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The Shipwreck That Saved Jamestown: The Sea Venture Castaways and the Fate of America. By Lorri Glover and Daniel Blake Smith. (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2008. Pp. [xii], 322. $26.00, ISBN 978-0-80508654-6.)
Published to catch the wave of interest in the four-hundredth anniversary of a famous shipwreck near Bermuda, this tale of two colonies by historians Lorri Glover and Daniel Blake Smith sets sail for a wide authence. But what does Bermuda, a remote (six hundred miles from the nearest land) island no bigger than Manhattan, have to do with the narrative of American history? The short answer: more than one might think.
At the time many observers thought that divine providence played a major role in wedging the foundering Sea Venture between two rocks off the coast of Bermuda in July 1609 and sending two shiploads of Bermuda castaways to Virginia in May 1610. These 130-odd hardy Bermuda survivors sailed upriver to the fort at Jamestown, where 60 emaciated colonists were starving. Thanks to recent archaeology at Jamestown, we now have proof (cahow bird bones) that the Bermuda voyagers shared what little food they had with the fort's residents, who were just a few days away from death...