DICKENSON (Jonathan).
God's Protecting Providence,
FLORIDA SHIPWRECK CAPTIVITY NARRATIVE
A popular captivity narrative detailing a shipwreck in the gulf of Florida, followed by the various hardships of the survivors at the hands of the Jobe and other Native Tribes. The first edition was printed in Philadelphia in 1699, and the work ran through sixteen editions in English, as well as additional translations into Dutch and German.
Jonathan Dickinson was a Jamaica planter and the son of a wealthy English Quaker. He was relocating his household to Philadelphia when on the 24th September 1696 a storm hit the barkentine Reformation and Dickinson’s family along with their ten enslaved captives, were cast ashore on Jupiter Island. There followed a trying journey to St Augustine with much suffering and loss of life. Dickinson spares no harrowing detail, and his account paints a stark picture of the interactions between the Native people of Florida, and British and Spanish colonisers at the turn of the eighteenth century.
ESTC, T95562; Sabin, 20015.
