7. The settlement at Jamestown led to Shakespeare writing The Tempest
That a voyage to Jamestown in Virginia led to a shipwreck in Bermuda, and a subsequent return to England was the basis of Shakespeare’s play The Tempest is often found on websites and histories. An account of the voyage of the ship Sea Venture was available in manuscript in London in 1610, though not published until 1625. The Tempest was most likely written around 1611. Another account of Sea Venture’s loss was published in 1610 in London, written by a survivor of the shipwreck, Sylvester Jourdain. There are similarities to the accounts of the Sea Venture (which had been sailing to relieve the colony at Jamestown) and the early portion of the play, but little else beyond the opening scene.
There are also similarities in the descriptions of the wreck in The Tempest with the account of the shipwreck in the Book of Acts, when Paul is stranded on the island of Malta. Whether Shakespeare consulted either of the accounts of the Sea Venture, the Book of Acts, or other sources when writing The Tempest is debated among scholars, and it cannot be said with certainty that the ill-fated voyage of Sea Venture was the inspiration for the play The Tempest. It is clear that the Bard took some of his inspiration, including lines of dialogue for Prospero, from the poem Metamorphoses by Ovid.