Jonathan Dickinson (1663–1722) was a merchant from Port Royal, Jamaica who was shipwrecked on the southeast coast of Florida in 1696, along with his family and the other passengers and crew members of the ship.

The party was held captive by Jaega or "Jobe" ("Hoe-bay") Indians for several days, and then was allowed to travel by small boat and on foot the 230 miles up the coast to Saint Augustine.

The Spanish authorities in Saint Augustine treated the surviving members of the party well, and sent them by canoe to Charles Town (now Charleston, South Carolina), where they were able to find passage to their original destination, Philadelphia.

Dickinson wrote a journal of the ordeal, which was published by the Society of Friends in 1699 as God's Protecting Providence Man's Surest Help and Defence in the times of the greatest difficulty and most Imminent danger Evidenced in the Remarkable Deliverance of divers Persons, from the devouring Waves of the Sea, amongst which they Suffered Shipwrack.

His father Francis had raised a troop of horse for Oliver Cromwell's Western Design expedition to capture Spanish possessions in the Caribbean, and had taken part in the English seizure of Jamaica in 1655, for which he had been rewarded with two plantations.

Dickinson and his family, which included his wife, Mary, their six-month-old son, Jonathan, and his ten slaves, took passage on the barkentine Reformation.

On September 18 a sudden wind blew a boom across the quarterdeck, breaking the leg of the Master, Joseph Kirle.

By September 20, the Reformation was still in the straits between Cuba and Florida trying to avoid ships of the French fleet that they believed to be in the area.

Several of the party were sick, including the Dickinson infant, Robert Barrow, Benjamin Allen, and Joseph Kirle, whose leg had been broken a few days earlier.

Dickinson and Robert Barrow, being staunch Quakers, persuaded the others to not resist the Jobes, but to put their trust in God to protect them.

The castaways indicated their desire to travel to Saint Augustine, but the Jobe cacique (which Dickinson spelled "Caseekey") wanted them to go to Havana, Cuba instead.

They were able to take some supplies that the Jobes did not want, including some wine, butter, sugar, and chocolate, and one of the ship's quadrants.

The weak and sick members of the party were put in the ship's boat with some men to row it, while the rest walked along the shore.

[14] On September 30 the party encountered Ais Indians from Santa Lucea, who called them "Nickaleer" even though Solomon Cresson was speaking Spanish to them.

The party was taken to the town, and the travelers were eventually given local clothing, deer skins for the women and a sort of breechclout-apron for the men.

They also told the travelers that some "English off Bristol", six men and a woman, were being held at that town, and that the prisoners would be killed before the Reformation party reached there.

[16] In the middle of the night the travelers were suddenly forced to leave the town, and were escorted four miles up the beach by a crowd throwing rocks at them.

At this point they realized that Solomon Cresson, Joseph Kirle's cabin boy, John Hilliard, and his slave, Ben, were not with them.

Solomon Cresson said he had been detained at Santa Lucea, while John Hilliard and Ben had been asleep in another house when the party was driven out of town.

The cacique left for Saint Augustine on October 18, taking Solomon Cresson and much of the money that the Jobes had taken from the Reformation.

The Indians of this part of the Florida coast did not cultivate crops, but lived on fish, shellfish and palmetto, cocoplum and seagrape berries in season.

On November 9 the escort of Spanish soldiers turned back south towards the two wrecked ships, leaving only one of them to guide the party to Saint Augustine.

The Spanish soldiers had told the English castaways that a group of stranded Dutch sailors had been killed and eaten in one of those towns a year earlier.

Five of the group died of exposure that day: Dickinson's kinsman, Benjamin Allen, and four of his slaves, Jack, Caesar, Quenza, and a child named Cajoe.

Dickinson, his wife and child, and Joseph Kirle and John Smith, the Master of the Nantwitch, stayed in the governor's house.