The Sea Venture
The Virginia Company's third resupply mission to Jamestown
departed from Plymouth, England on June 2, 1609. It was bringing a new
governor, Sir Thomas Gates, to the struggling colony, as well as more than 500
new settlers, traveling in 7 ships. Stephen was on the flagship, the Sea
Venture, along with Gates, as well as the fleet's Admiral, Sir George Somers,
and several notables and investors in the Jamestown venture, including William
Strachey, an aristocrat and writer with many friends among London's poets and
playwrights, and a businessman named John Rolfe, who was traveling with his
pregnant wife. All told, the ship carried 140 men, ten women and one dog. The Sea
Venture was also towing a pinnace - a smaller rigged ship that probably carried
cannons and could be used in the New World as a merchant ship or warship.
For six weeks, the voyage went spectacularly well, with
favorable winds, good weather, and all the fleet's ships able to stay within
sight of each other. Excitement was rising as the voyagers looked forward to
reaching Jamestown within the next week. But then on St. James Day, towards the
end of July, Stephen's fortune changed.
On Sunday night, clouds gathered and the winds picked up. A
storm rose quickly from the northeast until, by Monday morning, the wind
was singing and whistling with a ferocity unnerving even to the ship's
experienced sailors. The crew decided to cast off the pinnace so that it would
not collide with and damage the Sea Venture. No longer could the fleet keep the
other ships in sight and all were left to ride out the storm on their own.
Before long, the ocean was swelling and roaring, the wind
howling, but it seemed to build in fits, some hours more violent than others. Just
when it seemed that the storm surely must have spent itself, it would instead shriek back with
even more energy and fury.
Few ships had ever sailed in these waters. Many people still
believed that sailing west would lead not to Virginia but to falling off the
ends of the earth. Sailors had experienced storms at sea, but this was
something more ferocious entirely. Never in their wildest dreams had the Sea
Venture's passengers imagined a hurricane. And certainly not a hurricane in the
midst of the Bermuda Triangle.
The day turned dark as night. Rain blew so furiously that it
was more like rivers flooding down from the sky. The sea was heaving and
crashing and it took 8 men in the steering room to try to control the whipstaff
- the steering mechanism used before the steering wheel was invented. It was nearly
impossible to steer the ship in any direction.
Even in the early 1600s, sailing ships were constructed
strongly enough to withstand a storm. But the Sea Venture was newly built and
on her maiden voyage. The oakum - tarred fibers - used for caulking the ship's
seams had not yet had enough time to entirely cure. Not even a day into the
storm, the sailors were horrified to realize that the gale’s pounding and
shaking was causing the ship to "spew its oakum." Water was leaking
in through the seams. The ship was sinking in the midst of the hurricane.
Already, the ballast below deck was five feet underwater. Not only were the
passengers and crew threatened with drowning above decks, but now they were
just as likely to drown below decks as well.
This called for desperate measures. Immediately, everyone
grabbed candles and began creeping along the ship's ribs inside, looking and
listening for leaks. They found and patched many, including one in the gunner's
room that they filled with strips of beef, but could not find the main leak. They
would have to bail the ship, hoping they could keep ahead of its sinking.
The ship had at least three hand-operated pumps so the men
set to working them. But the ship continued sinking faster than it could be pumped
out. Even worse, the water inundated the ten thousand pounds of hard-tack stored
in the larder, causing the pumps to continually clog with soggy biscuits. By
the second day, most of the ship's supply of food and drink was underwater and
the passengers and crew were forced to go mostly without food or fresh water from
that point on.
By Tuesday, with the Sea Venture still sinking, the governor
divided the men and boys into three groups and sent them to different parts of
the ship, instructing them to bail with whatever they could find - pails, six-gallon
buckets, kettles, or anything else available. Everyone was to bail or man the
pumps for an hour, rest for an hour, then go back to bailing, with no let-up.
Their soaked clothes were soon such a hindrance that most of the men just
stripped naked and kept on frantically bailing.
But the hurricane kept thrashing. Monstrous waves rose high
and broke over the decks, racing into all the hatches and filling the ship
again. The helmsman, desperately trying to control the whipstaff, was smashed
from one side of the ship to the other and nearly killed. The men kept bailing,
one hour on, one hour off, then back to bailing, all day, all night. The days were
so black there was no telling when Tuesday turned into Wednesday or Wednesday
into Thursday.
And then, on Thursday night, in the midst of the storm's continuing
fury, some of the men saw a wondrous yet frightening vision. It looked like a
small bright blue ball of light, like sparks or a flare that shot from sail to
sail, shifting and whirling for half the night. Mariners had seen this on
occasion before and called the spectral flickers created by a huge storm's
electrical field "St. Elmo's Fire." When there were two flares at the
same time, sailors often felt heartened, considering them guardian spirits.
However, when there was only one, as now, they regarded it as a very bad omen.
But the Sea Venture's crew and passengers already knew they
were doomed and in a losing battle. Despite days of nonstop bailing of hundreds
of tons of water, they were exhausted, starving, and still sinking. They began
dumping everything overboard in a desperate attempt to lighten the ship - chests,
trunks, luggage, cannons, rigging, anything they could find.
As Thursday turned into Friday, they began to give up. They
decided that if there were no improvement by nightfall, they would all shut
themselves below decks, give their souls to God, and let the ship sink to the
bottom of the ocean. Some broke out the last remaining drink on the ship and
toasted one another, fully expecting that the next time they met would be in
Heaven. After nearly five days of heroic efforts, they began to prepare for the
end.
It was then, on Friday afternoon, that the hurricane
relented slightly. Suddenly Admiral Somers screamed, "Land!" What
land, they had no idea, but what a miracle! There might be hope!
Except that they had no way to get to shore. Normally, a
sailing ship of the Sea Venture's size and depth would anchor in deep water
offshore and the crew and passengers would row in to shore using the ship's
longboat, an open boat rowed by oarsmen that was built to withstand the steep
waves and pounding surf at land's edge. But the Sea Venture could not anchor;
it was still sinking and, without the constant bailing, would go very fast.
The decision was made to bear full speed ahead and attempt
to run the ship aground on the surrounding reef. The ship would wreck, but then
the crew and passengers could either row the small boats from there to land or,
if the ship split open or capsized, they would likely drown, since few could
swim, even the sailing crew.
So the crew aimed for two large rocks about half a mile
offshore and, to their astonishment, managed to ram the ship between them. With
the ship now wedged in securely, the rest of the afternoon and evening afforded
time to ferry back and forth, back and forth, until at last all the passengers,
crew, and the remaining usable cargo and some livestock were brought to land.
After the long nightmare and the certainty that they would drown, all were saved,
including the dog. Not one person was lost.
Imagine the amazement and gratitude they must have felt! But
where were they? Relief soon turned to horror as they began to realize they had
been blown far off course and become shipwrecked on the most feared island in
the world. This was the Isle of Devils, believed to be haunted and enchanted,
in the mysterious uncharted area of the ocean known as the Devil's Triangle.
Coming up: Part 3, Survival on the Isle of Devils
*************************
Sources:
William Strachey, Wreck
and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, Knight, 1610
Caleb Johnson, Here
Shall I Die Ashore, 2007
Wikipedia
Ted and Chuck Lochner
