Sea Venture was a seventeenth-century English sailing ship, part of the Third Supply mission flotilla to the Jamestown Colony in 1609. She was the 300 ton flagship of the London Company. During the voyage to Virginia, Sea Venture encountered a tropical storm and was wrecked, with her crew and passengers landing on the uninhabited Bermuda. Sea Venture's wreck is widely thought to have been the inspiration for William Shakespeare's 1611 play The Tempest.
Presumed portrait of Sir George Somers (with possible Sea Venture in left background)
Sylvester Jordain's A Discovery of the Barmudas, 1610
Replica of the Deliverance on Ordnance Island, 2007 (since 2022, replica disassembled)
Jamestown supply missions
The Jamestown supply missions were a series of fleets from 1607 to around 1611 that were dispatched from England by the London Company with the specific goal of initially establishing the company's presence and later specifically maintaining the English settlement of "James Fort" on present-day Jamestown Island. The supply missions also resulted in the colonization of Bermuda as a supply and way-point between the colony and England.
The original fleet, as commemorated on the Virginia State Quarter
Statue of Christopher Newport at the university bearing his name
Virginia pinnace approaching the Virginia shore, Seth Eastman c. 1850
Depiction of the arrival of West at Jamestown
