A Brave Vessel: The True Tale of the Castaways Who Rescued Jamestown and Inspired Shakespeare'sThe Tempest (20 page)

 

Just over a week after the blockhouse ambush, to the relief of the colonists, one of the two ships that had carried Gates back to England came up the James River. The
Hercules
under Captain Robert Adams carried only thirty people, but in addition to replacing the twenty killed at the blockhouse the arrival did a bit to revive the morale of the dispirited colony. The vessel carried important news for the survivors of the
Sea Venture
wreck—for the first time they knew that their families and friends were aware they had survived on Bermuda.

One man aboard the
Hercules
was a new recruit named Robert Evelyn, a Londoner deep in debt who hoped to return from the New World with riches for his wife and children. “I am much grieved at my heart for it that my estate is so mean,” Evelyn had written to his mother as he prepared to leave. “I am going to the sea, a long and dangerous vo[yage with] other men to make me to be [able] to pay my debts and to restore my decayed estate again; which I beseech God of His mercy to grant it may be [made] prosperous unto me to His honor and my comfort in this world and in the world to come; and I beseech you if I do die that you would be good unto my poor wife and children, which, God knows, I shall leave very poor.”

Adams, Evelyn, and the others on the
Hercules
reported that Thomas Gates had stunned London and all of England by coming back from the grave. When his ships arrived at the Thames quay in September, the story of the survival of the
Sea Venture
voyagers had spread rapidly through the city. To satisfy the demand for information on the wreck, two who had lived through it immediately published accounts. Silvester Jourdain was first into print with his
Discovery of the Barmodas
, a short pamphlet telling the story in spare prose. Another
Sea Venture
passenger, Richard Rich, calling himself a “soldier blunt and plain,” offered the tale in verse under the title
Newes from Virginia: The Lost Flocke Triumphant.

Neither Jourdain nor Rich mentioned the fate of Namontack, the Powhatan emissary who had twice been to London before departing on the
Sea Venture
with Machumps. Gates retold the Bermuda story many times, however, and a Dutch writer living in London heard one of those tellings. Emanuel van Meteren reported that Gates included among his list of the Bermuda dead “a
casicke
or son of a king in Virginia who had been in England and who had been killed by an Indian, his own servant.” Gates’s suspicion that Machumps had killed Namontack was reported as a certainty, and the former castaway apparently did not mention that the suspected murderer continued to circulate among the colonists in Jamestown without sanction for the alleged crime.

As in earlier times, the most anticipated publication in the weeks after Gates’s return was the one issued by the Virginia Company itself. Now instead of having to explain the death of one of its most promising leaders, the company could hail his survival as proof that God intended the English to prevail in Virginia. As the basis of
A True Declaration of the Estate of the Colonie in Virginia
, the company drew upon Strachey’s letter to the “Excellent Lady” and the derivative report that the secretary had drafted for Delaware’s signature. The company highlighted the successes of Bermuda and Virginia and downplayed or omitted the episodes of mutiny, murder, and bloody battles with the Powhatans. Highlighted was the miraculous—some might even say magical—survival of Thomas Gates and his company on an enchanted island.

This series of fortuitous events proved the intervention of the divine, according to the Virginia Company. Could these coincidences, the company asked, mean anything but that God intended Jamestown to succeed? If Gates had not come from Bermuda, the Virginia settlers would have starved; if Gates had not saved the colony from burning, the palisade could not have been reoccupied; if Jamestown had been abandoned much longer, the Powhatans would have destroyed it; if Gates had left sooner, his fleet would not have met Delaware; if Delaware had not brought ample supplies, his arrival would not have made a decisive difference. This was the hand of God at work, the Virginia Company said, and the preservation of the castaways on Bermuda was final proof that God wanted the English to succeed in the New World.

In crafting their publicity campaign, the Virginia Company made use of the positive elements of Strachey’s unexpected report. His vivid prose was a great help in crafting their publication, and the company wanted more. The organization’s secretary and friend of Strachey’s, Richard Martin, was enlisted to write him and ask for additional writings. The
Hercules
carried a letter from Martin to Strachey, complimenting his literary efforts and requesting a new report. Strachey may have sent back an additional description of the country when the
Hercules
returned to England in a few weeks’ time, but more likely he sent nothing immediately and the request by Martin spurred him to begin work on his comprehensive history of Virginia. Strachey was now convinced that he would realize his opportunity for literary success. At long last he had wealthy and well-placed patrons asking him to write something that would have a lasting impact on the literature of the age. He did not intend to let the chance slip by.

The most important news arriving with the
Hercules
was that it was part of a new supply fleet. The ship had separated from two companion vessels on the way over, but others were expected soon in the Chesapeake. The convoy was under the leadership of Sir Thomas Dale, a career soldier with twenty-three years’ military service. Dale had distinguished himself against Celtic forces in Ireland and the Spanish in the Netherlands, rising from common soldier to knight. While serving in the field with Gates in both conflicts, Dale had used strict discipline, in sharp contrast to Gates’s preference for compromise. The Virginia Company had given Dale the rank of marshal and placed him in charge of the colony’s military activities. He had departed with three ships carrying cattle, armor, and three hundred settlers, including sixty women. While Dale was assigned to oversee military activities only, in the unexpected absence of Delaware he would become the highest-ranking official in the colony and take over as acting governor. The marshal would prove to be a strict leader.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I fear a madness held me.

—Alonso,
The Tempest

 

 

 

T
he sails of the remaining two ships of Thomas Dale’s fleet appeared on the horizon off Point Comfort in May 1611. The Virginia Company’s primary order to Dale was to expand the settlement beyond Jamestown and Point Comfort. The two abandoned forts at Kecoughtan, now named Fort Henry and Fort Charles, were to be reoccupied and planted with corn. The settlement at Jamestown was to become a fully functioning village. Once those goals were accomplished, Dale was to reoccupy and develop the upriver site where Delaware had spent the winter. The new leader’s efforts were to be spent strengthening the colony rather than seeking silver.

“The twelfth of May we seized our bay,” Dale reported, “and the same night with a favorable southeast gale (all praise be to God for it) we came to an anchor before Algernon Fort at Point Comfort, where to our no small comfort again we discovered the
Hercules
even then preparing to take the advantage of the present tide to set sail for England.” The
Hercules
had exchanged its cargo of settlers for one of fish and was set to return home. Percy was at the fort to see the ship off, and the veteran colonist greeted Dale with the news that Delaware had left Virginia a month earlier and Dale would consequently be in charge of the entire colony rather than just its military activities.

Given the rapid advance of the growing season, the marshal immediately took his ships to Kecoughtan instead of going upriver to Jamestown. There he found that the English encampment remained vacant. Housing and corn were his priorities, so he wasted no time in establishing both at Kecoughtan. Dale ordered carpenters to restore the cabins at the site, and put the rest of the colonists in his ships to work planting the fields around the destroyed Powhatan village. After a week, he left a contingent of settlers at Kecoughtan to tend the fields and moved on to Jamestown.

Arriving at the Jamestown palisade on Sunday, May 19, Dale found the residents living an undisciplined existence. As colonist Ralph Hamor sarcastically put it, the people were found to be going about “their daily and usual works—bowling in the streets.” The lack of crops in the ground and the perceived lack of effort angered Dale, who vented his frustration on Christopher Newport. The former captain of the
Sea Venture
had returned to Virginia with him, apparently after supporting the contention of Virginia Company treasurer Thomas Smith that the colony was adequately provisioned. “Sir Thomas Dale, at his arrival finding himself deluded by the aforesaid protestations,” a witness said, “pulled Captain Newport by the beard, and threatening to hang him, for that he affirmed Sir Thomas Smith’s relation to be true, demanding of him whether it were meant that the people here in Virginia should feed upon trees.”

Dale immediately set the colonists to work restoring the settlement. William Strachey was always quick to show loyalty to a strong leader, and he was careful to avoid being among those who were subjected to Dale’s wrath. The new acting governor would retain Strachey as secretary of the colony, and one of their first joint projects was an expansion of the laws first imposed by Gates. Strachey spent hours with Dale as the marshal dictated dozens of new civil and military regulations. By the time they were posted on June 22, the original list of twenty-one civil laws had been expanded to thirty-seven, and fifty-one military commandments had been laid out as well. Few colonists were happy with the new rules. “Sir Thomas Dale immediately upon his arrival,” one resident said, “to add to that extremity of misery under which the colony from her infancy groaned, made and published most cruel and tyrannous laws, exceeding the strictest rules of marshal discipline.”

Dale’s civil laws were much like those imposed by Gates. Anyone killing a domestic animal without permission would be punished by the branding of a hand and the loss of both ears. Despite the threat of attack, settlers were told to go at least a quarter of a mile from the fort “to do the necessities of nature, since by these unmanly, slothful, and loathsome immodesties, the whole fort may be choked and poisoned with ill airs.” Colonists were to keep their houses clean, with the beds at least three feet off the ground to escape contagious vapors. Some of the laws were directed at women—any laundress who stole clothes or surreptitiously replaced new articles with worn ones, for example, was to “be whipped for the same and lie in prison till she make restitution of such linen.” Beyond the civil laws, a new section of military decrees applied only to the male colonists when they were acting as soldiers. If they transgressed while on duty they might be whipped, held in irons, forced to ask forgiveness on their knees, run a gauntlet of pikes, lose a hand, or be executed by their own weapons. Soldiers were subjected to a strict code of honor and were not to “outrage or injure anyone without a cause, in deed or in words, privately behind his back like a sly coward or openly to his face like an arrogant ruffian.”

A bond formed between Strachey and Dale as they drafted the expanded laws. The new leader of the colony found a loyal lieutenant in the secretary, and would trust him thereafter with personal projects. After living for a short period under the unsure leadership of George Percy, Strachey admired Dale’s imposition of fierce discipline on what the secretary had always seen as an unbridled rabble. Strachey would stay close to the acting governor’s side for the remainder of his time in Jamestown.

Dale and his council of advisers developed a list of construction projects to restore Jamestown. They made plans to repair the church and storehouse and to construct a stable, barn, armory, powder house, fish-drying shack, wharf, forge, second well, and additional blockhouse. First on the agenda were the church, stable, and wharf. As work commenced on those, it became clear to colonist Ralph Hamor that Dale would be “severe and strict” in his rule and expect each of his orders “with all severity and extremity to be executed.”

 

In addition to reinvigorating Jamestown, Dale wanted to expand the colony to a new site. To that end, in early summer he undertook a scouting expedition with a hundred colonists, including Strachey. First Dale planned to explore the Nansemond River, a tributary of the James that branched off downriver from Jamestown. He would then return past the colony and go upriver to inspect the rude fort Delaware had built there. Machumps would serve as a guide. The Powhatan traveler had returned to Virginia with the
Sea Venture
castaways, apparently telling Wahunsenacawh that Namontack had stayed behind in England. The colonists continued to suspect him of foul play in Namontack’s disappearance in Bermuda but continued to use him as a guide and interpreter. Machumps, Strachey said, “comes to and fro amongst us as he dares and as Powhatan gives him leave.” When in Jamestown he would occasionally dine with the leaders of the colony. “Before their dinners and suppers the better sort will do a kind of sacrifice, taking the first bit and casting it in the fire and to it repeat certain words,” Strachey wrote. “I have heard Machumps at Sir Thomas Dale’s table once or twice (upon our request) repeat the said grace, as it were, howbeit I forgot to take it from him in writing.”

On one of his extended visits to Jamestown, Machumps told a story that the colonists wanted to believe. At an inland village, he said, “the people have houses built with stone walls and one story above another, so taught them by those English who escaped the slaughter at Roanoke.” The fate of the 1587 colony located down the coast at Roanoke had been of intense interest to the English since a supply ship found the site deserted in 1590. Machumps claimed that the colony was overrun and the attackers “preserved seven of the English alive—four men, two boys, and one young maid (who escaped and fled up the river of Chanoke).” Though the colonists would search as best they could and inquire at parlays, no further evidence of the seven captives has ever been discovered.