To celebrate its fiftieth anniversary, the University of
Virginia Press reissues its first-ever publication. The volume's
two accounts of the 1609 wreck of a Jamestown-bound ship offer a
gripping sea adventure from the earliest days of American
colonization, but the dramatic events' even greater claim to fame
is for serving as the inspiration for William Shakespeare's last
major work, "The Tempest."
William Strachey was one of six hundred passengers sailing to
Jamestown as part of the largest expedition yet to Virginia. A mere
week from their destination, the fleet's flagship, Sea Venture, met
a tropical storm and wrecked on one of the islands of Bermuda.
Strachey's story might have ended there, but the castaways survived
on the tropical island for eleven months and--in an act of almost
incomprehensible resourcefulness--used local cedarwood, along with
the wreckage of their own ship, to construct two seaworthy boats
and continue successfully on their voyage.
Strachey's frankness about his fellow travelers, mutinies on the
island, and the wretched condition in which they finally found
Jamestown kept his document from being officially published
initially, but it circulated privately in London, where one of its
early readers was William Shakespeare. The second narrative in this
volume, by Strachey's shipmate Silvester Jourdain, covers the same
episode but includes many fascinating details that Strachey's does
not, including some that made their way into "The Tempest."
Presented with modern spelling and punctuation, this great
maritime drama and unforgettable firsthand look at the profound
struggle to colonize America offers today's reader the raw material
that inspired Shakespeare's masterpiece.
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