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Captain John Smith: His Brave Adventures
Captain John Smith is best remembered for his association with Pocahontas
- GenresHistory
202 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 8, 2025
Learned recently that there was much more to John Smith’s incredible life than Jamestown and Pocahontas. This was the only biography I could find. There was little on his explorations in New England, where I was surprised he had ventured, on this book but alot about his incredible soldier’s career in Europe and a young man and very extensive information on the colonization of Virginia. Very interesting and the author has an unexpected sense of humor
March 3, 2017
I loved this book. John Smith's life was full of adventure as a soldier, pirate, president of Jamestown, negotiator with Indians, surveyor of the New Land, etc. I had no idea before this book about how interesting this man's life was. The common knowledge about him is in relation to Jamestown and Pocahontas, but there was so much more that he did that is worth reading about. The author chronicles the story of his life and the lives of those around him in an engaging way that made me not want to put the book down.
July 7, 2010
th (H Books) (Paperback)
John Smith's life can be separated into three distinct parts. Born the restless son of a Yeoman farmer in Lincolnshire, John spent his early years as a volunteer soldier, fighting in the Netherlands, Spain and the Balkans. Captured and enslaved, he murdered his master and disappeared into Russia before resurfacing as pirate in the Mediterranean. The defining middle years of his life were spent attempting to colonise territory on the eastern seaboard of north America. When that was later denied him, he became, perforce, a writer, drawing on his experiences on land and sea.
Although the hazards and ambitions of the early English settlers in America, in which Smith was a central figure, have been extensively documented, this is the area to which R E Pritchard devotes the great majority of his book. It is a story worth telling, and here it draws heavily on Smith's own accounts. These include the story of how his life was saved by the Princess Pocohontas who subsequently married another Englishman, came to this country and died here. But this is merely one instance of the many occasions when Smith's life was in serious peril. His escapes owed less to superhuman feats than to his innate courage and sense of what was required to be a leader of men in the permanently ambivalent relationship with the Indian tribes, not to mention the jealous and sometimes downright treacherous behaviour of some of his fellow countrymen.
So far, so admirable. Unfortunately, the author, who taught Renaissance Literature at Keele University in Staffordshire, could with advantage have enrolled in that body's Creative Writing course. In the fifty pages before the reader joins Smith on his first venture across the Atlantic, there are frequent lengthy and learned digressions into the history of Europe on the cusp of the 17th Century. Smith's role in these is not always apparent. Moreover, Pritchard is in love with the parenthetical. If there is a tangential reference, relevant or not, it cannot be resisted. Ten such in the first two pages (!) test the reader's willingness to follow the direction and purpose of a sentence.
In the middle section, the narrative flows but it will take a determined reader to hack a path through the early thickets. Perhaps information about Smith's formative years is hard to come by, but it could profitably have enlivened fifty largely turgid pages.
John Smith's life can be separated into three distinct parts. Born the restless son of a Yeoman farmer in Lincolnshire, John spent his early years as a volunteer soldier, fighting in the Netherlands, Spain and the Balkans. Captured and enslaved, he murdered his master and disappeared into Russia before resurfacing as pirate in the Mediterranean. The defining middle years of his life were spent attempting to colonise territory on the eastern seaboard of north America. When that was later denied him, he became, perforce, a writer, drawing on his experiences on land and sea.
Although the hazards and ambitions of the early English settlers in America, in which Smith was a central figure, have been extensively documented, this is the area to which R E Pritchard devotes the great majority of his book. It is a story worth telling, and here it draws heavily on Smith's own accounts. These include the story of how his life was saved by the Princess Pocohontas who subsequently married another Englishman, came to this country and died here. But this is merely one instance of the many occasions when Smith's life was in serious peril. His escapes owed less to superhuman feats than to his innate courage and sense of what was required to be a leader of men in the permanently ambivalent relationship with the Indian tribes, not to mention the jealous and sometimes downright treacherous behaviour of some of his fellow countrymen.
So far, so admirable. Unfortunately, the author, who taught Renaissance Literature at Keele University in Staffordshire, could with advantage have enrolled in that body's Creative Writing course. In the fifty pages before the reader joins Smith on his first venture across the Atlantic, there are frequent lengthy and learned digressions into the history of Europe on the cusp of the 17th Century. Smith's role in these is not always apparent. Moreover, Pritchard is in love with the parenthetical. If there is a tangential reference, relevant or not, it cannot be resisted. Ten such in the first two pages (!) test the reader's willingness to follow the direction and purpose of a sentence.
In the middle section, the narrative flows but it will take a determined reader to hack a path through the early thickets. Perhaps information about Smith's formative years is hard to come by, but it could profitably have enlivened fifty largely turgid pages.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews