Bermuda’s gift of tobacco to the struggling colonies of the New World is being explored by historian George Cook, as he compiles a history of the Island’s early settlers.Dr Cook hopes to complete ‘Sea VentureWho’s Who’ this year, in time for the 400th anniversary of Bermuda’s settlement.He told Hamilton Rotary Club yesterday: “I’m going to try and have it done this year. What happens is, I start writing, and something else comes up.”Fellow St George’s Foundation member Rick Spurling has already unearthed the tobacco link between the Island and the Virginia colony, but Dr Cook’s research has stumbled upon new details.Shipwrecked passengers of the Sea Venture who came ashore in 1609 were greeted by tobacco and hogs — tokens left by earlier Spanish visitors. Courtesy of Bermuda-built rescue vessels the Patience and Deliverance, tobacco went on to become a cash crop for Virginia.“Tobacco was a success for Virginia, and the idea was in England that Bermuda could be a potential area to grow it,” Dr Cook told The Royal Gazette. “But we didn’t have the land.”He added: “My argument is that the tobacco that saved Virginia as a colony came from Bermuda, and was of Spanish origin — what was referred to in the Caribbean as the Orinoco variety, and a very good variety.”US historians have tended to give the Virginia tobacco’s origin as Trinidad, he said, but the theory doesn’t hold up.“Why would they have gone to the Spanish territory of Trinidad?” he asked. “The King of Spain, Phillip III, had forbidden the export of tobacco on pain of death.”The tobacco link is one of many side routes that have emerged in Dr Cook’s research of exactly who sailed aboard the Sea Venture.The ship is an icon of Bermudian history, but little is known about many of its passengers.“I am trying to write a mini-biography of each one,” Dr Cook said. “Some of the crew would have nothing recorded. All I have is a name. If it’s a sailor, for example, I can surmise from the unknown. A sailor was probably illiterate, rural, from a poverty-stricken background, and the sea was something seen as a gamble or an escape.”For now, Dr Cook’s study covers about 50 individuals. History records 150 on board the vessel.“So far my book goes from the letter B to Y,” Dr Cook said. “I’m getting there.”