Even after its discovery, Bermuda remained a no-man’s-land. The maze of reefs and coral heads that nearly surround the islands make approaching the Bermudas a scary business.
At the same time, Smith decided that the best way, indeed the only way, to guarantee Jamestown’s future was to disperse settlers. In making this decision, he was taking a page out of the Indians’ play...
Vessels in the fleet endured after leaving the company of the Sea Venture. The first thing that happened—and this was reported by every witness—was that the ships scattered. Contact was soon lost and...
Turned to gaze seaward at the grounded vessel that had carried them from home to the forlorn beach, the vessel that looked like nothing more than a dying creature, parts of its skeleton already expose...
The haunts of certain nocturnal birds which during the day remain in their caves but at night come out to feed.… At nightfall these birds come out from their caves with such an outcry and varying clam...
The Virginia Company had floated an idea that all English pirates might be pardoned if they agreed to move to Virginia.
Virginia was seen as a convenient place to send the poor and unemployed and to dump some of the criminals who infested London’s crowded streets and alleyways.
The admiral ordered extra lanterns flown from the flagship’s high yards in hopes that the other ships would not lose contact with the Sea Venture during what he knew would be a long, difficult night.
George Percy, the journal keeper who would later prove to be a terribly inept governor in his own right, said that Smith, fearing … thatt the seamen and thatt factyoin mighte growe too stronge and be...
As the realization of their continued peril became clear, crewmen and passengers—men and women and older children—clawed and battled for position along the ship’s rails, terrified that the horribly wo...
As he walked the eight miles to where the Sea Venture lay docked, passing from his old life to his new, it would have been perfectly natural for him to wonder if he would ever again see the bustling,...
All any on the flagship could do was hope the other vessels were safe, pray that the other ships and their crews and passengers would survive the storm.
They had landed in the Bermudas. To those on the beach who had any knowledge of the island chain at all, the announcement would have been terrible news. The Bermudas were known, as passenger Sylvester...
The island chain had achieved such a terrible reputation, thanks to its reefs and to the unearthly screams of the island’s millions of cahows, that mariners were calling Bermuda the Isle of Devils.
The death toll on the Diamond and the Swallow was terrible. Between the two vessels, thirty-two passengers and crew—well over 10 percent of their total complement—had died at sea, their bodies thrown...
Within a week or two weeks of their grounding, Gates and the others knew that the other ships in the fleet had either been lost in the storm or had sailed on to Jamestown. If any of the other sea capt...
They sit roughly 900 miles north and east of the Bahamas; roughly 600 miles east of Virginia; and about 3,500 miles south and west of London.
These hard men were middle-aged in their twenties and ancient if they saw their thirties, made old by poor diet and lives filled with dangerous work performed under terribly harsh conditions. Many wer...
The passengers and crew gathered each morning and evening and each Sunday for prayers,
The largest of the Bermudas is only about fourteen miles long and about a mile wide at its widest point. The highest point of land in Bermuda, now known as Town Hill, has an elevation of just 250 feet...