Combining rare narrative skills and historical detail, historians Lorri Glover and Daniel Blake Smith have written a fascinating book about a subject of crucial importance for understanding early America. The Shipwreck that Saved Jamestown is a welcome contribution to the large body of literature about Jamestown, Va., published before and after the 400th anniversary of its founding last year.

Glover and Smith deftly chronicle the fate of the 150 passengers on board the Sea Venture, the lead vessel in a convoy of nine ships that set sail from Plymouth, England, in the early summer of 1609. As the authors note, “the fleet was the largest England had ever sent across the Atlantic — an audacious effort born out of the desperate desire to save the dying Colony huddled around Jamestown.”

Particularly engaging is the authors’ analysis of the broadsides and essays that advertised the venture, sponsored by the Virginia Company. Unlike previous settlement ventures, the Virginia Company leaders in 1609 used “the power of faith to motivate investors. Promoters depicted England’s presence in America as the will of God; their propaganda highlighted the providential design of colonizing Virginia and the obligation to spread the Christian faith among native peoples.” The true desperate intent of the voyage wasn’t mentioned.

Glover and Smith point out that the decision of Capt. Christopher Newport, Gov. Thomas Gates and Admiral George Somers to all sail aboard the Sea Venture because they could not agree on a command structure had dire consequences for the voyage and the future of Virginia. The company directives for Jamestown were also on board.

About a week’s sail from the Virginia coast, the Sea Venture was shipwrecked at Bermuda, known at the time as the “Isle of Devils,” after becoming caught in a powerful hurricane. Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, may have been loosely based on the incident.

The authors argue that it was up to Gates and Somers “to remind the others that their future — and the glory of England — lay not in the comforts” that Bermuda had to offer, “but in reaching Virginia.” The task was not easy because the survivors soon realized that Bermuda was not haunted by evil spirits but in reality a mini-paradise. They dallied there for a year before cobbling together boats and sailing to relieve Jamestown, where food had become so scarce that some of the Colonists who had not already succumbed to disease or been killed by Powhatan Indian raids resorted to cannibalism.

This is indeed an engrossing narrative that contributes a great deal to the historical literature. The book reads much like a novel because of Glover and Smith’s ability to anchor their story in the lives of their central characters. Readers interested in the subject will also want to consult historian Karen Ordahl Kupperman’s recent book, The Jamestown Project (2007) along with Edmund Morgan’s classic work, American Slavery, American Freedom (1975).