WILLIAM STRACHEY.
William Strachey[3] was an English gentleman who came over to Virginia with Sir Thomas Gates in 1609, and was secretary of the Colony for three years. Their ship, the Sea Venture, was wrecked on the Bermudas in a terrible tempest, of which he gives the account that follows. It is said to have suggested to Shakspere the scene of the storm and hurricane in his “Tempest.”
WORKS.
A True Repertory of the Wracke and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates upon and from the Islands of the Bermudas.
Historie of Travaile into Virginia Brittania.
Edited Lawes Divine, Morall, and Martiall.
William Strachey’s writings show a thoughtful and cultivated mind. His style abounds in the long involved and often obscure sentences of his times, but his subject matter is usually very interesting. Compare the following selection with Shakspere’s “Tempest,” Act I., scene 1 and 2, to “Ariel, thy charge.” Notice the reference to Bermoothes (Bermudas).
A STORM OFF THE BERMUDAS.
(From A True Repertory of the Wracke and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates.)
On St. James his day, July 24, being Monday (preparing for no less all the black night before) the clouds gathering thick upon us, and the winds singing and whistling most unusually, which made us to cast off our Pinnace, towing the same until then asterne, a dreadful storm and hideous began to blow from out the Northeast, which, swelling and roaring as it were by fits, some hours with more violence than others, at length did beat all light from heaven, which, like an hell of darkness, turned black upon us, so much the more fuller of horror, as in such cases horror and fear use to overrun the troubled and overmastered senses of all, while (taken up with amazement) the ears lay so sensible to the terrible cries, and murmurs of the winds and distraction of our Company, as who was most armed and best prepared, was not a little shaken. . .
For four and twenty hours the storm, in a restless tumult, had blown so exceedingly, as we could not apprehend in our imaginations any possibility of greater violence, yet did we still find it, not only more terrible, but more constant, fury added to fury, and one storm urging a second, more outrageous than the former, whether it so wrought upon our fears, or indeed met with new forces. Sometimes strikes in our Ship amongst women, and passengers not used to such hurly and discomforts, made us look one upon the other with troubled hearts, and panting bosoms, our clamors drowned in the winds, and the winds in thunder. Prayers might well be in the heart and lips, but drowned in the outcries of the Officers,—nothing heard that could give comfort, nothing seen that might encourage hope. . . . .