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The Shipwreck That Saved Jamestown: The Sea Venture Castaways and the Fate of America Audiobook
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Publisher Description
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.
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"A rip-snortin' story of shipwreck, intrigue, horror, courage, risk, luck and will.... The authors have brought the drama in the Chesapeake alive in all its gripping detail."
— Publishers Weekly
The Shipwreck That Saved Jamestown Listener Reviews
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" I wasn't interested enough in the subject to try and wade through all the quotations of old English. Very slow moving and dry. "
— Elise, 2/2/2009 -
" This book tells how Bermuda became to be inhabited. "
— Stephanie, 11/7/2008 -
" I had never heard (or didn't remember)that that one of the ships sent with supplies and colonists for Jamestown during the "Starving Time" went aground on Bermuda. I will give it two stars because I learned something, but it was very, very dry. "
— Lynne, 9/13/2008
About the Authors
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 An American Betrayal, The Shipwreck That Saved Jamestown, Inside the Great House: Planter Family Life in Eighteenth Century Chesapeake Society, and many articles on early American history. Formerly a professor of colonial American history at the University of Kentucky, Smith now lives in St. Louis where he works as a screenwriter and filmmaker.
About Michael Prichard
Michael Prichard is a Los Angeles-based actor who has played several thousand characters during his career, over one hundred of them in theater and film. He is primarily heard as an audiobook narrator, having recorded well over five hundred full-length books. His numerous awards and accolades include an Audie Award for Tears in the Darkness by Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman and six AudioFile Earphones Awards. He was named a Top Ten Golden Voice by SmartMoney magazine. He holds an MFA in theater from the University of Southern California.