Brave Vessel : The True Tale of the Castaways Who Rescued Jamestown

In 1609, aspiring writer William Strachey set sail aboard the Sea Venture, bound for the New World. Caught in a hurricane, the ship separated from its fleet and wrecked on uninhabited Bermuda, a bountiful island paradise its passengers would inhabit for nearly a year before reaching their intended destination, the famine-stricken colony of Jamestown. Following the life of this ordinary man and the extraordinary account he left of his odyssey, Hobson Woodward tells one of the neglected but defining stories of America's founding-and exposes it as the real-life inspiration for The Tempest, one of William Shakespeare's enduring masterpieces. Book jacket.

Hobson Woodward is an associate editor of the Adams Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society and the author of numerous articles on American and literary history. He lives near Boston.