In 1609, one of the most remarkable providences of the Jamestown story involved one of those relief expeditions led by three men: Sir Thomas Gates, who had been knighted for military service against Spain and newly appointed as Lt. Governor, Admiral Sir George Somers, who had served under Francis Drake, and Captain Christopher Newport, a forty-nine year old privateer on his fourth crossing to Virginia. The flagship of the fleet was The Sea Venture, followed by Diamond, Falcon, Blessing, Unity, Lion, Swallow, Virginia, and an unnamed vessel. Also aboard the Sea Venture were the Reverend Richard Bucke, gentleman-farmer John Rolfe and his pregnant wife, William Strachey, a gentleman poet and bankrupt actor, several war veterans, joiners, farmers, unemployed, and rogues looking for their main chance. The expedition carried the 2nd Charter of Jamestown.

The Sea Venture, which is at the heart of this story and is the title of the book, was a merchantman with a high sterncastle and forecastle and a rounded hull, which caused it to wallow and roll but kept it from sailing into the wind. The one hundred fifty souls aboard were forced to live below decks due to the amount of artillery on the top deck. Kieran Doherty, the author of this book and a well-known writer of books for young adults has a descriptive and analytical flair which brings the story to life. Picture this description of the voyage of the little armada and decide if you would join the Jamestown relief:

A sea voyage in 1609 was, even under the best of circumstances, a miserable affair. On deck or below, passengers were cold and damp in the winter and fall and beastly hot and damp in the spring and summer. Seasickness was endemic. Passengers were crowded together, forced to live and sleep and eat in intolerably cramped conditions. There was almost no privacy, no water for washing, no break in the tedium as the ship rolled and pitched, hour after hour, day after day, even in fine weather. It did not take long for food and drink to turn bad, so passengers as well as crew were forced to drink foul water or flat beer, eat weevil-infested biscuits, and try to choke down green salt meat. Ships teemed with vermin: roaches and fleas and lice and rats beyond counting. In addition, those who were lubbers—and that was most—had entered a world that was overwhelmingly strange and confusing. The deck appeared to be nothing more than a jumble of ropes and lines. The vessel was filled with objects with no discernable purpose. Even the sailors seemed like aliens. They dressed their scarred, often disfigured bodies in strange clothing, ran around the deck barefoot, or scampered aloft like monkeys as they mouthed words that might as well have been Greek: talk of luffs and cringles and futtocks and grommets and buntlines and so on. And then there was the fear, for even those who had never seen a body of water larger than a millpond knew that Ocean voyages were dangerous, that the sea killed hundreds, even thousands of men each year. (p.25)

In the Providence of God, an Atlantic hurricane (“A dreadful storm and hideous”) scattered the fleet and hurled the flagship through the dark onto the shoals off the beach of St. George’s Island one of the uninhabited 150 Bermuda islands. All one hundred fifty passengers and crew survived! One passenger recorded that their survival was “the work of a merciful God. . .A few yards to port or starboard and the Sea Venture would have been battered to pieces.” The ship sank after the passengers escaped to the island.

For the next ten months, the leaders fought to keep the shipwrecked Englishmen working together to provide food and build another ship to get them to Virginia. A mutineer was hanged and two others escaped to another island. Two babies were born and died. Finally in May, two small ships were finished and cast off for Jamestown. The aptly named Deliverance and Patience carried the survivors to the mouth of the James River, none too soon.

The story of the Jamestown rescue has been oft told but Doherty’s narrative is more lively and fast-paced than most. The special providences fairly leap off the pages as the survivors of the shipwreck settle at Jamestown and face the same difficulties and battles as their predecessors. It is worth noting the number of ministers of the Gospel who played important roles throughout the Jamestown story: Richard Hakluyt, Richard Bucke, William Crashaw, Master Kieth, Alexander Whitaker, and Samuel Purchase all make their appearances and play key roles in the story. The Bible they carried was the Geneva version.

The story of Jamestown is incomplete without including the founding of the colony in Bermuda as a result of the great shipwreck. In 1616, within 6 years of settlement, there were 600 settlers in Bermuda and only 400 in Virginia after 9 years. Ever after, the Bermudas were a safe haven stop-off for settlers headed to Virginia. The ship that brought the first Englishmen to the island chain was totally lost to memory after the shipwrecked generation died, until an amateur diver, a direct descendant of Sir George Yeardly, located and partly excavated the wreck in 1958. Artifacts of the Sea Venture can be seen today in the Bermuda Maritime Museum.

The author of this great and exciting tale has written a thoroughly entertaining and informative narrative full of wonderful providential observations, but this reviewer has three brief criticisms, one I can live with and two that I can’t. While Mr. Doherty includes a brief bibliography and helpful footnotes, there is no index. If you want to find a reference to Pocahontas, you must conduct your own page by page search. Since it is a narrative, the reader probably won’t need to search for references later (unless he is reviewing the book. . .)

More distressing, the author delivers a long-winded explanation of how the Bermuda islands came into existence through uniformitarian evolutionary geology. His theories parrot what are probably the most fashionable explanations concocted by the average geologist but they unnecessarily interpose speculation out of conformity to Scripture.

Most distressing, however, are the author’s theories regarding Pocahontas’s “falling in love with John Rolfe” and her conversion to Christ. He suggests that perhaps she succumbed to “the Stockholm Syndrome” where hostages fall in love with their captives! Perhaps she saw herself as the link to forming better political alliances. There are also other possibilities suggested, all more likely than that she actually was attracted to John Rolfe enough to marry and was a true convert to the Christian faith. The providential story of the Sea Venture and the impact of her passengers and crew in the history of the Jamestown Colony is one of incalculable importance. Despite the above caveats, no one has told the tale better than Kieran Doherty and anyone in this quadracentennial year will see the hand of God displayed in ways large and small on almost every page of this book.

William E. Potter Williamsburg, Virginia, 2007