A Stranger Amongst Saints: Stephen Hopkins, the Man Who Survived Jamestown and Saved Plymouth

In 1609, on a voyage to resupply England’s troubled Jamestown colony, the Sea Enterprise was caught in a hurricane and shipwrecked off the coast of Bermuda. The story of its marooned survivors finally impressed William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, however for one castaway it was solely the start.

A Stranger Amongst Saints traces the lifetime of Stephen Hopkins, who spent ten months stranded with the Sea Enterprise crew, throughout which he was charged with tried mutiny and condemned to die—solely to have his sentence commuted simply earlier than it was carried out. Hopkins finally made it to Jamestown, the place he spent six years earlier than returning to England and signing on to a different colonial enterprise, this time with a gaggle of spiritual radicals on the Mayflower.

Hopkins was the one member of the get together who had been throughout the Atlantic earlier than—the one one who’d encountered America’s native individuals and land. The Pilgrims, suffering from illness and contentious early encounters with indigenous Individuals, turned to him for management. Hopkins performed an important function in bridging the divide of suspicion between the English immigrants and their native neighbors. With out him, these settlers would seemingly not have lasted by way of that brutal first yr.