The survivors had established their tiny settlement on the beach overlooking Gates Bay. The quarters were described as cabins thatched with palmetto fronds. Nearby stood the small enclosure they had b...
The islands remained uninhabited and unpeopled, visited only by sailors under duress.
Minister who addressed the original Virginia settlers before their departure from London in 1606. Now he praised Smythe and the adventurers for again backing the Virginia Company, and he ended his ser...
Even before the boat was fully beached, he jumped into the shallow water. Gates, his bay! he supposedly shouted as he slogged ashore. Whether or not the tale is true, the bay on the eastern shore of S...
Captain John Smith, the president of the colony during much of its earliest history, regularly complained of the quality of those sent to establish the settlement. The colony, he said, would have been...
A sea storm attacks the senses, the mind, the spirit, until the gut is filled with terror that can make a brave man cower belowdecks, curled into a ball like a whimpering child.
It is unlikely that any of the ships’ captains seriously considered steering their damaged and undermanned vessels to either Barbuda or the Bermudas in search of the Sea Venture. Instead, the storm wo...
The little satellite settlement was in disarray, with no discipline, no rule other than every man for himself. West himself, the putative leader of the settlement, was gone, searching for gold. The si...
The deck appeared to be nothing more than a jumble of ropes and lines. The vessel was filled with objects that seemed to have no discernible purpose. Even the sailors appeared like aliens. They dresse...
Evangelista Torricelli, the Italian physicist who invented the barometer, the instrument used to forecast storms by registering fluctuations in air pressure, was an infant in mid-1609. The instrument...
By that point, those on the vessel were almost beyond caring. Mountainous seas, driving rain, lightning, and screaming winds continued as the ship labored simply to stay afloat. Sylvester Jourdain, So...
By 1609 Strachey, like other Englishmen, knew that Seagull’s words were not true. He knew that no diamonds had been found on Virginia’s beaches, that no golden chamber pots had been discovered. But he...
Spoke from the open-air Paul Cross pulpit at St. Paul’s Church, praising the Virginia Company’s plans to bring the Christian faith to heathen natives of Virginia.19
Sir George Somers, an experienced mariner, was put in charge of the fleet. Roughly sixty years of age, Somers, from the town of Lyme on England’s southwest coast, had a resume that included service un...
For almost seven weeks, the ships of the fleet sailed their leisurely way across the Atlantic. Since the ships’ captains wanted to stay in contact, the fleet could sail no faster than its slowest vess...
Even before those in Bermuda knew that Ravens’s mission was unsuccessful, Sir Thomas Gates ordered the construction of a pinnace that could carry survivors on to Jamestown. He may have figured there w...
During all this time, the ship—without so much as an inch of sail flying—was being driven nine or ten leagues (roughly thirty miles) in each four-hour watch. And all this time, Strachey said, those on...
According to Oviedo’s history, a Portuguese ship bound for home port from San Domingo was driven onto the Bermudan reefs in 1542 or early 1543. Fortunately for the thirty seamen on the vessel, the shi...
One unlucky sailor, who had been branded a liar by his shipmates, was given the unenviable job of cleaning the slop buckets and swabbing the privy in the ship’s beak.
In addition to those who risked money, more than six hundred men and women—those who dreamed of a new life in a new land—invested themselves in the venture, signing on to make the voyage to Virginia a...