"Not a hair perished;
On their sustaining garments not a blemish,
But fresher than before: and as thou bad'st me,
In troops I have dispersed them 'bout the isle."
The particular circumstances of the wreck are given quite exactly in the familiar verses:—
"Safely in harbor
Is the king's ship; in the deep nook, where once
Thou call'st me up at midnight to fetch dew
From the still-vexed Bermoothes, there she's hid."
Bermoothes, the Spanish pronunciation of Bermudas, or Bermudez, the original name of the island, taken, as is said, from that of a Spanish captain wrecked there. Another real incident is referred to in the following verses, the time only being transposed:—
"The mariners all under hatches stowed;
Whom, with a charm joined to their suffered labor,
I have left asleep."
The return of the other seven vessels of the fleet is described with a change, however, of the sea in which they sailed, and in their place of destination:—
"And for the rest of the fleet,
Which I dispersed, they all have met again;
And are upon the Mediterranean flote,
Bound sadly home for Naples;
Supposing that they saw the king's ship wrecked
And his great person perish."
For nearly a year after the Sea-Venture's separation from the fleet, it was believed, in Virginia and in England, that she and her company were lost. Smith and Pocahontas may have suggested some materials for the characters of Ferdinand and Miranda.
Shakespeare, after abandoning the stage, in 1607 or 1608, about the time of the first landing at Jamestown, remained in London for some four or five years. Smith, and the early colonists of Virginia, had many of them probably witnessed the theatrical performances at the Globe or Black Fryars; Beggars' Bush, now Jordan's Point, an early plantation on the James River, derived its name from a comedy of Fletcher's. Shakespeare was, no doubt, quite familiar with the more remarkable incidents of the first settlement of the colony: the early voyages; the first discovery; the landing; Smith's rencontres with the Indians; his rescue by Pocahontas; the starving time, etc. Smith, indeed, as has been before mentioned, complained of his exploits and adventures having been misrepresented on the stage, in London. That Shakespeare makes few or no allusions to these incidents, is because they occurred after nearly all his plays had been composed. "The Tempest," however, was written several years after the landing at Jamestown, being one of his latest productions—a creation of his maturest intellect.
[102:A] Court and Times of James the First, 160.