“He was in a shipwreck. He was at Jamestown. He was on the Mayflower. And maybe, just maybe, he’s in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

Stephen Hopkins was the only passenger on the Mayflower who had previously been to the Americas. Eleven years before the Mayflower landed in what is now Massachusetts, Hopkins sailed aboard the Sea Venture, a ship bound for Jamestown, VA that was blown off-course by a hurricane and wrecked in Bermuda. Among Hopkins’s fellow passengers on the Sea Venture was William Strachey, a poet and playwright whose account of the ill-fated voyage may have inspired Shakespeare’s The Tempest.”

You can read more at Shakespeare Unlimited: Epsiode 163

You can watch the video “Stephano” on Hit and Run History or on Vimeo (fees apply).

We also recommend that you read the book Here Shall I Die Ashore: Stephen Hopkins: Bermuda Castaway, Jamestown Survivor, and Mayflower Pilgrim by Caleb Johnson.

Ann McReynolds, Recording Secretary and Joan McCready, Webmaster
Missouri Mayflower Society