The swashbuckling life of the Elizabethan explorer and colonial governor is vividly recounted in this historical biography. Captain John Smith is best remembered for his association with Pocahontas, but this was only a small part of an extraordinary life filled with danger and adventure. As a soldier, he fought the Turks in Eastern Europe, where he beheaded three Turkish adversaries in duels. He was sold into slavery, then murdered his master to escape. He sailed under a pirate flag, was shipwrecked, and marched to the gallows to be hanged, only to be reprieved at the eleventh hour. All this before he was thirty years old. Smith was one of the founders of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America. He faced considerable danger from the Native Americans as well as from competing factions within the settlement itself. In the face of all this, Smith’s leadership saved the settlement from failure.

This concise biography paints a rich and detailed portrait of one of America's most intriguing founding fathers. Historian Thompson guides readers through annotated selections of Smith's most important and compelling writings.

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Excerpt from The Adventures of Captain John Smith: Captain of Two Hundred and Fifty Horse, and Sometime Time President of Virginia "Then, seeing we are not born for ourselves, but to help each other, and that our abilities are much alike at the hour of our birth and the minute of our death; seeing our good deeds or our bad, by faith in Christ's merits, are all we have to carry our souls to heaven or hell; seeing honour is our life's ambition, and our ambition after death to have an honourable memory of our life; and seeing by no means we would be abated of the dignities and glories of our predecessors, let us imitate their virtues to be worthily their successors." - John Smith. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.