A Voyage to Virginia in 1609: Two Narratives Strachey's 'True Reportory' and Jourdain's Discovery of the Bermudas

xx, 116 pp. True Reportory is the short-title of a 24,000 word of an early American colonial narrative, A true reportory of the wracke, and redemption of Sir Thomas Gates Knight; vpon, and from the Ilands of the Bermudas: his comming to Virginia, and the estate of that Colonie then, and after, vnder the gouernment of the Lord La Warre, Iuly 15. 1610.[1] The author William Strachey was a passenger on the Sea Venture, the flagship of the supply fleet that sailed to the English colony of Virginia from Plymouth in June 1609. During a hurricane it wrecked off the coast of Bermuda, where the survivors built two pinnaces, Patience and Deliverance, to continue the journey. They arrived in Jamestown in May 1610 and found the colony suffering from famine and Indian attacks that had reduced the 600 colonists to fewer than 70. True Reportory is Strachey's account of these incidents, first published in 1625 in an anthology of new world colonial literature assembled by Samuel Purchas.--Wikipedia. Silvester was not the only person who believed that God had preserved them. He was one of a few who wrote about it. When Sir Thomas Gates and Captain Christopher Newgate returned home to England, they took with them two texts: Robert Rich's poem, The Lost Flocke Triumphant, and Silvester Jourdain's narrative, A Discovery of the Bermudas, Otherwise Called the Isle of Devils. Both writers conveyed the theme that their experience had been a result of God's "most gracious and merciful providence." A third document was not long behind: William Strachey's A True Reportory of the Wreck and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates. All three of these writings convinced the people of England that "the ship -- and the English nation -- had been chosen by God for greatness."--Wiki Tree