm so violent that "it beat all light from Heaven." The inspiration for Shakespeare's The Tempest, the hurricane separated the flagship from the fleet, driving it onto reefs off the coast of Bermuda—a lucky shipwreck (all hands survived) that proved to be the turning point in the colony's fortune.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    September 16, 2008

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781400129478
      • File size: 288645 KB
      • Duration: 10:01:20

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      History so often turns on chance events, and the survival of the Jamestown colony is a dramatic example. This audiobook tells the surprisingly little-known story of how the Virginia Company's ship, SEA VENTURE, changed the course of American history after arriving at Jamestown in 1610. Michael Prichard maintains a steady voice as he relates the unspeakable suffering of the earlier settlers, who, when the SEA VENTURE finally arrived, were enduring the "starving time," which had reduced them to eating the bodies of their dead. Prichard's pace is just right, leaving the listener enough time to absorb the details in the narrative and keeping the story moving even when the text bogs down in detail. D.B. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      June 16, 2008
      Few history tales pack the excitement of Virginia's founding. Most accounts start with the 1607 Jamestown landing. But like Kieran Doherty in 2007's Sea Venture
      , historians Glover (Southern Sons
      ) and Smith (Inside the Great House
      ) focus on the desperate endeavors to rescue the colony from disaster after its first year. It's a rip-snortin' story of shipwreck, intrigue, horror, courage, risk, luck and will, and the authors milk it for all it's worth. Whether the wreck of the Sea Venture
      on Bermuda and its recovery as part of the fleet sent to save Jamestown was more important to “the fate of America” than the original 1607 settlement is open to question. That aside, the authors let the story unfold in all its inherent complexity, tragedy and suspense. Glover and Smith focus on the tale's human elements and its often harrowing, sometimes inspirational events with appropriate verve. The authors have brought the drama in the Chesapeake alive in all its gripping detail.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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