USA > Virginia > History of the colony and ancient dominion of Virginia > Part 8
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It has before been mentioned, that toward the end of July, 1609, in a violent tempest, the Sea-Venture, with Newport, Gates, and Somers, and one hundred and fifty souls, had been separated from the rest of the fleet. Racked by the fury of the sea, she sprang a leak, and the water soon rose in her hold above two tiers of hogsheads that stood over the ballast, and the crew had to stand up to their waists in the water, and bail out with buckets, baricos, and kettles. They continued bailing and pump- ing for three days and nights without intermission, yet the water appeared rather to gain upon them than decrease; so that all hands, being at length utterly exhausted, came to the desperate resolution to shut down the hatches and resign themselves to their fate; and some having "good and comfortable waters fetched them, and drank to one another as taking their last fare- well." During all this time the aged Sir George Somers, sitting upon the quarter-deck, scarce taking time to eat or sleep, bearing the helm so as to keep the ship as upright as possible, but for which she must have foundered,-at last descried land. At this time many of the unhappy crew were asleep, and when the voice of Sir George was heard announcing "land," it seemed as if it was a voice from heaven, and they hurried up above the hatches to look for what they could scarcely credit. On finding the intel- ligence true, and that they were, indeed, in sight of land,- although it was a coast that all men usually tried to avoid,-yet they now spread all sail to reach it. Soon the ship struck upon a rock, till a surge of the sea dashed her off from thence, and so from one to another till, at length, fortunately, she lodged (July twenty-eighth) upright between two rocks, as if she was laid up in a natural dry-dock. Till this, at every lurch they had ex- pected instant death; but now, all at once, the storm gave place to a calm, and the billows, which at each successive dash had threatened destruction, were stilled; and, quickly taking to their boats, they reached the shore, distant upwards of a league, with- out the loss of a single man out of upwards of one hundred and fifty. Their joy at an escape so unexpected and almost miracu- lous, arose to the pitch of amazement. Yet their escape was not more wonderful in their eyes than their preservation after they had landed on the island; for the Spaniards had always looked
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upon it as more frightful than purgatory itself; and all seamen had reckoned it no better than an enchanted den of Furies and devils-the most dangerous, desolate, and forlorn place in the whole world; instead of which it turned out to be healthful, fer- tile, and charming.
The Bermudas are a cluster of islands lying in the Atlantic Ocean, at the distance of six hundred miles from the American Continent, extending, in crescent form, from east to west; in length, twenty miles; in breadth, two and a half. On the coast of the principal of these islands, Bermuda, the Sea-Venture was wrecked; and, on landing, the English found, instead of those gloomy horrors with which a superstitious fancy had invested it, a terrestrial paradise blessed with all the charms of exquisite scenery, luxuriant vegetation, and a voluptuous atmosphere, which have since been celebrated in the verse of a modern poet. Here they remained for nearly a year. Fish, fowl, turtle, and wild hogs supplied the English with abundant food; the palmetto leaf furnished a cover for their cabins. They had daily morning and evening prayers, and on Sunday divine service was performed and two sermons preached by the chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Bucke. He was a graduate of Oxford, and received the appointment of chaplain to the Virginia expedition upon the recommendation of Dr. Ravis, Bishop of London. Mr. Bucke was the second minister sent out from England to Virginia, being successor to Rev. Robert Hunt. The company of the Sea-Venture were sum- moned to worship by the sound of the church-going bell, and the roll was called, and absentees were duly punished. The clergyman performed the ceremony of marriage once during the sojourn on the island, the parties being Sir George Somers' cook and a maid-servant, (of one Mrs. Mary Horton,) named Elizabeth Persons. The communion was once celebrated. The infant child of one John Rolfe-a daughter, born on the island-was chris- tened, February eleventh, by the name of Bermuda, Captain Newport, the Rev. Mr. Bucke, and Mrs. Horton being witnesses. It would seem from this, that John Rolfe was a widower when he afterwards married Pocahontas. Another infant, born on the island, a boy, was christened by the name of Bermudas. Six of the company, including the wife of Sir Thomas Gates, died there.
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, Living in the midst of peace and plenty in this sequestered and delightful place of abode, after escaping from the yawning perils of the deep, many of the English lost all desire ever to leave the island, and some were even mutinously determined to remain there. Gates, however, having decked the long-boat of the Sea- Venture with the hatches, dispatched the mate, Master Raven, an expert mariner, with eight men, to Virginia for succor; but the boat was never more heard of. Discord and insubordination found a place among the exiles of the Bermudas; and even the leaders, Gates and Somers, lived for awhile asunder. At length, while Somers was engaged in surveying the islands, Gates com- pleted a vessel of about eighty tons, constructed somewhat after the manner of Robinson Crusoe, partly from the timber of the Sea-Venture, and the rest of cedar. A small bark was also built under the direction of Sir George Somers, of cedar, without the use of any iron, save a bolt in her keel. These two vessels were named, the one the "Patience," the other the "Deliverance." Finally, on the 10th day of May, 1610, after the lapse of nine months spent on the island, and nearly a year since their de- parture from England, harmony being restored, and the leaders reconciled, they embarked in these cedar vessels for Virginia.
The name of Sir Thomas West, afterwards Lord la Ware, ,or De la War, or Delaware, appears in the commission appointed in the year of James the First, for inquiring into the case of all such persons as should be found openly opposing the doctrines of the Church of England. Such was the spirit of that age, by which standard the men of that age ought to be judged. Lord Dela- ware was, nevertheless, distinguished for his virtues and his gene- rous devotion to the welfare of the infant colony of Virginia-a man of approved courage, temper, and experience. The Rev. William Crashaw, father of the poet of that name, at the period of Lord Delaware's appointment to the place of Governor of Vir- ginia, was preacher at the Temple; and he delivered a sermon before his lordship, and others of his majesty's council for the Colony of Virginia, and the rest of the adventurers or stock- holders in that plantation, upon occasion of his lordship's embark- ation for Virginia, on the 21st day of February, 1609-10. The text was from Daniel, xii. 3: "They that turn many to righteous-
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ness shall shine as the stars forever and ever." This sermon was printed by William Welby, and sold in Paul's Churchyard, at the sign of the Swan, 1610, and is the first missionary sermon preached in England to any of her sons embarking for Virginia. Crashaw, in this discourse, urges it warmly upon his countrymen to aid the enterprise of planting the colony; rejects, with indig- nant scorn, the more sordid motives of mere lucre, and appeals to loftier principles, and the more elevated motives of Christian beneficence. But although he rejects motives of mere profit, he tells his auditors that if they will pursue their object, animated by these enlarged views, they will probably find the plantation eventually a source of pecuniary profit, the soil being good, the commodities numerous and necessary for England, the distance not great, and the voyage easy, so that God's blessing was alone wanting to make it gainful. In his peroration, the preacher, apostrophizing Lord Delaware, excites his generous emulation by a personal appeal, reminding him of the gallant exploit of his ancestor, Sir Roger la Warr, who, assisted by John de Pelham, captured the King of France at the battle of Poictiers. In me- mory of which exploit, Sir Roger la Warr-Lord la Warr accord- ing to Froissart-had the crampet or chape of his sword for a badge of that honor. Crashaw bitterly denounces the Papists, and the Brownists, and factious separatists, and exhorts the Vir- ginia Company not to suffer such to have any place in the new colony. Rome and Geneva were the Scylla and Charybdis of the Church of England .* Lord Delaware sailed in February for Virginia.
Gates and Somers, after leaving the Bermudas in May, in fourteen days reached Jamestown, where they found only sixty miserable colonists surviving. Sir Thomas Gates, Lieutenant- Governor, landing on the twenty-fourth of May, caused the church-bell to be rung; and such as were able repaired thither, and the Rev. Mr. Bucke delivered an earnest and sorrowful prayer upon their finding so unexpectedly all things so full of misery and misgovernment. At the conclusion of the religious service the new commission of Gates was read; Percy, the acting president,
* Anderson's Hist. of Col. Church, i. 232.
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scarcely able to stand, surrendered up the former charter and his commission. The palisades of the fort were found torn down; the ports open; the gates distorted from the hinges; the houses of those who had died, broken up and burned for firewood, and their store of provision exhausted. Gates reluctantly resolved to abandon the plantation, and to return to England by way of Newfoundland, where he expected to receive succor from English fishing vessels. June seventh, they buried their ordnance and armor at the gate of the fort, and, at the beat of drum, embarked in four pinnaces. Some of the people were, with difficulty, re- strained from setting fire to the town; but Sir Thomas Gates, with a select party, remained on shore until the others had em- barked, and he was the last man that stepped into the boat. They fired a farewell volley; but not a tear was shed at their de- parture from a spot associated with so much misery. How often is the hour of despair but the deeper darkness that immediately precedes the dawn! At noon they reached Hog Island, and on the next morning, while anchored off Mulberry Island, they were met by a long-boat with dispatches from Lord Delaware, who had arrived with three vessels, after a voyage of three months and a half from England .* Upon this intelligence Gates, with his company, returned up the river to, Jamestown on the same day. Lord Delaware arrived there with his three vessels on the ninth, and on the morning of the following day (Sunday) he landed at the south gate of the fort, and although the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Thomas Gates, with his company, were drawn up to meet him, he fell on his knees, and remained for some time in silent prayer. After this he repaired to the church, and heard a sermon de- livered by the Rev. Mr. Bucke. A council was then called, and the governor delivered an address to the colonists. The hand of a superintending and benignant Providence was plainly manifested in all these circumstances. The arrival of Sir Thomas Gates rescued the colony from the jaws of famine; his prudence pre- served the fort at Jamestown, which the unhappy colonists, upon abandoning the place, wished to destroy, so as to cut off all pos- sibility of a return; had their return been longer delayed, the
* Anderson's Hist. of Col. Church, i. 263.
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savages might have destroyed the fort; had they set sail sooner, they would probably have missed Lord Delaware's fleet, as they had intended to sail by way of Newfoundland, in a direction contrary to that by which Lord Delaware approached .*
* The wreck of the Sea-Venture appears to have suggested to Shakespeare the groundwork for the plot of "The Tempest," several incidents and passages being evidently taken from the contemporary accounts of that disaster, as narrated by Jordan and the Council of the Virginia Company.
" Boatswain, down with the top-mast, yare Lower, lower; bring her to try with the main course."
Captain Smith, in his Sea-Grammar, published 1627, under the article how to handle a ship in a storm, says: "Let us lie as try with our main course-that is, to haul the tack aboard, the sheet close aft, the boling set up, and the helm tied close aboard." Again, the boatswain says: "Lay her a-hold, a-hold; set her two courses." The two courses are the mainsail and the foresail; and to lay a ship a-hold is to bring her to lie as near the wind as she can. These, and other nautical orders, are such as the brave old Somers probably gave when trying to keep the ship as upright as possible.
"We are merely cheated of our lives by drunkards."
This was suggested to the poet by the recorded incident of part of the crew of the Sea-Venture having undertaken to drown their despair in drunkenness.
"Farewell, my wife and children ! Farewell, brother ! Ant. Let's all sink with the king. Seb. Let's take leave of him."
These answer to the leave-taking of the Sea-Venture's crew. Jordan, in his narrative, says: "It is reported that this land of Bermudas, with the islands about it, are enchanted and kept by evil and wicked spirits," etc. Shakespeare accordingly employs Prospero, Ariel, and Caliban to personate this fabled en- chantment of the island. Ariel's task is, at Prospero's bidding-
" To fly, To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride On the curled clouds."
The tempest, in which the ship was wrecked, is thus described by Ariel :-
" I boarded the king's ship; now on the beak, Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin, I flamed amazement : sometimes I'd divide, And burn in many places ; on the top-mast, The yards, and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly, Then meet and join; Jove's lightnings, the precursors
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Lord Delaware, Governor and Captain-General, was accompa- nied by Sir Ferdinand Waynman, Master of the Horse, who died shortly afterwards; Captain Holcroft; Captain Lawson; and
O' the dreadful thunder-claps, more momentary And sight-outrunning were not; the fire, and cracks Of sulphurous roaring, the most mighty Neptune Seemed to besiege, and make his bold waves tremble."
Again :-
" Not a soul But felt a fever of the mad and played Some tricks of desperation."
The almost miraculous escape of all from the very jaws of impending death, is thus alluded to by Ariel in her report to Prospero :-
" Not a hair perished ; On their sustaining garments not a blemish, But fresher than before : and as thou bad'st me, In troops I have dispersed them 'bout the isle."
The particular circumstances of the wreck are given quite exactly in the fami- liar verses :-
" Safely in harbor Is the king's ship; in the deep nook, where once Thou call'st me up at midnight to fetch dew From the still-vexed Bermoothes, there she's hid."
Bermoothes, the Spanish pronunciation of Bermudas, or Bermudez, the original name of the island, taken, as is said, from that of a Spanish captain wrecked there. Another real incident is referred to in the following verses, the time only being transposed :-
" The mariners all under hatches stowed; Whom, with a charm joined to their suffered labor, I have left asleep."
The return of the other seven vessels of the fleet is described with a change, however, of the sea in which they sailed, and in their place of destination :- .
" And for the rest of the fleet, Which I dispersed, they all have met again; And are upon the Mediterranean flote, Bound sadly home for Naples ; Supposing that they saw the king's ship wrecked And his great person perish."
For nearly a year after the Sea-Venture's separation from the fleet, it was be- lieved, in Virginia and in England, that she and her company were lost. Smith
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other gentlemen. Lord Delaware was the first executive officer of Virginia with the title of Governor; and the titles of Go- vernor and Captain-General were ever after given to the colo- nial chief magistrates of Virginia. Under Lord Delaware's dis- creet and energetic management, discipline and industry were speedily restored, the hours of labor being set from six o'clock in the morning to ten, and from two to four in the afternoon. The store of provisions that he had brought over with him was suffi- cient to supply four hundred men for twelve months. He gave orders for repairing the church. Its length was sixty feet, and its breadth twenty-four, and it was to have a chancel of cedar and a communion-table of black-walnut, and the pews of cedar, with handsome wide windows, to shut and open according to the weather, made of the same wood; as also a pulpit with a font hewed out hollow like a canoe, with two bells at the west end. The building was so constructed as to be very light within; and the Lord Governor and Captain-General caused it to be kept passing sweet, and trimmed up with divers flowers. There was also a sexton belonging to it. Every Sunday there were two sermons delivered, and every Thursday one-there being two preachers who took their weekly turns. In the morning of every day, at the ringing of the bell at ten o'clock, the people attended prayers; and also again at four in the afternoon, before supper.
and Pocahontas may have suggested some materials for the characters of Ferdi- nand and Miranda.
Shakespeare, after abandoning the stage, in 1607 or 1608, about the time of the first landing at Jamestown, remained in London for some four or five years. Smith, and the early colonists of Virginia, had many of them probably wit- nessed the theatrical performances at the Globe or Black Fryars ; Beggars' Bush, now Jordan's Point, an early plantation on the James River, derived its name from a comedy of Fletcher's. Shakespeare was, no doubt, quite familiar with the more remarkable incidents of the first settlement of the colony : the early voy- ages ; the first discovery ; the landing; Smith's rencontres with the Indians; his rescue by Pocahontas ; the starving time, etc. Smith, indeed, as has been be- fore mentioned, complained of his exploits and adventures having been misre- presented on the stage, in London. That Shakespeare makes few or no allusions to these incidents, is because they occurred after nearly all his plays had been composed. "The Tempest," however, was written several years after the land- ing at Jamestown, being one of his latest productions-a creation of his maturest intellect.
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On Sunday, when the Governor went to church, he was accompa- nied by the councillors, officers, and all the gentlemen, with a guard of halberdiers in his lordship's livery, handsome red cloaks, to the number of fifty on each side, and behind him. In the church his lordship had his seat in the choir, in a green velvet chair, with a cloth, and also a velvet cushion laid on the table before him on which he knelt. The council and officers sate on each side of him, and when he returned to his house he was escorted back in the same manner. The newly appointed council consisted of Sir Thomas Gates, whose title was changed from that of Lieutenant-Governor to that of Lieutenant-General; Sir George Somers, Admiral; Captain George Percy; Sir Ferdi- nando Wayman, Master of the Ordnance; Captain Newport, Vice-Admiral; and Mr. Strachey, Secretary and Recorder. Strachey, who appears to have been a scholar, published an inte- resting account of the colony at this period. Some of the houses at Jamestown were covered with boards ; some with Indian mats. They were comfortable, and securely protected from the savages . by the forts. Lord Delaware was a generous friend of the colony ; but it was as yet quite too poor and too much in its infancy to maintain the state suitable to him and his splendid retinue. The fashions of a court were preposterous in a wilderness. On the ninth of June, Sir George Somers was dispatched, in compliance with his own suggestion, in his cedar vessel to the Bermudas, accompanied by Argall in another vessel, to procure further sup- plies for the colony. Captain Argall, in consequence of adverse winds and heavy fogs, returned to Jamestown. Sir George
Somers, after much difficulty, reached his destination, where he shortly after died, at a spot on which the town of St. George commemorates his name. The islands themselves received the designation of his surname, and were afterwards called the Sum- mer Islands. It is said that the Bermudas were at first named in England "Virginiola," but shortly after the "Summer Islands," partly in allusion to their temperature, and partly in honor of Sir George .* It was remarked of him that he was "a lamb upon land; a lion at sea." As his life had been divided between the
* Court and Times of James the First, 160.
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Old World and the New, so after his death his remains were buried, part at Bermuda, part at Whitchurch, Dorsetshire, in England.
Lord Delaware dispatched Captain Argall to the Potomac for corn, which he succeeded in procuring by the aid of the youthful prisoner, Henry Spilman. His lordship erected two forts, called Henry and Charles, after the king's sons. These forts were built on a level tract bordering Southampton River, and it was intended that settlers arriving from England should first land there, to refresh themselves after the confinement of the voyage. Sir Thomas Gates, who had before sent his daughters back to Eng- land, now returned there himself, in order to render to the council an account of all that had happened. Captain Percy was dis- patched with a party to chastise the Paspaheghs, for some depre- dations; they fled before the English, who burnt their cabins, captured their queen and her children, and shortly after bar- barously slew them. Lord Delaware, visiting the falls with a party of soldiers, was attacked by the Indians, who killed some of his men.
His lordship having suffered much sickness, and finding himself in a state of extreme debility, embarked,* in company of Dr. Bohun and Captain Argall, and about fifty others, for the Island of Mevis, in the West Indies. Contrary winds drove them to the north, and having put in at the mouth of a large river, then called Chickohocki, it hence derived its name of the Delaware.
Lord Delaware upon leaving the colony, committed the charge of it to Captain George Percy, an honorable and resolute gentle- man, but in infirm health, and deficient in energy. The number of colonists was at this period about two hundred; the stock of provisions sufficient for ten months, and the Indians peaceable and friendly. Before Lord Delaware reached England, the Vir- ginia Council, discouraged by so many disasters and disappoint- ments, were at a loss to decide whether they should use any further efforts to sustain the ill-fated colony, or should abandon the enterprise, and recall the settlers from Virginia. But Sir Thomas Gates made so strenuous an appeal in favor of sustaining the plantation, that Sir Thomas Dale was dispatched with three
* March 28th, 1611.
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vessels, cattle, hogs, and other supplies. The title given to Dale was that of High Marshal of Virginia, indicative of the martial authority with which he was invested. He was a military man, and had served in the Low Countries, and he brought over with him an extraordinary code of "laws divine, moral, and martial," compiled by William Strachey, secretary of the colony, for Sir Thomas Smith, from the military laws observed during the wars in the Low Countries. This code was sent over by Sir Thomas Smith, treasurer or governor of the Virginia Company, without the company's sanction, as it has been alleged; but since the com- pany in no way interposed its authority in contravention to the new code, their sanction of it may be presumed. Several of these laws were barbarous, inhuman, written in blood.
Arriving in Virginia in the month of May, 1611, Dale touched at Kiquotan, and set all hands there to planting corn. Reaching Jamestown on the tenth of May, he found the settlers busily en- gaged in their usual occupation, playing at bowls in the streets. He set them to work felling trees, repairing houses, and providing materials for enclosing the new town, which he proposed to build. To find a site for it he surveyed the Nansemond River and the James as far as the falls, and finally pitched upon a high ground, with steep banks, on the north side of the river, near Arrohat- tock, and about twelve miles below the falls of the river. The site was on a peninsula, known as Farrar's Island, in Varina Neck. Sir Thomas was prevented for a time from founding the new town by the disturbances that prevailed in the colony, and to restore order he enforced martial law with rigor. Eight of the colonists appear to have been convicted of treasonable plots and conspiracies, and executed by cruel and unusual modes, before midsummer. Among these was Jeffrey Abbot, who had served long in the army in Ireland and in the Netherlands; had been a sergeant of Captain John Smith's company in Virginia, who avers that he never knew there a better soldier or more loyal friend of the colony. It must be acknowledged that rigorous measures were necessary, and it was fortunate for the colony that the cruel and despotic code of laws, to which it was now subjected, was ad- ministered by so discreet and upright a governor as Dale.
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