far away from the islands, and to shun their storms and SECTION reefs. Nor was it the Spaniards only who dreaded and had cause to dread the dangers of the Bermudas. In 1591 three trading ships were sent from London to the East under the command of James Lancaster. On their return voyage they found their way to the West Indies; and at Hispaniola, at the end of 1593, Lancaster sent on one of his followers, Henry May, in a French ship bound for Europe and commanded by a captain named La Barbotière. The ship was wrecked on the shoals of the Bermudas; May with about half of his companions remained on the islands for nearly five months, when they found their way to Newfoundland; and on his return to England he published a short and simple account of the place where he had been so 'illwelcomed by the rocks',' which is to be found in the pages of Hakluyt. To the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century, one discoverer after another, whether they went to north or south, continued to bear ill-witness against the Bermudas. Writing in 1595 of his voyage to Guiana, Sir Walter Ralegh speaks of them as a 'hellish sea for thunder, lightning, and storms 2'; Champlain, the great pioneer of French colonisation in Canada, who sighted them about 1600, has left a record of 'a mountainous island, which it is difficult to approach on account of the dangers that surround it 2'; and when British colonisation in America began in sober earnest with the incorporation of trading companies, and the era of spasmodic discovery was followed by that of systematic settlement, the curtain rises on the 'stillvex'd Bermoothes' in shipwreck and storm. 1 From the Historye of the Bermudaes, attributed to Capt. John Smith, edited by Sir J. H. Lefroy for the Hakluyt Society. 2 Given in the Appendix to vol. ii. of the Memorials of the Bermudas. 3 From the Tempest, act i. sc. 2. It is generally admitted that in I. SECTION The I. and Sir G. The Virginia Company1 received its patent from James the First in 1606, and on New Year's day 1607 its first colonists were despatched to America. In 1609 the ComVirginia pany was re-organised, and nine ships were sent out under Company three of its most prominent members, Gates, Somers, and Somers. Newport. The second of the three, and the leading spirit, Sir George Somers, was the man after whom the Bermudas were called the Somers islands. Somers was well worthy to be the eponymous hero of a British colony. Like many other great English sailors, he was a West country man, born at or near Lyme Regis in Dorset. He had been trained in the wars with Spain. In his passionate daring, his constancy, and force of character, he was a typical representative of the race of Englishmen who made the reign of Elizabeth famous, and he carried on into the more prosaic seventeenth century the best and brightest qualities of the older generation. Wreck of the Sea Venture. The little fleet left Plymouth on the second of June, the three leaders sailing in the same ship, the Sea Venture. On or about the twenty-fifth of July a violent storm scattered the vessels. On the Sea Venture Sir George Somers alone of the company, like Sir Humphrey Gilbert years before, remained watchful and unmoved; and, when all had been given up for lost, he sighted land at the Bermudas. The story of the storm and shipwreck reads curiously like the account of the tempest which cast St. Paul on Malta. The ship was wedged fast between two rocks, and on the twenty-eighth of July all the company reached the land in writing this play, which was produced in 1611, Shakespeare had in his mind the wreck of Sir G. Somers' ship on the Bermudas two years previously. See App. 2 to vol. ii. of the Memorials of the Bermudas. 1 For the Virginia Company and its connexion with the Bermudas, see Doyle's History of the English in America, vol. i. 2 See what is said of Sir G. Somers in Fuller's Worthies of England, among the Worthies of Dorsetshire. 3 One of the shoals off St. George's island is still known as Sea Venture Flat. I. safety. There they stayed till the tenth of May following1, SECTION finding the islands better than their repute; and finally, having built two ships, they set sail and reached Virginia 2. As far as their own comfort was concerned, they had better have remained at the much maligned Bermudas. They found the Virginian colony nearly starved out, 'in much distress of victual, so that the overplus of their Sommer islands store relieved many and saved some lives 3. The abandonment of the colony was only prevented by the arrival of fresh ships and a new governor from England; and, towards the end of June, Somers undertook to fetch food from the Bermudas, 'the most plentiful place that ever I came to for fish, hogs, and fowl.' He reached the islands Death of in safety, but reached them only to die. His body was embalmed and carried to England by his companions, under the command of his nephew Captain Matthew Somers, and laid to rest at Whitchurch in his native county; but his heart is said to have been interred in Bermudian soil 5, where the town of St. George now stands, and that name with those of Somers islands and Somerset (Somers seat) have perpetuated his memory in the lonely land where he died. 1 During their stay a boy and girl were born, and were christened respectively, with some want of invention, Bermudas and Bermuda. There are the fullest authorities for this celebrated voyage. Sir G. Somers' own report, and two fuller accounts by men who accompanied him, are given in the Memorials of the Bermudas. 3 From the Historye of the Bermudaes. * From Sir G. Somers' report to the Earl of Salisbury, referred to in the note above. It is dated Jamestown, the twentieth of June, whereas he is said to have sailed for the Bermudas on the nineteenth. 5 A few years later, in 1620, Governor Butler put the following inscription over the spot : 'In the year 1611 Noble Sir George Summers went hence to heaven. Sir G. SECTION I. Favourable The return of Somers' companions drew public attention in England to the Bermudas. There was much to attract in the tale which they had to tell. The islands now recalled the adventures and death of a leading Englishman. While Virginia had been tried and found grievously wanting, the Bermudas, so long dreaded and shunned, had proved a spot from which the Virginian colonists might find relief. Romance always exaggerates; and, the dark picture hitherto notices given of the islands having been proved to be untrue, no of the Bermudas. colours were thought too bright for future descriptions. Marvell. Henceforward the Bermudas are constantly spoken of as a kind of islands of the Blest. The author of the 'Historye of the Bermudaes,' who wrote probably soon after the first settlement of the islands, speaks of them as 'being in an equal elevation with that of the Holy Land, and in particular very near with the very city of Jerusalem, which is a clime of the sweetest and most pleasing temper of all others.' A letter written in 1611-12 alludes to their being called 'Sommer islands as well in respect of the continual temperate air as in remembrance of Sir George Sommers that died there' Their climate, beauties, and products became a favourite theme for English poets. Andrew Marvell, writes of— This eternal spring Which here enamels everything"." 1 Quoted in the Memorials of the Bermudas, vol. i. p. 57. The false etymology no doubt helped to perpetuate the name. Writing in the middle of the seventeenth century, after the mistake had taken root, Fuller says, 'Possibly in process of time these Summer islands may be conceived so named because there winter doth never appear.' See the reference given in the note above, p. 8. 2 From the singularly beautiful little poem beginning 'Where the remote Bermudas wide, In ocean's bosom unespied.' It was probably written about 1645. Waller's1 description is equally glowing,— 'So sweet the air, so moderate the clime, Heaven sure has kept this spot of earth uncurst, To show how all things were created first.' SECTION Waller. While in our own century, Moore 2, whose poetry is inspired Moore. by the genius of the place, has sung of 'These leafy isles upon the ocean thrown, comparing them to the 'pure isles' 'Which bards of old with kindly fancy placed Captain Somers returned to England in 1611. In March The Bermuda 1612 the Virginia Company procured an extension of their Company. charter so as to cover all islands within three hundred leagues of the Virginian shore and thereby to include the Bermudas. In the autumn of the same year the Company sold the islands to certain members of their own body, who in 1615 were 1 From the burlesque poem, 'The Battle of the Summer islands.' It was probably written before 1639. The tradition that Waller visited the Bermudas is shown to be groundless in App. 8 to vol. ii. of the Memorials of the Bermudas. Moore.commemorates his supposed visit in the lines (Odes to Nea)— 'May spring to eternity hallow the shade, Where Ariel has warbled and Waller has strayed.' 2 Moore was appointed Registrar of the Court of Admiralty in the Permudas in the year 1803, but he only stayed a few months in the islands. He held the office, however, the duties being discharged by a deputy, till 1844. Other writers besides poets have borne witness to the climate and soil of the Bermudas, notably Bishop Berkeley in discussing his scheme for the establishment of a college in the islands (see below, pp. 21, 2). On the other hand a different picture is given in A Short Discovery of the Coast and Continent of America, by William Castell, published in 1644 (see the Harleian Collection of Voyages). The writer says, 'Besides it is as much if not more than any other place infested with most tempestuous fearful winds called hurricanes. The soil and temperature is far inferior to any part of Virginia, and yet is it inhabited no less than with 1000 English.' Labat, too [1705], speaks of the Bermudas, to which he gives the second name of Vermude, as being stormy islands. |