Bermuda was first documented by a European in 1503 by Spanish explorer Juan de Bermúdez. In 1609, the English Virginia Company, which had established Jamestown in Virginia two years earlier, permanently settled Bermuda in the aftermath of a hurricane, when the crew and passengers of Sea Venture steered the ship onto the surrounding reef to prevent it from sinking, then landed ashore. Bermuda's first capital, St. George's, was established in 1612.
A privateer is a private person or vessel which engages in maritime warfare under a commission of war. Since robbery under arms was a common aspect of seaborne trade, until the early 19th century all merchant ships carried arms. A sovereign or delegated authority issued commissions, also referred to as letters of marque, during wartime. The commission empowered the holder to carry on all forms of hostility permissible at sea by the usages of war. This included attacking foreign vessels and taking them as prizes and taking crews prisoner for exchange. Captured ships were subject to condemnation and sale under prize law, with the proceeds divided by percentage between the privateer's sponsors, shipowners, captains and crew. A percentage share usually went to the issuer of the commission.
The Colony of Virginia was a British colonial settlement in North America between 1606 and 1776.
The Bermuda sloop is a historical type of fore-and-aft rigged single-masted sailing vessel developed on the islands of Bermuda in the 17th century. Such vessels originally had gaff rigs with quadrilateral sails, but evolved to use the Bermuda rig with triangular sails. Although the Bermuda sloop is often described as a development of the narrower-beamed Jamaica sloop, which dates from the 1670s, the high, raked masts and triangular sails of the Bermuda rig are rooted in a tradition of Bermudian boat design dating from the earliest decades of the 17th century. It is distinguished from other vessels with the triangular Bermuda rig, which may have multiple masts or may not have evolved in hull form from the traditional designs.
John Oldham was an early Puritan settler in Massachusetts. He was a captain, merchant, and Indian trader. His death at the hands of the Indians was one of the causes of the Pequot War of 1636–37.
USS Grampus was a schooner in the United States Navy. She was the first U.S. Navy ship to be named for the Grampus griseus, also known as Risso's dolphin.
A Bermuda rig, Bermudian rig, or Marconi rig is a configuration of mast and rigging for a type of sailboat and is the typical configuration for most modern sailboats. This configuration was developed in Bermuda in the 17th century; the term Marconi, a reference to the inventor of the radio, Guglielmo Marconi, became associated with this configuration in the early 20th century, because the wires that stabilize the mast of a Bermuda rig reminded observers of the wires on early radio masts.
Sea Venture was a seventeenth-century English sailing ship, part of the Third Supply mission flotilla to the Jamestown Colony in 1609. She was the 300 ton flagship of the London Company. During the voyage to Virginia, Sea Venture encountered a tropical storm and was wrecked, with her crew and passengers landing on the uninhabited Bermuda. Sea Venture's wreck is widely thought to have been the inspiration for William Shakespeare's 1611 play The Tempest.
Stephen Hopkins was an English adventurer to the Virginia Colony and Plymouth Colony. Most notably, he was a passenger on the Mayflower in 1620, one of 41 signatories of the Mayflower Compact, and an assistant to the governor of Plymouth Colony through 1636. He worked as a tanner and merchant and was recruited by the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London to provide the governance for the colony and to assist with the colony's ventures. He was the only Mayflower passenger with prior New World experience, having been shipwrecked in Bermuda in 1609 enroute to Jamestown, Virginia. Hopkins left Jamestown in 1614 and returned to England. Hopkins traveled to New England in 1620 and died there in 1644.
Isla de Providencia, historically Old Providence, and generally known as Providencia or Providence, is a mountainous Caribbean island that is part of the Colombian department of Archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina, or The Raizal Islands, and the municipality of Providencia and Santa Catalina Islands, lying midway between Costa Rica and Jamaica.
The Somers Isles Company was formed in 1615 to operate the English colony of the Somers Isles, also known as Bermuda, as a commercial venture. It held a royal charter for Bermuda until 1684, when it was dissolved, and the Crown assumed responsibility for the administration of Bermuda as a royal colony.
Nathaniel Butler was an English privateer who later served as the colonial governor of Bermuda during the early 17th century. He had built many structures still seen in Bermuda today including many of the island's coastal fortresses and the State House, in St. George's, the oldest surviving English settlement in the New World. He also has the distinction of introducing the potato, the first seen in North America, to the early English colonists of Jamestown, Virginia.
Edward Mansvelt or Mansfield was a 17th-century Dutch corsair and buccaneer who, at one time, was acknowledged as an informal chieftain of the "Brethren of the Coast". He was the first to organise large scale raids against Spanish settlements, tactics which would be utilised to attack Spanish strongholds by later buccaneers in future years, and held considerable influence in Tortuga and Port Royal. He was widely considered one of the finest buccaneers of his day and, following his death, his position was assumed by his protégé and vice-admiral, Henry Morgan.
Mayflower was an English sailing ship that transported a group of English families, known today as the Pilgrims, from England to the New World in 1620. After 10 weeks at sea, Mayflower, with 102 passengers and a crew of about 30, reached what is today the United States, dropping anchor near the tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, on November 21 [O.S. November 11], 1620.
The New England Colonies of British America included Connecticut Colony, the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Massachusetts Bay Colony, Plymouth Colony, and the Province of New Hampshire, as well as a few smaller short-lived colonies. The New England colonies were part of the Thirteen Colonies and eventually became five of the six states in New England, with Plymouth Colony absorbed into Massachusetts and Maine separating from it.
The English overseas possessions comprised a variety of overseas territories that were colonised, conquered, or otherwise acquired by the Kingdom of England before 1707.
The Providence Island colony was established in 1630 by English Puritans on Providence Island, about 200 kilometres (120 mi) east of the coast of Nicaragua. It was founded and controlled by a group of English investors, the Providence Island Company.
Sussex Camock or Sussex Cammock was an English privateer who was involved in establishing the Providence Island colony, a Puritan colony on what is now Isla de Providencia in the western Caribbean. Sussex Camock was the brother of Captain Thomas Cammock.
Robert Hunt was an English soldier who was Governor of the Providence Island colony in the western Caribbean Sea from 1636 to 1638.
Fonseca, also spelled Fonzeca, Fonsequa, or Fonte Seca, other names San Bernardo, San Bernaldo, Galissonière's Rock, is a phantom island which was said to lie in the Atlantic Ocean at 12°27'N and 54°48'W, east of Barbados and Tobago.
