Glover considers 'The Shipwreck That Saved Jamestown'
Lorri Glover, co-author of The Shipwreck That Saved Jamestown: The Sea Venture Castaways and the Fate of America, describes how England's foothold in America almost never came to pass.
According to Glover, England's attempts to colonize America were a disaster from the beginning as warfare with native peoples and dissent among settlers threatened to destroy England's foothold in the New World.
To rescue the colonists and restore order, the Virginia Company chose a new leader, Thomas Gates. Nine ships left Plymouth in the summer of 1609 — the largest fleet England had ever assembled. But disaster struck with a storm so violent "it beat all light from Heaven." The hurricane, inspiration for Shakespeare's The Tempest, separated the Sea Venture from the rest of the fleet and drove the flagship onto reefs off the coast of Bermuda.
Glover recounted the rest of the ship's fate in her free and public lecture Sept. 7, 2011. The event was co-sponsored by The Filson Historical Society and the Ohio Valley Educational Cooperative.