Silvester Jourdain

Silvester Jourdain ( - d. 1650), was an English traveler who became a colonist at the Jamestown, Virginia settlement. 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 authored a pamphlet in 1610, A Discovery of the Barmudas, otherwise called the Ile of Divels [sic] (later part of the 1613 publication, A Plaine Description of the Barmudas, now called Sommer Ilands, etc. ), which scholars have attributed as inspiration for William Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Silvester died unmarried in the parish of St Sepulchre, in the spring of 1650. He was the son of William Jourdain of Lyme Regis, and a cousin of John Jourdain.