Bermuda: Read Before You Go {Non-Fiction}

Bermuda has long been used to repair, re-provision, and refuel ships crossing the Atlantic Ocean. The Royal Naval Dockyard once served the British fleet.

UPDATED: 2/5/2023

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Finding books about Bermuda to read before we went was more difficult than expected! After Google searches that didn’t provide any lists or suggestions, we even contacted the tourism board in Bermuda to inquire (no response received). The first book below was suggested to us by a reader on Twitter, and was one of the best pre-reads we could have come across!

The only recommendations for fiction seemed to turn up writers who, like Mark Twain, spent time on the island but could not truly be considered Bermudian writers.

Bermuda has so much more to offer than simply an island get-away, so we recommend the two non-fiction books below for anyone interested in traveling to or learning more about Bermuda.

A Brave Vessel: The True Tale of the Castaways Who Rescued Jamestown and Inspired Shakespeare’s The Tempest by Hobson Woodward

304 pages, published 2009

YOU MAY ENJOY THIS BOOK IF YOU LIKE:

Early American history * Real-Life Adventure Stories * Ocean voyages * Shipwrecks

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Hobson Woodward

As if our difficulty finding books on Bermuda was a harbinger of things to come, even less is available about the author of this book. Other than a short description of Hobson Woodward as serving as an associate editor of the Adams Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society, there is no other background information on Woodward that we were able to discover. He appears to have written no additional books, which is our loss as readers.

Rarely have I found such a fascinating and engaging read on a little-known historical event as described by Woodward in A Brave Vessel: The True Tale of the Castaways Who Rescued Jamestown.

REVIEW OF A Brave Vessel BY Hobson Woodward

In the year 1609, the Sea Venture was one of several ships to set sail to provide supplies and a leader for the early settlers at Jamestown, Virginia, a settlement that is famous in the role it played in the founding of the future United States.

We found this full size recreation of the Deliverance on Ordinance Island in St George’s. It was much smaller than I’d imagined it should be!

When the fleet hit a hurricane in the middle of the ocean, they split up with each focused on its own survival. In at least one case that meant that family members on separate ships were left uncertain as to the fate of their family members. William Strachey, whose fate would be tied to the Sea Venture and who was an aspiring writer, kept a journal of his experience. This journal forms the foundation from which Woodward is able to breathe new life into a 400-year-old story.

After a breathtakingly described three days of struggle to keep the Sea Venture from foundering, the ship wrecked right off the shore of Bermuda and in two-birds-with-one-stone fashion, discovered the island and became its first settlers. Talk about luck. Seriously, just look at a map of Bermuda in the middle of the ocean, and there is nothing at all nearby. Others had discovered Bermuda before as they had traversed the ocean and an earlier group had released hogs on the island as a future food source for others shipwrecked nearby. Since the island is surrounded by coral reefs, shipwrecks are quite common.

The Sea Venture’s former inhabitants quickly established a settlement, dealt with murder and intrigue, and somehow managed to use the natural resources of the island to build two small ships (Patience and Deliverance) to be used for the remainder of the voyage to Jamestown. All of the details and personalities of the group are fleshed out in this book.

And wait, does some of this sound . . . familiar? For all of William Strachey’s efforts to become a recognized and respected fictional writer in his day, it was his description of this journey that gained attention as he wrote back home to England and may have feasibly been read by William Shakespeare. Upon Strachey’s later return to England, he noted similarities in both the story and descriptors included in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

Woodward does a thorough job telling the story of the early settlers on Bermuda and their efforts to reach Jamestown and makes the story even more intriguing by following the parallels between Strachey’s story and Shakespeare’s play.

One of my favorite parts of reading this book before traveling to Bermuda is that I could look out into the ocean off of Fort St. Catherine and see the area where the Sea Venture wrecked and imagine what early landfall would have been like. This also made us want to revisit Jamestown, located only a few hours away from us in Virginia, with a new understanding of the connection between Bermuda and the early settlers’ success in America. We have a trip planned to visit Jamestown and its surrounding early Colonial America sites (Williamsburg and Yorktown) in November 2020, but it remains to be seen with Covid whether that trip will occur this year. If not, certainly at a future date. This is one of our favorite parts of traveling and reading about new places: understanding how interconnected so many pieces of history are!

We also recommended this book to several family members who have not gone to Bermuda, and they found this to be a fascinating read as well!

Hamilton, Bermuda | Couple Blogger | To Make Much of Time Travel Blog

The Story of Bermuda and Her People by William Sears Zuill

259 pages, published 1973

YOU MAY ENJOY THIS BOOK IF YOU LIKE:

Bermuda history * Political history * Military history * Cultural history

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: William Sears Zuill

William Sears Zuill was integrally involved in the preservation of Bermuda’s history before he died in 2016 at the age of 86. He was the first Director of the Bermuda National Trust, founded in 1970, and had a reputation for knowing the ins-and-outs of Bermuda. This Royal Gazette article articulately outlines Zuill’s important role in the country.

REVIEW OF The Story of bermuda and her people BY william sears zuill

The Story of Bermuda and Her People reads as a short survey of the country as told through its history, culture, and modern atmosphere (modern by the standards of a book written in 1973). This is the type of book that is reminiscent of a freshman college survey course with a high-level overview of various facets of a country. That is not a criticism, but it is a model that left me wanting more depth and nuance.

This book is a good way to familiarize yourself with the history of Bermuda. It also feels a bit outdated in some of the cultural topics, which is to be expected from a book nearly 50 years old. What I found made this book particularly helpful is that it filled a gap prior to our trip where truly no other books tread. If anyone is considering writing a more up-to-date version of this book, that would be even better!