A Sea Venture in the latest Family Tree Firsts Post

The next post is up at Family Tree Firsts. You can read all about my adventure here.

I have done more reading and would like to correct a statement. In an article I read on line, it stated that he came with his son Giles to Virginia. Further study has me wondering where they found that information as I can only find records of Stephen coming over alone on that ship.

The more I read, the more fascinated I am by this man. He was a real character to put it mildly.  While I was in the Williamsburg area I picked up a pick to read on the shipwreck.  I hope it will tell me about the ship, about him, and about the circumstances that led to the mutiny and why he left so quickly from the Virginia Colony.  The book is titled The Shipwreck That Saved Jamestown:The Sea Venture Castaways and the Fate of America by Lorri Glover and Daniel Blake Smith. 

I have already bookmarked the pages that talk about Stephen, and in those few pages I am beginning to get a clearer picture of who he was.  He led a mutiny against Captain Christopher Newport in Bermuda because it was his feelings that Newport no longer had power over them.  After all, they were no longer on the ship, and Captains are only in command on ships.  They were not in Virginia so the new governor was not in charge of them.  On this Island their only master was god.  He was eventually pardoned of his death sentence for mutiny, and spent only two years in Jamestown.

Eleven years later he took his entire family on the Mayflower and he once again became the leader of the discontented.  Even giving a speech where he stated “when they came ashore they would use their own liberty, for none had power to command them.”