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5 unusual facts about Thomas Gates


Elizabeth City County, Virginia

They were friendly to the English, but Sir Thomas Gates either worried about safety (including potential attack by the Spaniards and the Dutch) or coveted their corn fields after the "starving time" of the 1609-10 winter.

St. George's, Bermuda

Led by Admiral Sir George Somers and Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Gates, they had deliberately steered their ship, the Sea Venture, onto a reef.

Starving Time

Also aboard the new flagship were the Admiral of the Company, Sir George Somers, Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Gates, William Strachey and other notable personages in the early history of English colonization in North America.

Thomas Gates

Thomas Sovereign Gates (1873–1948), U.S. educator, first president of the University of Pennsylvania

Virginia Company

Notable persons aboard the Sea Venture included the Admiral of the fleet, George Somers, Vice-Admiral Christopher Newport, the new governor for the Virginia Colony, Sir Thomas Gates, future author William Strachey, and businessman John Rolfe with his pregnant wife.


Fibag scandal

In 1961, the weekly magazine Der Spiegel reported Franz Josef Strauss, minister of defense in Konrad Adenauer's cabinet, had advised his American colleague, Thomas Gates, to contract the company Fibag (Finanzbau Aktiengesellschaft) for construction of several thousand apartments for the American military in Germany.

George Somers

Somers and Sir Thomas Gates oversaw the construction of two small ships, the Deliverance and the Patience. They were built from local timber (Bermuda Cedar) and the salvaged spars and rigging of the wrecked Sea Venture.


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