A Brave Vessel: The True Tale of the Castaways Who Rescued Jamestown and Inspired Shakespeare'sThe Tempest (6 page)

It was June 8, 1609, and the
Sea Venture
was departing for the New World. The men, women, and children aboard watched the sails set on the companion ships and the bluffs of the Falmouth coast recede to a line on the horizon. As the English coastline fell away, many on board surely felt the weight of the decision to go. The passengers did indeed say many prayers as the land of their birth was lost to view. Those on shore also appealed to heaven for a safe voyage. An official of the Virginia Company wrote in his diary as the ships departed: “God bless them and guide them to His glory and our good.”

 

For seven weeks the ships of the Jamestown fleet sailed in convoy. Strachey reported that the vessels “kept in friendly consort together, not a whole watch at any time losing the sight each of other.” The fleet would not be quite as large as expected, however, as the pinnace
Virginia
proved out of condition for a transatlantic crossing. The vessel that had joined the fleet at Plymouth turned around after a week at sea. Eight craft would sail on to Jamestown.

One family was especially glad that the ships stayed within sight of each other. Gentleman William Pierce was traveling to Virginia on the
Sea Venture
, while his wife Joan and their ten-year-old daughter of the same name were making the voyage on the
Blessing
. The reason for the separation is not known, but perhaps only one space was available on the
Sea Venture
and William and Joan thought it important that he make connections with the leaders who would ride on the flagship. William took to hailing his wife and child when the
Blessing
rode close enough to see the people on deck.

The rhythms of shipboard life were soon adopted by all aboard. When mariners traditionally came off watch to the mess on such a voyage, John Smith said, the cook gave them “a quarter can of beer and a basket of bread to stay their stomachs till the kettle be boiled, that they may first go to prayer, then to supper.” Meals consisted of “a dish of buttered rice with a little cinnamon, ginger, and sugar, a little minced meat, or roast beef, a few stewed prunes, a race of green ginger, a flapjack, a can of fresh water brewed with a little cinnamon, ginger, and sugar.” For a main course the cook might prepare “a little poor John—or salt fish—with oil and mustard, or biscuit, butter, cheese, or oatmeal pottage on fish days; or, on flesh days, salt beef, pork, and peas with six shillings beer.”

If the ships were becalmed at any point during such a voyage, Smith reported, “the men leap overboard to swim.” Voyagers like Stephen Hopkins were the ones most likely to take to the water. Gentlemen were less apt to partake in a cool dip, but they might watch from the gallery balcony at the stern. A resort to the gallery would have provided an opportunity for William Strachey or John Rolfe to smoke tobacco in clay pipes with tiny bowls—a small amount was used because tobacco was an expensive commodity in 1609.

For the few passengers who preferred the ship’s toilets to chamber pots, the onboard facilities were simply holes in the “head” deck that projected from the bow of the ship. The passengers accepted such things without complaint during the first days of the voyage. As time went on, the concessions in everyday living—certain to become even more pronounced in the forests of Virginia—began to seem more radical than they did when they first went to sea. The fresh breezes on the open deck, however, made up for some of the compromises. As the weather warmed with the fleet’s progress south it was at times downright pleasant to sit on deck and watch the other ships sail alongside.

The convoy made good progress during June and July. Colonist George Percy, then in Jamestown, would report that the fleet heading in his direction encountered “prosperous winds” during the first weeks at sea. Those winds and the Portugal Current pushed the convoy at an average speed of 3.3 knots (3.8 mph), for an average daily distance of 70 nautical miles (80.5 statute miles). The speed of the ships was measured using a line with a wooden float at the end, called a “chip log,” that was thrown into the sea from the stern balcony. The log line was allowed to play out until the sand finished falling through an hourglass (or in this case a half-minute glass), at which point the “knots” in the played-out line were measured.

As the Jamestown ships neared the latitude of the Canary Islands after two weeks on the water, they paused and the officers of the fleet came over to the
Sea Venture
in skiffs to plot the course they would take across the Atlantic. The route they chose would initially trace the traditional one, through the tropics at twenty-four degrees latitude. That would put them in tropical climes, but it was a latitude reliably within the westbound circulation at the bottom of the Atlantic’s vast clockwise wheel of trade winds. Once across the mid-Atlantic, however, the fleet would veer from the traditional passage. Instead of threading through the Caribbean, the vessels would turn north and traverse open water to Virginia. Company officials recommended such a route to avoid the Spanish waters of the Caribbean.

During the meeting on the
Sea Venture
, the officers of the Gates fleet selected a place at which the ships would rendezvous if they became separated. The decision was made to reunite at Barbuda in the Caribbean. Sir Walter Raleigh had sighted the island twelve years earlier and no other European power claimed it, making it a relatively safe place for a fleet of English vessels to meet in case of trouble. Barbuda’s location on the eastern fringe of the Caribbean chain meant ships going to it would be unlikely to encounter vessels of other European powers.

When the consultation on the
Sea Venture
was complete the officers returned to their ships and the fleet resumed the voyage. “We ran a southerly course for the Tropic of Cancer, where, having the sun within six or seven degrees right over our head in July, we bore away west,” Gabriel Archer wrote. The ships now began what Archer described as “tracing through the Torrid Zone.” The sailors strung sails as awnings to keep the sunshine from the pallid skin of the English passengers. An awning was essential for a ship passing through the tropics, according to a contemporary sailor’s manual. “In all hot voyages this is of infinite use, both to keep men from the sun by day and the dews by night, which in some places are wonderful infectious.” The tropics proved infectious, indeed, for the ships of the Jamestown fleet. Calenture or heatstroke killed thirty-two people on two of the ships, Archer wrote. There was a report of plague on the
Diamond
, he said, “but in the
Blessing
we had not any sick, albeit we had twenty women and children.” Children in another vessel were not so lucky: “In the
Unity
were born two children at sea, but both died, being both boys.” No disease broke out on the
Sea Venture
, but watching the splashes of bodies buried at sea from the other ships was a somber reminder that a combination of London plague and hot sun could be lethal.

In late July, after two months at sea and a week to go until landfall in Virginia, the voyage had proved to be a relatively easy one. The exotic nature of the New World had become clear as the temperate world of England gave way to blistering days and sweltering nights in the tropics. The weather had turned cooler, though, as the ships turned north before reaching the West Indies. The calm voyage muted any second-guessing among the passengers. In any case, there was no point in questioning the decision to leave home. As everyone in the fleet knew, there was no turning back now.

CHAPTER FOUR

Ride on the curled clouds.

—Ariel,
The Tempest

 

 

 

T
he end of the serene sail of the
Sea Venture
came on the evening of Monday, July 24. A week from Jamestown in open water between the Caribbean and Bermuda, inky clouds and rising wind had the sailors working through the night to tie down everything on the ship in preparation for a storm. Canvas covers were lashed over wooden grates that provided ventilation to the gun deck. The guns were rolled back and tied in place and the gun ports closed, and the passengers secured their personal belongings. After a sleepless night on the ships of the Gates fleet, the morning of St. James Day, July 25, dawned with a frightful prospect.

Charcoal clouds overtook the ship, the winds rose sharply, and rain began to fall. Despite the worsening conditions, George Somers stationed himself outside on the high poop deck at the stern of the
Sea Venture
. There he shouted directions through a grate to the helmsman at the whipstaff below on the enclosed steerage deck—Jacobean ships were steered by a vertical staff rather than a wheel. Somers could tell this was no ordinary gale. The fleet was facing a kind of storm that few English mariners had seen but many had heard about since Europeans began crossing the Atlantic—a
hurricano
of the West Indies.

The storm that overtook the
Sea Venture
was born of winds off Africa in the tropical waters of the Equator. Gathering strength, it followed the trade winds (and the
Sea Venture
) across the Atlantic toward the Caribbean, veering north before encountering the West Indian island chain. The ship and the hurricane both turned north, but the
Sea Venture
was closer to the coast when it did so. They then followed converging tracks and met in open water halfway between the Caribbean and Bermuda. The circular storm caught the flagship with the counterclockwise winds of its northwestern edge, placing the ship at the ten o’clock position if the storm were a giant clock face. Thus, as William Strachey reported, the
Sea Venture
initially encountered northeast winds.

“A dreadful storm, and hideous, began to blow from out the northeast,” Strachey said, “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 a hell of darkness turned black upon us.” Within an hour the fleet was scattered and each vessel was on its own. The
Diamond
, the
Falcon
, the
Blessing
, the
Unity
, the
Lion
, and the
Swallow
disappeared from the view of the
Sea Venture
watch. George Somers and his crew were now in a desperate struggle for the safety of all on board.

The ketch under the command of Michael Philes that was being towed by the flagship would sail on its own as well. The conditions were too dangerous for the tiny vessel and the much larger
Sea Venture
to remain tied together within striking distance of each other, and in the rough seas there was no way to transfer the people from the ketch to the ship. After signaling their intention with flags, the crewmen of the flagship cast off the towropes, and Philes and his complement of about thirty people were left to the mercy of the waves. There was a last look at the faces of the sailors on the bobbing ketch as they disappeared into the sheets of rain—never to be heard from again.

 

A sea storm of any kind, much less a hurricane, was a dreadful new experience for most of the colonists. Within an hour or two all the passengers on the
Sea Venture
feared they would die. Strachey, for one, could think of nothing but his own mortality. “It works upon the whole frame of the body and most loathsomely affects all the powers thereof,” he wrote, “and the manner of the sickness it lays upon the body, being so insufferable, gives not the mind any free and quiet time to use her judgment and empire.”

The gun deck where Strachey and the other passengers braced themselves was stifling, and the increasingly steep movements of the ship were alarming. Servant Elizabeth Persons huddled on her straw mattress as the ship pitched with a nauseating rhythm. Resorting to the rail when seasickness arose was impossible, and so chamber pots were used. Many of those then spilled with the pitching of the ship. The sleeping area with its hatches battened to keep the storm waters out quickly became a foul place. Elizabeth put her face down into her mattress, closed her eyes, and waited for the ordeal to end.

A typical Atlantic hurricane produces a trillion gallons of rain each day, and the hurricane of July 1609 was no exception. “The sea swelled above the clouds and gave battle unto heaven,” Strachey said. “It could not be said to rain, the waters like whole rivers did flood the air.” In Strachey’s mind the winds and the waves became angry giants. “The glut of water (as if throttling the wind ere while) was no sooner a little emptied and qualified, but instantly the winds (as having gotten their mouths now free and at liberty) spoke more loud and grew more tumultuous and malignant. What shall I say? Winds and seas were as mad as fury and rage could make them.”

Taking the flagship through a hurricane would test the mettle of George Somers. The admiral was faced with an immediate choice between the two options available to Jacobean mariners in heavy weather. The first was to run with the wind and “spoon afore,” or keep the ship headed in the direction of the wind with little or no sail (later called “scudding”). This would put the vessel under the least stress, but steering would be difficult and the
Sea Venture
might be overwhelmed and sunk by a large wave breaking over the stern. The second option was to “weather coil,” or turn the vessel around and let the waves hit the bow. The wind would then push the high stern structure as if it was a sail and the ship would ride backward.

Somers chose to spoon afore and ride the giant swells of the hurricane. To make use of the winds out of the northeast, he turned the ship and pointed it to the southwest toward the Caribbean. The waves would approach from behind and push the ship forward as they passed underneath. If Somers sensed that the ship was at all weak, this was the safest option, but it was labor-intensive and any lapse in steering would likely mean doom. A series of helmsmen would take turns wrestling the whipstaff to positions called by the admiral. Silvester Jourdain, a passenger on the
Sea Venture
, recalled, “Sir George Somers sitting upon the poop of the ship (where he sat three days and three nights together, without meal’s meat and little or no sleep) conning the ship to keep her as upright as he could (for otherwise she must needs instantly have foundered).”