On July 28, a violent storm arose which separated the _Sea Venture_
from the rest of the fleet. This "dreadful tempest" was the tail of a
West Indies hurricane and lasted four days and nights. An account of
it written in 1610, by William Strachey, secretary to Lord De La Warr,
and a passenger on the ship, is said to be one of the finest
descriptions of a storm in all literature, and led to the writing of
_The Tempest_ by Shakespeare. The letter was written to a person
unknown, addressed as "Excellent Lady." Some excerpts are given
herewith.
When on S. James his day, July 24, being Monday ... the clouds
gathering thicke upon us and the wind 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 north-east, which swelling, and roaring, as it were
by fitts, some hours with more violence than others, at length
beat all light from heaven, which like a hell of darkness turned
black upon us, so much the more fuller of horror, as in such cases
horror and fear use to overrunne the troubled, and overmastered
sences of all, which, taken up with amazement, the eares lay so
sensible to the terrible cries, and murmurs of the winds, and
distractions of our company.... For foure and twenty houres the
storme in a restless tumult, had blown so exceedingly, as we could
not apprehend in our imaginations any possibility of greater
violence, yet did wee 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
feares ... as made us look one upon the other with troubled hearts
and panting bosoms; our clamours drowned in the windes, and the
windes 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.... The
sea swelled above the clouds, and gave battell unto Heaven. It
could not be said to raine, the waters like whole rivers did flood
in the ayre.... The winds spake 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.... There was not a moment in which
the sudden splitting or instant oversetting of the ship was not
expected. Howbeit this was not all; it pleased God to bring a
greater affliction yet upon us; for in the beginning of the storm,
we had received likewise a mighty leake. And the ship in every
joint almost, having spued out her okam, before we were aware ...
was growne five foote suddenly deep with water above her ballast,
and we almost drowned within, whilst we sat looking when to perish
from above. This imparting no less terror than danger ran through
the whole ship with much fright and amazement, startled and turned
the blood and took down the braves of the most hardy mariner of
them all.... The leake which drunk in our greatest seas, and took
in our destruction fastest could not then be found nor ever was by
any labour, counsell or search.... Every man came duely upon his
watch ... working with tyred bodies and wasted spirits three days
and foure nights destitute of outward comfort, and desperate of
any deliverance.... During all this time the Heavens looked so
black upon us that it was not possible the elevation of the pole
might be observed; nor a starre by night, not a sun beame by day
was to be seene. Onely upon Thursday night, Sir George Somers
being upon the watch, had an apparition of a little round light
like a faint starre, trembling and streaming along with a
sparkeling blaze, halfe the height upon the main mast, and
shooting sometimes from shroud to shroud, tempting to settle as it
were, upon any of the foure shroudes ... half the night it kept
with us; running sometimes along the main yard to the very end,
and then returning. At which, Sir George Somers called divers
about him, and showed them the same.... It did not light us any
whit the more to our known way, who ran now as hoodwinked men, at
all adventures, sometimes north and north-east, then north and by
west, and in an instant varying two or three points, and sometimes
half the compass.... It being now Friday, the fourth morning, it
wanted little, but that there had been a general determination to
have shut up hatches, and commending our sinfull soules to God,
committed the ship to the mercy of the sea. Surely, that night we
must have done it, and that night had we then perished: but see
the goodnesse and sweet introduction of better hope, by our
merciful God given unto us. Sir George Somers, when no man dreamed
of such happiness, had discovered and cried land!
The storm drove the ship toward the dangerous and dreaded islands of
Bermuda. Nearing the shore, the ship was caught between rocks as in a
vise and held there while all the one hundred and fifty persons
reached the shore in safety. As soon as they were conveniently
settled, after the landing, the long boat was fitted up in the fashion
of a pinnace with a little deck made of the hatches of the wrecked
ship, so close that no water could enter, and with a crew of six
sailors, using sails and oars, Thomas Whittingham, the cape merchant,
and Henry Ravens, the master's mate, as pilot, the boat sailed for
Virginia. It was hoped, when news reached Jamestown of the safe
landing of the passengers from the wrecked _Sea Venture_ on Bermuda,
that a ship or pinnace from the fleet in Virginia would be sent to
take them home, but the long boat was never heard from again.