Since the parent course for this project emphasizes the interrelation of technology, humanistic research, and public education, our project has to adhere to the same, considerably rigorous, standards. These standards have guided our research from the beginning. As you will see in the “Works Cited” portion of our site, our research began with three primary texts: William Strachey’s “True Reporatory,” Silvestre Jourdain’s A Plaine Description of the Barmudas, and John Smith’s Generall Historie of the Bermudas— all of which are considered fundamental texts in the scholarly study of the Sea Venture.

Strachey’s text, since it thoroughly and first-handedly records the entire plight of the Sea Venture, provides much of the backbone for our research. From this document, we created our initial list of characters, the events that occurred during the journey, and excerpts of text that we felt illuminated either of the preceding elements. Jourdain’s text, unfortunately, pales in comparison to the comprehensive description of Strachey’s “True Reporatory” and, as a result, is used as a supplementary text to add additional detail to what we retrieved from Strachey. Smith, similarly, lacks the comprehensive detail of the events and characters, but is redeemed by the amount of detail he reveals about the geography and ecology of Bermuda. Much of this information was used to ground the development of the background depicted within the game.

With these three texts, we etched out a skeleton of the basic information for our game’s factual historical narrative, and, from there, have consulted additional sources as necessary to complete or complement the information already being depicted. Additionally, we are fortunate to have Dr. Michael Jarvis, an expert on the very subjects we’re dealing with, guiding our research. He has been a wealth of knowledge in regards to addressing seemingly any question about the plight of the Sea Venture or Bermuda in general, as well as directing us towards reputable texts to utilize in our further research.

For more information about the texts we use, check out our Further Reading tab. For any questions about our research process, please contact us directly.