On May 11 Edward Reed wrote from London to Mr. Coke of Wedgnocke: "The sickness increaseth. The Virginians go forward next week." The expedition of nine vessels, carrying men, provisions, and the plague, sailed from Plymouth toward the end of May, 1609.[57] Gates and Somers were each severally authorized, whichever might happen first to reach Jamestown, to supersede the existing administration until the arrival of Lord Delaware, who was not to embark for several months, and did not reach Virginia until more than a year after the fleet sailed. Newport, Gates, and Somers, finding it impossible to adjust the point of precedence among themselves, embarked together by way of compromise, in the same vessel, the Sea Venture. In the same ship John Rolfe and his first wife sailed (the second was Pocahontas), also George Sandys, Strachey the historian, and the Rev. Mr. Bucke; also Namontack and Matchumps (Machumps?), two of Powhatan's Indians who were, it appears, in England in May, 1609.
The fleet, contrary to directions, followed the old circuitous route, via the Canaries and West Indies, and, of course, as always, were "caught in the tail of a hurricane." Some of the vessels lost their masts, some their sails from the sea breaking over the ships. One small vessel was lost and never heard from again, and the Sea Venture, with Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, Admiral, charter, and all, was separated from the other ships of the fleet. The other vessels, badly shattered by the storm, their stores spoiled with sea water, and many of their passengers dead or dying with the plague, arrived at Jamestown in August, 1609.
They brought back the early agitators, Martin, Archer, and Ratcliffe, together with "sundry other captains, divers gentlemen of good means and high birth, and about three hundred settlers; the greater part of them profligate youths, packed off from home to escape ill destinies, broken-down gentlemen, bankrupt tradesmen, and the like, decayed tapsters, and ostlers, trade-fallen; 'the cankers of a calm world and long peace.'"
Among the "youths"—we hope only a wild youth and not "profligate,"—was the Henry Spelman, son of Sir Henry Spelman, of literary fame, whom we remember as a fine fellow and good nurse. He came over in the Unity, and had a career of adventure second to none in the colony. He was rescued once from massacre by Pocahontas, was a valiant soldier and expert interpreter, and fell at last, in 1623, under the tomahawk of the Indian.
The story of the Sea Venture is a thrilling one. Who can read unmoved of Sir George Somers, the brave old Admiral, who scarce took leisure to eat or sleep day or night, but stood at the helm and kept his ship upright until she was jammed between the ledges of two rocks on one of the Bermudas! His crew had given themselves up as lost, and some having "comfortable waters" on board, drank themselves into oblivion after pumping vainly night and day. "Neither living or dying are we the better for being drunk," said the old Admiral.
They found themselves castaways on the "Isles of Devils," as the Bermudas had been named by the buccaneers who had visited them. This was the wreck which is said to have suggested Shakespeare's "Tempest." The author had evidently read Strachey's "True Repertory," and followed it in his descriptions of the "vexed Bermoothes": the cries of the mariners, the trembling star, flaming among the shrouds, which had appeared to the excited imagination of the weary and fasting Admiral at the helm. "On this strand at moonlight, the hag-born Caliban might roll and growl: Sycorax, the blue-eyed witch, might hover in the cloud wracks: and the voices of the winds whisper strange secrets."
The shipwrecked voyagers found an earthly paradise; and long afterward Andrew Marvel immortalized, in a lovely poem, the boat song of the exiles while they dreamed away the long months before they could reach the haven to which they were bound. May I, too, be allowed to dream awhile, pausing in my story of misery, cold, ingratitude, war, famine, and pestilence? Perhaps some of my readers may have forgotten the poem, and will forgive me for recalling part of it:—
"Where the remote Bermudas ride
In the ocean's bosom unespied,
From a small boat that rowed along
The listening winds received this song:
"'What should we do but sing His praise
That led us through the watery maze
Unto an isle so long unknown
And yet far kinder than our own?
Where He the huge sea-monsters wracks
That lift the deep upon their backs;
He lands us on a grassy stage
Safe from the storms and prelate's rage.
He gave us this eternal spring
Which here enamels everything.
He hangs in shades the orange bright—
Like golden lamps in a green night;
And does, in the pomegranites close
Jewels more rich than Ormus shewes.
He makes the figs our mouths to meet,
And throws the melons at our feet:
And makes the hollow seas that roar
Proclaim the ambergrease on shore.
He cast (of which we needs must boast)
The Gospel's pearl upon our coast;
And in these rocks, for us, did frame
A temple where to sound His name.
O let our voice His praise exalt
Till it arrive at heaven's vault;
Which then perhaps resounding may
Echo beyond the Mexique bay!'