William Strachey

William Strachey 1572-1621, English colonial historian; educated at Cambridge. In 1609 he sailed to Virginia with Sir Thomas Gates . A storm wrecked his ship in the Bermudas, and the party remained there for nearly a year. A letter written by Strachey describing this experience was one of several versions of the shipwreck, one of which may have inspired Shakespeare's The Tempest. When Strachey arrived (1610) at the colony he was made secretary and wrote, for the Virginia Company, a report of conditions under the title Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia (pub. by the Hakluyt Society, 1849 and 1951). His writings are prime sources for the early history of Virginia.

Bibliography: See biography by S. G. Culliford (1965).

Strachey, William (fl.1606–18),first secretary of the Virginia colony, after a literary career in England and a position as secretary of the ambassador to Constantinople (1606) accompanied Gates and Somers on the Virginia expedition of the Sea Adventure, which was wrecked in the Bermudas (July 1609), reaching Virginia the following May. During the year that he remained in the colony, he wrote a letter describing the wreck, which was first printed by Purchas (1625). The manuscript describing the storm may have influenced Shakespeare in writing The Tempest. Strachey's other works include For the Colony of Virginea Britannia: Lawes Divine, Morall, and Martiall (1612), the first legal codification for Virginia, and The Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia …, inscribed to Bacon in 1618, but first published by the Hakluyt Society (1849).