author

sailor on the Nottingham galley George White

Known only through a single grim survivor narrative, this early eighteenth-century sailor helped preserve one of colonial New England’s most haunting shipwreck stories. His voice survives in a firsthand account of wreck, hunger, and endurance on Boon Island.

1 Audiobook

A True Account of the Voyage of the Nottingham-Galley of London, John Dean Commander, from the River Thames to New-England

A True Account of the Voyage of the Nottingham-Galley of London, John Dean Commander, from the River Thames to New-England

by Christopher Langman, Nicholas Mellen, sailor on the Nottingham galley George White

About the author

George White is remembered as one of the three crewmen who signed A True Account of the Voyage of the Nottingham-Galley of London, a pamphlet published in 1711. In that work, he appears simply as a sailor aboard the Nottingham Galley, alongside mate Christopher Langman and boatswain Nicholas Mellen.

The book was written after the Nottingham Galley wrecked on Boon Island, off the coast of present-day Maine, in December 1710. White was among the survivors of the disaster, and the published account presents the crew’s version of what happened during the voyage and the desperate struggle that followed.

Very little else about his life seems to be firmly documented in the sources I could confirm. What remains is brief but memorable: White’s name is tied to a rare firsthand account of survival at sea, and to a small but vivid piece of early Atlantic history.