William Strachey

thumb| William Strachey (4 April 1572 – buried 16 August 1621) was an English writer whose works are among the primary sources for the early history of the English colonisation of North America. He is best remembered today as the eye-witness reporter of the 1609 shipwreck on the uninhabited island of Bermuda of the colonial ship Sea Venture, which was caught in a hurricane while sailing to Virginia. The survivors eventually reached Virginia after building two small ships during the ten months they spent on the island. His account of the incident and of the Virginia colony is thought by most Shakespearean scholars to have been a source for Shakespeare's play The Tempest. Quotes If men will shun swolne Fortunes ruinous blastes, Let them use Temperance. Nothing violent lastes. Sonnet "Upon Sejanus", appended to the quarto edition of Ben Jonson's Sejanus His Fall (1605) External links William Dinsmore Briggs, "Source-Material for Jonson’s Plays. Part II", Modern Language Notes, vol. 31, no. 6 (1916), p. 328 Category:1572 births Category:1621 deaths Category:Authors from England