Jamestown and Bermuda: Virginia Company Colonies
Jamestown Settlement Special Exhibition
This special exhibition, March 1- October 15, 2009, explored the shared history and links between England’s first two permanent colonies in the New World, on the occasion of Bermuda’s 400th anniversary.
A British presence was established in Bermuda in 1609 when the Sea Venture, the flagship of a fleet en route to Jamestown, Virginia, founded two years earlier, was shipwrecked.
Beginning with the wreck of the Sea Venture, upon which Shakespeare’s play The Tempest is based, the exhibition traced Bermuda’s 400-year history, highlighting its importance as a strategic location and emergence as a premier travel destination in the 20th century.
The exhibition featured more than two dozen artifacts from the Sea Venture underwater archaeological site and objects associated with early government and the Church of England in Virginia and Bermuda.
A dozen 19th- and 20th-century paintings by leading American, Canadian and British artists depicting Bermuda scenes were exhibited along with posters and other promotional materials illustrating the popularity of both Virginia and Bermuda as travel destinations.
Jamestown and Bermuda: Virginia Company Colonies Exhibition Resources
Download the exhibition brochure. (PDF opens in new window.)
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1633 Map of Bermuda, Willem Blaeu,
Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation collection.
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Watch a video about the Sea Venture and its effect on the colony at Jamestown.
Read more about the voyage of the Sea Venture and its impact on the survival of the Jamestown colony and the founding of Bermuda.
Listen to an audio interview with Steve Clark of WCVE and Nancy Egloff, Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation historian, about Bermuda's Beginnings.
Jamestown was the first permanent English colony in America, but the second was not far behind. The Virginia Company incorporated Bermuda under its 1612 charter and sent out a group to settle there. This audio interview with Steve Clark of WCVE and Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation historian Nancy Egloff examines English Colony Governance.
View a video of a lecture by Lorri Glover, associate professor of history at the University of Tennessee, on The Shipwreck That Saved Jamestown.
Listen to an audio file of a lecture by Rochester University professor of history Michael Jarvis on Sister Colonies: Virginia, Bermuda and the Beginnings of English America.
As you explore Jamestown Settlement's galleries and outdoor areas, use this special family gallery guide to discover how historians use nature, artifacts, images and words to learn more about people and places in 17th-century Virginia and Bermuda. (PDF opens in new window.)
