A Brave Vessel: The True Tale of the Castaways Who Rescued Jamestown and Inspired Shakespeare'sThe Tempest

by Hobson Woodward

  The massive breaking swell hit the admiral and smashed him to the deck. For a moment he was underwater as tons of brine passed over him and cascaded onto the lower parts of the ship. Then he emerged sputtering and horribly unsure whether the Sea Venture had survived. Within seconds he determined that the vessel was still afloat, but facing a dire new threat. The flagship had passed through instead of over the highest portion of a wave. Though the ship emerged on the other side still on the surface of the sea, the seawater passing over it tore aside canvas hatch covers and poured into the enclosed decks below. For a moment the hull of the ship was underwater.

  “So huge a sea broke upon the poop and quarter, upon us, as it covered our ship from stern to stem like a garment or a vast cloud,” Strachey wrote. “It filled her brim-full for a while within, from the hatches up to the spardeck. The source or confluence of water was so violent, as it rushed and carried the helmsman from the helm and wrested the whipstaff out of his hand, which so flew from side to side that when he would have seized the same again it so tossed him from starboard to larboard as it was God’s mercy it had not split him, it so beat him from his hold and so bruised him.” The ship would probably have gone broadside to the waves and capsized had not another sailor wrestled the whipstaff under control.

  As the water swept down into the gun deck, it hit Gates, Strachey, and others in the bailing lines, knocking Gates from a resting spot at the capstan. “It struck him from the place where he sat and groveled him and all us about him on our faces, beating together with our breaths all thoughts from our bosoms else than that we were now sinking,” Strachey said. “For my part, I thought her already in the bottom of the sea.” Despite the apparent futility of going topside, the people below scrambled to avoid being trapped in a sinking hull.

  For a moment after the wave hit, the Sea Venture stood almost still. Since the wall of water had passed around the ship rather than underneath it, the ship did not mount the top of the swell and strike as the stern fell down the back of the wave. The pooped Sea Venture was momentarily stopped dead. In the halted ship Strachey recalled a classical account he once read about a parasitic tropical fish, called a remora, that survives by attaching itself to a shark with a suction mouth. Superstitious sailors believed the remora could also stick to a ship, grow to enormous size, and slow or stop its progress. “It so stunned the ship in her full pace,” Strachey said, “that she stirred no more than if she had been caught in a net, or than as if the fabulous remora had stuck to her forecastle.”

  The image of the remora was fleeting and Strachey soon turned to other thoughts as the motion of the Sea Venture resumed. The people who made it up the ladders reported that the ship remained afloat and under control. The alarm abated and the direction of the traffic on the ladders reversed. The seawater on the gun deck drained through hatchways that led to the hold. While that made it possible to again move freely, the workers knew that the water in the hold was now higher than it had ever been. Yet they still lived, and the voyage would go on. The glassy-eyed men returned to their stations and began once again to pass the buckets and raise the levers of the pumps.

  Through Wednesday and into Thursday the pumping and bailing continued, though the workers were near collapse. They knew, though, that if they stopped the ship would certainly sink. “There was not a passenger, gentleman or other, after he began to stir and labor but was able to relieve his fellow and make good his course,” Strachey said. “And it is most true, such as in all their lifetimes had never done hour’s work before (their minds now helping their bodies) were able twice forty-eight hours together to toil with the best.”

  Strachey’s own fatigue was something he had never before experienced. His arms ached from passing the heavy buckets and his hands were raw. The adrenaline that initially charged his movements had long since drained from his veins and was replaced by an utter exhaustion. Still he pushed on with the work, more for the occupation of mind rather than from any real hope that death was not imminent in the hours to come.

  As the ship was pushed northeast into the Atlantic with the hurricane, the wind and rain that had begun on Monday continued to lash the vessel. To the people on the Sea Venture the storm seemed endless. As Thursday night fell the voyagers were in a dark mood, but it was a mood that would be unexpectedly brightened at the darkest hour. Near midnight George Somers noticed an eerie luminescence in the rigging of the ship. Knowing that his fellows could do with a diversion, he called to them and pointed to the flitting radiance on the masts and yards. Strachey was among the off-duty bailers who ventured above.

  “Upon the Thursday night,” Strachey reported, “Sir George Somers being upon the watch had an apparition of a little round light like a faint star, trembling and streaming along with a sparkling blaze half the height upon the mainmast, and shooting sometimes from shroud to shroud, attempting to settle as it were upon any of the four shrouds, and for three or four hours together, or rather more, half the night it kept with us, running sometimes along the main yard to the very end, and then returning, at which, Sir George Somers called diverse about him, and showed them the same, who observed it with much wonder and carefulness.”

  Static electricity had built up on the rigging as the ship moved across the surface of the sea, so much so that the rigging was alight with the plasma energy known as St. Elmo’s fire. The phenomenon is often a sign of an imminent lightning strike, but on the Sea Venture it proved only a benign distraction. The uneducated people on board were awed by it, Strachey said, but the experienced officers and learned gentlemen saw it only as a curiosity. The luminescence dissipated with the first gray of dawn. “Towards the morning watch they lost the sight of it and knew not what way it made,” Strachey said. “The superstitious seamen make many constructions of this sea fire, which nevertheless is usual in storms.”

  In the dawn of Friday morning the marvel of St. Elmo’s fire was gone. The Sea Venture voyagers were incredulous that the storm still raged around them after four days, but they stayed at their tasks. The flood in the hold continued to gain on the bailers and pumpers, and the leaders of the expedition began to consider other ways to lighten the ship. The step of last resort was contemplated but so far not done—some on the Sea Venture, Strachey reported, “purposed to have cut down the mainmast, the more to lighten her, for we were much spent, and our men so weary, as their strengths together failed them, with their hearts, having travailed now from Tuesday till Friday morning, day and night, without either sleep or food.”

  Despite the efforts of Somers and Gates to keep the men working, most were in despair. “It being now Friday, the fourth morning, it wanted little but that there had been a general determination to have shut up hatches and commending our sinful souls to God, committed the ship to the mercy of the sea,” Strachey said. “Surely that night we must have done it, and that night had we then perished.” Passenger Silvester Jourdain recalled that many of the off-duty pumpers and bailers were lying down in dark places on the ship. “They were so overwearied and their spirits so spent with long fasting and continuance of their labor that for the most part they were fallen asleep in corners and wheresoever they chanced first to sit or lie.” Flasks were passed and final toasts were made. “Some of them having some good and comfortable waters in the ship fetched them and drunk one to the other taking their last leave one of the other, until their more joyful and happy meeting in a more blessed world.”

  On the late morning of Friday, July 28, 1609, not everyone on the Sea Venture was asleep, but George Somers was losing his ability to keep the men working. Though the pumping and bailing continued, many of the off-duty workers appeared unlikely to return for another shift. The work was keeping the ship afloat, but it was an unsustainable solution to the crisis. In the muted light of late morning, the never-ending storm continued to hammer the ship. If the removal of water was not continued through the afternoon and evening, the inflow and the pounding seas would sink the Sea Venture and the coming night would be the las
t.

  Somers continued to scan the ocean, watching the waves but also looking for ships that might offer relief. He was exhausted, famished, and thirsty, but still he watched and called rudder adjustments to the helmsman below. On one of his sweeps, a movement far off caught his eye. At the crest of a swell he detected a flutter on the horizon to the west, slightly higher than the surface of the sea. The ship descended into a trough and he froze and waited for it to rise again. At the top he saw it again, and this time more clearly—above the waves, he was almost sure, he saw the tops of palm trees moving in the wind. He waited one more time as the ship dipped between swells. The consequences to morale of making a mistake would be devastating. They were far out in the Atlantic and sighting trees—while not impossible—was incredible. At the top of the next wave he saw them again and this time he was sure. Somers then let go a bellow that reached the ears of everyone on the ship, and he repeated his call, drawing out in a sustained holler the word “Land.” To the people on the Sea Venture it was a miraculous sound.

  “See the goodness and sweet introduction of better hope by our merciful God given unto us,” Strachey said. “Sir George Somers, when no man dreamed of such happiness, had discovered and cried land.” Jourdain also recalled the moment when Somers “most wishedly, happily descried land.” The first call caught the pumpers and bailers staring into the smiling faces of their mates, and the second prompted a rush up the ladders so they might see for themselves. Only a few were able to immediately confirm the sighting, but after a moment or two most were able to catch a glimpse of the palm tops. “It being better surveyed, the very trees were seen to move with the wind upon the shoreside,” Strachey said.

  John Rolfe sought out and hugged his wife. They now might live and the child Goodwife Rolfe carried might yet be born. They had begun to count the remainder of their lives in hours rather than years. Now their family might survive—they themselves might yet live to escape this sloshing, stinking ship. They had become so dulled that they hardly dared hope they would again stand on land, and now hope permeated their minds.

  Though it had been days since Somers was able to see the stars and calculate the location of the Sea Venture, he was quite certain that the ship was in the middle of the Atlantic rather than in the Caribbean or along the coast of America. That meant that the land was almost certainly Bermuda, an island (or, more precisely, an archipelago) discovered by Spaniard Juan Bermúdez in 1505 and shown on maps since 1511. The fact that the land was probably Bermuda did not inspire confidence, as it was known to be surrounded by shallows stretching far out to sea that were rightly considered the most dangerous waters of the Atlantic. Nevertheless, they had to attempt to bring the Sea Venture to shore. After a conference with Somers, Gates gave the order to bring the ship in.

  Despite the newfound optimism of everyone on board, the mariners knew that they were far from safe. Getting passengers and crew from a distressed ship on a stormy sea through unmapped shallows to an unknown shore was a perilous undertaking. Under normal conditions Somers would have anchored the ship offshore and awaited calmer conditions to send in the longboat, but if he did that now the Sea Venture would sink in place. The best option was to run toward the land and ground the ship. If this worked, equipment and supplies would be salvageable. The danger was that the Sea Venture and its unplanned cargo of seawater could run aground, be pushed on its side, and break apart in the surf. If that happened, a few strong swimmers might fight the waves and make it to shore, but most of the exhausted voyagers would die.

  At Somers’s insistence, the pumpers and bailers went back to work to lighten the Sea Venture as much as possible for the run into land. The knowledge that their labors would soon be over produced a surge of activity. “Hearing news of land, wherewith they grew to be somewhat revived, being carried with will and desire beyond their strength, every man bustled up and gathered his strength and feeble spirits together to perform as much as their weak force would permit him.”

  As the ship turned and headed toward the island, a fortuitous event occurred. Perhaps the hurricane was finally veering away or maybe the vessel came within the lee of the island, but for whatever reason the wind slacked as the ship began its final run. To Jourdain the abrupt change had a divine quality. “It pleased God to work so strongly, as the water was stayed for that little time (which, as we all much feared, was the last period of our breathing).” Strachey was more matter-of-fact in his description of the drop in wind: “The morning now three-quarters spent, had won a little clearness from the days before.” When the ship was a mile from shore Strachey noted it again, saying “we had somewhat smooth water.” So far, things were going well.

  As they moved toward the island, a sounding lead and line was used to measure the decreasing depth. “The boatswain sounding at the first found it thirteen fathoms; and when we stood a little in, seven fathoms; and presently heaving his lead the third time had ground at four fathoms.” The Sea Venture had a draft of fifteen feet when it was not carrying a hold full of seawater. With the ocean depth at four fathoms (twenty-four feet), the mariners knew the ship would soon run aground. Somers clenched his teeth as he anticipated impact, and in a few minutes it came with a sickening grind. Now would come the true test of their luck. The sailors waited to see whether the ship would be pushed sideways in the surf, and to their great relief it held fast. As they had hoped, the Sea Venture remained wedged in an upright position. “Neither did our ship sink,” Jourdain said, “but more fortunately in so great a misfortune, fell in between two rocks where she was fast lodged and locked for further budging.”

  The Sea Venture had run into the shallows blind, and the outcome could hardly have been better. Granted there was still three-quarters of a mile of rough water to cross in the small boats, but the people on the ship would gladly take their chances. The distressed ship had approached Bermuda from the east and grounded at the northeastern tip of the archipelago, off the shore of a medium-sized island. As the voyagers would discover later, the place where the Sea Venture came in was the only place on the entire coast that was deep enough to allow a large vessel to approach so close.

  Not knowing how long the ship would remain upright, the sailors worked quickly to untie the Sea Venture’s longboat and skiff and put them over the side. Ladders were dropped and the boats were filled to capacity. The longboat held perhaps thirty people and the skiff about ten. The first contingent included Gates, a number of male passengers, and almost certainly the dozen or so women and children on the ship. Sailors manned the oars as the boats pulled away. The Sea Venture had come to rest “under a point that bore southeast from the northern point of the island,” Strachey said, and it was just below that northern point that the two small boats would make landfall. After coasting north along a shore of jagged rocks the oarsmen reached a bay that would forever after carry the name of the governor. Strachey described it as “a goodly bay, upon which our governor did first leap ashore, and therefore called it (as aforesaid) Gates his Bay, which opened into the east, and into which the sea did ebb and flow, according to their tides.”

  The bay featured a pink sand crescent onto which the longboat and skiff managed to land without upsetting despite the heavy surf. The thirty or so passengers in the boats were left on shore and the ten or so sailors pushed off immediately to pick up more people from the ship. Unsteady on their feet but vastly relieved to be on solid earth, the landing party waded onto the beach. The palm leaves that had been sighted from the ship moved against a dark afternoon sky in the diminishing wind. A heavy growth of vegetation covered the base of the trees. The island was relatively flat. To the south the land rose to a rocky bluff of perhaps thirty feet, and to the north a point of jagged rocks extended a short way into the sea. There was no time to explore at the moment, though, and the voyagers set about collecting firewood in the wet underbrush. A circle of stones was laid on the beach above the high tide mark and wood was propped in the center to make a fire to guide in the returning boats and
, perhaps, other ships at sea. Lighting the kindling proved difficult in the damp conditions, but presently a blaze was lit.

  A short way into the woods the voyagers chose a campsite and laid a second circle of stones in the center. When it too was filled with wood, they brought an ember from the beach and the upland fire was alight by the time the second load of people arrived. Through the afternoon teams of sailors in the boats rowed at maximum effort, not knowing whether the Sea Venture would remain fast in its nook. The ship was three-quarters of a mile off the nearest land, but the campsite up the coast was almost a mile and a half over water from the grounded vessel. The five or so trips to clear the ship required at least seven miles of rowing by teams of sailors who had just endured four days of constant work in the midst of a hurricane. Dusk was falling as the last group came ashore. In accord with maritime tradition, Newport and Somers were the last off the ship. Incredibly, despite the dire situation of just a few hours earlier, no one on the Sea Venture had died or even suffered a serious injury during the storm. “By the mercy of God unto us,” Strachey said, “making out our boats, we had ere night brought all our men, women, and children, about the number of one hundred and fifty, safe into the island.”

  The sailors kept the watch schedule they had followed on the ship and tended the fires through the night. Since the castaways could not hunt for food until first light, they lay in a circle around the fire under layers of palm fronds. The survivors of the Sea Venture had just come through the most exhausting experience of their lives. Despite growling stomachs they closed their eyes, huddled close to one another, and fell into a deep sleep.