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...
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...
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.
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...
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...
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...
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...
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.
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 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...
Strachey, no doubt hungry for firsthand information about the colony, would have passed the bookseller a few coins, snapped up a copy of Smith’s brief report, and hurried home to read it voraciously a...
Somers and Newport, too, knew there was no way to bring the Sea Venture to anchor. Her hull was so open, her planks so sprung, that the ship would sink like one of the cannon they’d already jettisoned...
Somehow, though, Strachey and others on the vessel found the will to keep struggling, to fight for their lives though it seemed all was lost. Terrified now, the passengers forgot all class pretensions...
Now Archer and Ratcliffe and, to a lesser degree, John Martin, another of the original settlers whose laziness had angered Smith in the colony’s early days, and who had departed in 1608 only to return...
In reality, Smith, the man of action who had won respect as a soldier in Europe, would not have had to expend much in the way of bribes or feasting to earn the mariners’ support. They certainly knew t...
In fact, it is unlikely that all the men on the island went in search of food and water. While some went foraging, others would have set about building rough shelters, thatched with palm fronds, above...
For that voyage, Frobisher packed one pound of biscuit and one gallon of beer per man per day, one pound of salt meat (beef or pork) per man for each flesh day, as well as one dried codfish for every...