During the journey in 1609, a tropical storm caused the ship, the Sea Venture to be run aground on the uninhabited St. George's Island, Bermuda, with Jourdain, George Somers, Thomas Gates, William Strachey, and other settlers marooned for nine months.

Silvester Jourdain was old enough in 1603 to ship goods from Lyme Regis, Dorset.

[1] Silvester authored a pamphlet in 1610, A Discovery of the Barmvdas, otherwise called the Ile of Divels [sic] (later part of the 1613 publication, A Plaine Description of the Barmvdas, now called Sommer Ilands, etc.

[note 1][2][3]), which scholars have attributed as inspiration for William Shakespeare's The Tempest.

[4][5][6] Silvester died unmarried in the parish of St Sepulchre, in the spring of 1650.