Sea Venture

Title: Quo Fata
Ferunt
Source: The Mariners' Museum, Newport
News, Virginia
More informationThe Sea Venture was the flagship of a convoy sent from England in June 1609 to re-supply and revive the failing colony at Jamestown. On July 24, just off the coast of the uninhabited island chain of Bermuda, the fleet sailed into a hurricane. The storm separated the flagship from the other vessels and left it gravely damaged. The 150 passengers and crew members, including Christopher Newport, the ship's captain, and the colony's intended new leaders, escaped death at sea but found themselves marooned on Bermuda. Before the ship sank, crewmen salvaged many of their supplies and even the rigging. For ten months the castaways remained on Bermuda, while their countrymen in Virginia and England assumed them dead. During that time, they built two small boats, which they named the Patience and the Deliverance, and sailed to Virginia, arriving on May 24, 1610. Word of their odyssey fascinated English men and women, who saw in the story providential design: surely, many concluded, God had saved the Sea Venture voyagers. The tale also attracted London's leading playwright: the Sea Venture contributed to the inspiration behind William Shakespeare's last major play, The Tempest. Most importantly for the still-floundering Virginia colony, the amazing story encouraged the English to stick with their American enterprise and even expand their colonial presence in North America.

The Plan to Save Jamestown

Title: Sea Venture
Narrative
Source: The Mariners' Museum, Newport
News, Virginia
More informationFrom its start, the Virginia colony suffered from unrealistic expectations, political infighting, violence between Indians and settlers, and deprivation. Within weeks of being deposited on Jamestown Island by Captain Christopher Newport, the first settlers realized that the promises made by the Virginia Company of London—that the settlement would be safe, prosperous, and bounteous—had been greatly exaggerated. While the colonists futilely searched the forests for gold and the "other sea" (and a quick passage to the Far East), their leaders quarreled and alienated the powerful leader Powhatan (Wahunsonacock). Colonist George Percy quickly decided "There were never Englishmen left in a forreigne Countrey in such miserie as wee were in this new discovered Virginia." Half the colonists who arrived in April 1607 were dead by October, and fewer than forty survived the winter. Newport made two supply trips to Virginia, in January and October 1608, both times bringing home more bad news: John Smith, a brash commoner, had assumed authority over a quarreling, ineffective colonial Council, the colonists refused to take orders, the Powhatan Indians struck at will, and famine and illness raged.

By January 1609, with Newport back from the second supply trip, Sir Thomas Smythe, treasurer and de facto head of the Virginia Company of London, understood that his enterprise at Jamestown was failing in every conceivable way. The response of Smythe and the principal investors in the Virginia Company was not, however, resignation and evacuation, although they considered it. Rather, they undertook a wholesale reorganization of their company and its colony, and commenced an unprecedented public relations campaign to entice "adventurers"—their word for people who would wager either their money or their lives on Virginia.

Title: George Somers
Source: Virginia Historical Society
[1930.8]
More informationOn June 2, 1609, the Virginia Company of London sent across the Atlantic Ocean the largest fleet England had ever amassed in the West: nine ships, 600 passengers, and livestock and provisions to last a year. The audacious effort was born out of desperation to save Jamestown, and with it the whole idea of an English, Protestant presence in the Americas. Newport, the most experienced mariner of his age, was hired to captain the flagship Sea Venture. He carried the admiral of the fleet, George Somers; the new governor, Sir Thomas Gates; and 150 passengers and crew members. Unlike the earlier crossings, which transported too many gentlemen, this fleet carried skilled workers: shipwrights, carpenters, fishermen, masons, and farmers capable of building and sustaining a self-sufficient community.

Under Newport's experienced leadership, the fleet made good time. On July 24 the voyagers were within seven days of landfall when they were hit by a hurricane. The Sea Venture bore the brunt of the storm and was soon separated from the other ships. As thirty-foot waves and violent winds bombarded the ship, it sprung a leak so severe that, as one passenger put it, "we almost drowned within whilst we sat looking when to perish from above." For three days the passengers and crew fought the rising water, but it was a losing battle. On the fourth morning the exhausted men and women gave up, and "commending our sinful souls to God, committed the ship to the mercy of the gale."

Trapped in Paradise

Title: Naturalist Mark Catesby
Source: University of Virginia Special
Collections [QH41 .C26 1731
v.2]
More informationBut the Sea Venture voyagers did not meet a watery grave. Instead, they were cast away on the uninhabited island chain Bermuda, which was, in the seventeenth century, rumored to be haunted by evil spirits, and known as the Isle of Devils, "that all men did shun as Hell and Perdition." Far from diabolical, however, Bermuda was the paradise that promotional tracts promised would await those voyaging to Virginia: there was a boundless food supply, an ideal climate, and no dangerous wildlife. The castaways feasted on birds, fish, sea turtles, and wild hogs, which had swum ashore after an unknown shipwreck. George Somers and some of his men scouted the island chain while Thomas Gates put the passengers and crew—luckily, trained in a wide range of skills—to work collecting water, hunting and cooking, and constructing housing and boats.

The passengers on the other ships in the fleet did not fare so well. They arrived in Virginia sick, with damaged ships, having jettisoned many of their supplies. Their arrival without Gates sent Jamestown into a political tailspin. While the castaways on Bermuda spent the winter of 1609–1610 feasting, the settlers in Virginia endured the "Starving Time," with a mortality rate of 70 percent and survivors resorting to cannibalism, raiding the graves of their fallen countrymen and Indians they had killed in warfare.

Jamestown Redeemed

Title: The Shipwreck That
Saved Jamestown: The Sea
Venture Castaways and the
Fate of America
Source: Virginia Historical
Society
More informationOn May 24, 1610, Gates, Somers, Newport, and the castaways sailed up the James River in boats—aptly named the Patience and Deliverance—built from Bermuda cedar and the scavenged remains of the Sea Venture. But all of Gates's efforts seemed for naught when he surveyed the dire straits inside the fort. He reluctantly admitted that he saw no choice but to abandon Jamestown. So he loaded everyone back on the boats, along with the survivors of the "Starving Time," with plans to sail to Newfoundland where he assumed they could catch a ride home on one of the many English fishing or trading vessels that frequented Newfoundland harbors at this time. He was met on the James by Thomas West, baron De La Warr, sent by Thomas Smythe on yet another rescue mission, this one based on the mistaken belief that Gates was dead and the enterprise lost. De La Warr and his pilot, Samuel Argall, brought a year's supply of food, and so everyone returned to Jamestown.

The Sea Venture Legacy

Title: The Tempest
Source: John Carter Brown Library
More informationThe real salvation of Virginia came not with De La Warr but that fall, when Gates and Newport returned home to tell their remarkable tale. William Strachey, one of the castaways, committed his story to the page, as did Silvester Jourdain and Robert Rich. Strachey's, however, was the longest and most compelling of the Sea Venture narratives. Believed to have been written in 1610 but published after his death in 1625, Strachey's account, titled A true repertory of the wracke, and redemption of Sir Thomas Gates Knight, circulated through London's literary circles. All three men's common themes of harrowing adventure and providential delivery added to the stories told by Gates and Newport and shaped the promotional campaigns of the Virginia Company. The saga of the Sea Venture swept London, even seducing the city's most famous playwright. Shakespeare's The Tempest was inspired in part by the Sea Venture story.

Far more importantly, many seventeenth-century Londoners believed that nothing but the divine intervention of God could explain the events surrounding the Sea Venture. Protestant ministers, already committed to challenging the Catholic-Spanish domination of the Americas, and Virginia Company promoters, desperate for profits, eagerly spread the word. God, they claimed, had acted to save English America. As one minister put it, the events "could proceed from none other but the singular providence of God." And so it was essential that the English not give up on their American colony.

While Virginians suffered through many more years of deprivation and disappointment, they persisted in the Chesapeake. The Virginia Company collapsed in 1624 without ever earning a profit. In fact, nearly everyone who invested lost nearly everything they wagered. Mortality rates ran so high in the colony that one visitor in the 1620s observed, "Instead of a plantation it will shortly get the name of a slaughter house."

Title: Map of Bermuda
Source: The Mariners' Museum, Newport
News, Virginia
More informationMeanwhile, another English colony, created because of the Sea Venture and conceived as a partner to Virginia, thrived. Bermuda, not New England, as is commonly assumed, was the location of England's second New World colony. The Somers Island Company, named for George Somers, operated as a subsidiary of the Virginia Company from 1612 until 1615. During those years, the company sent about 600 colonists to Bermuda and consistently turned a profit. Bermudians enjoyed lower mortality rates and longer life expectancy than their countrymen in both Virginia and England. By 1625, nine forts secured the island from Spanish encroachments, ministers led services at six churches, and 2,500 residents were governed in part by an elective assembly. From the loss of the Sea Venture and the founding of Bermuda, England gained an invaluable entry into the Spanish-dominated Caribbean and the profits and hope to continue pursuing its colonial ambitions.

Time Line

April 10, 1606 - King James I grants the Virginia Company of London a royal charter dividing the North American coast between two companies overseen by the "Counsell of Virginia," whose thirteen members are appointed by the king.
April 26, 1607 - Jamestown colonists first drop anchor in the Chesapeake Bay, and after a brief skirmish with local Indians, begin to explore the James River.
June 2, 1609 - The largest fleet England has ever amassed in the West—nine ships, 600 passengers, and livestock and provisions to last a year—leaves England for Virginia. Led by the flagship Sea Venture, the fleet's mission is to save the failing colony. Sir Thomas Gates heads the expedition.
July 24, 1609 - A hurricane strikes the nine-ship English fleet bound for Virginia on a rescue mission. The flagship Sea Venture is separated from the other vessels and irreparably damaged by the storm.
Late August 1609 - After being damaged by a hurricane, eight of nine English ships bound for Virginia arrive safely at Jamestown under the assumption that the flagship Sea Venture, carrying Captain Christopher Newport and Sir Thomas Gates, had been lost at sea. The news sends the colony into a political tailspin.
Winter 1609–1610 - While the English colonists starve in Virginia, the shipwrecked crew and passengers of the Sea Venture make camp in Bermuda. They build two new boats, the Patience and Deliverance, from Bermuda cedar and the scavenged remains of the Sea Venture.
May 21, 1610 - Having been stranded in the Bermuda islands for nearly a year, the party of Virginia colonists headed by Sir Thomas Gates arrives at Point Comfort in the Chesapeake Bay.
May 24, 1610 - The party of Virginia colonists headed by Sir Thomas Gates arrives at Jamestown, now aboard the Patience and Deliverance. They find only sixty survivors of a winter famine. Gates decides to abandon the colony for Newfoundland.
June 8, 1610 - Sailing up the James River toward the Chesapeake Bay and then Newfoundland, Jamestown colonists encounter a ship bearing the new governor, Thomas West, baron De La Warr, and a year's worth of supplies. The colonists return to Jamestown that evening.
November 1, 1611 - William Shakespeare's players present the first recorded performance of The Tempest before King James I and the royal court at Whitehall Palace. The play is in part based on the shipwreck of the Sea Venture, a ship bearing colonists to Jamestown in Virginia.
July 11, 1612 - The first intentional colonists arrive in Bermuda to secure the claim of the Somers Island Company, a subsidiary of the Virginia Company. England's intention to colonize the island chain came after a successful ten months spent in Bermuda by the shipwrecked survivors of the Sea Venture, bound for Virginia.