May 19, 2010 • 21 mins
When a relief mission left Plymouth in 1609 to assist the troubled colony of Jamestown, an intense storm separated one vessel from the rest of the fleet. Learn how this shipwreck may have saved Jamestown -- and inspired Shakespeare -- in this podcast.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm fair Dowdy. And after we
recorded our episode on Pocaconta's Last Fall, listeners like Katrina
(00:22):
and Ron wanted to hear more on one point in particular,
and that was the shipwreck that stalled John Rolfe's arrival
in Jamestown. Yeah, and the shipwreck in itself is a
pretty amazing story. We've got St Elmo's fire and wild
hogs and even the devil um. But it's also a
make or break moment in early American history because the
(00:45):
passengers survived the wreck and they saved Jamestown. And because
they saved Jamestown and send back all these amazing New
World stories of their own, they boost English support for
American colonization. So it's a really good story, so good
in fact, that Shakespeare wrote about it in The Tempest.
(01:05):
So our wrecked ship was bound for Jamestown. So we're
gonna give you a little rundown and start there. Start
with the Virginia Company. So Jamestown was supposed to be
a money making operation for for the Virginia Company. Obviously,
if you're going to invest in something, you wanted to
have a return. And so in sixteen o seven they
sent folks. They're hoping to set up industries like silk manufacturer,
(01:27):
pitch and tar, soap, ashes, glassmaking, lumber, sassafrass. Really anything
would do. Maybe they'd even find some gold. They just
wanted to get some money out of it. But of
course that doesn't happen. And in sixteen o nine, according
to Sarah's outline, Jamestown is terrible, but it's true. It's
built on this marshy land. There's lots of mosquitoes, no
(01:49):
fresh water because the James River is only potable for
part of the year. All of their crops are failing,
and the settlers are warring with the Native Americans and
with each other. So they have an investment of not
only money, but people too. I mean, you can't just
abandon the people you've sent to live in the New World.
So the Virginia Company pours all it has into the
(02:11):
third Supply Relief Mission, and that's going to be a
nine ship fleet headed up by the two forty ton
merchant ship, the Sea Venture, and it's going to have
six hundred new settlers to go and revitalize Jamestown and
a ton of supplies, and also really good leadership and
big names on board. Yeah, and that's important because part
(02:32):
of Jamestown's problems were coming from their their poor leadership
and all their in fighting. So we're going to have
Admiral Sir George Summers, who was a war hero. He's
actually coming out of retirement for this very mission. Captain
Christopher Newport, who's on his fourth voyage to the New World,
which pretty impressive. I mean, this is sixteen o nine.
(02:52):
The first one was sixteen o seven, so very impressive.
And Sir Thomas Gates, who's going to be the governor
and actually has a decree from King James himself seating
the crowns authority to the Virginia Company, which is, uh,
it's kind of a stretch, but that's a little quasi independence.
They're back in sixteen o nine. So this relief mission
(03:15):
leaves Plymouth Harbor on June two, sixteen o nine, and
thinks go well for most of the journey. They're almost
there when something terrible happens, and the night before St
James Day, Monday, July a terrible storm hits this ship,
and the sea venture is separated from the others in
the fleet, and the survivor William Strikey later writes, a
(03:39):
dreadful storm and hideous gant a blow from out the northeast, which,
swelling and roaring, as it were, by fits some hours
with more violence than others. At length diould be all
light from heaven, which like an hell of darkness, turned
black upon us. So a scary scene here. Imagine being
out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on your
(04:00):
um seventeenth century ship, and the ship is beaten by
the storms. Streaky says again, 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. And then these ships starts to
break apart and take on water. The water is already
(04:20):
five ft above the ballast, so they're sinking. So the
crew rushes about with candles to try to plug all
of the leaks, and they plug the leaks with anything
they can find. His account even mentions them using slabs
of beef um. But they can't find that leak that's
sinking the ship, and it's still filling up. So the
governor organizes all of the men on the ship into
(04:42):
three companies to bail water and shifts at three different points.
So imagine um three groups working around the clock in
hour long shifts, just bailing water and manning the pumps,
and even the great men on the ship, like the admiral,
like the governor, take their hour long turns. And remember
they started this on Monday, and by Thursday this is
(05:05):
still going on, so it can't go on much longer.
But the watch spots st. Elmo's Fire, which was named
by Mediterranean sailors and was considered a sign of salvation
because it usually comes at the end of the storm.
But the sea venture, you know, they're not saved yet.
By Friday morning, they're still sinking. They've been bailing water
for days now, and they're getting completely exhausted, and it's
(05:29):
clear that they won't make it through another night, and
as Striky said, they'll have to commit the ship to
the mercy of the sea. But then just miraculously, George
Summers spots land and the land is close enough that
he can even see the trees swaying in the wind.
But they're still not safe. The seafloor is rising so
(05:49):
quickly underneath them that it's possible their ship is going
to break up. You know, their rickety old ship will
break before they can get close enough to the land.
So Summers does some very impressive Blackbeard style maneuvering and
manages to steer hard and wedge the ship between two
rocks about three quarters of a mile off the island,
and all one hundred fifty aboard, including the dog, make
(06:13):
it ashore on longboats by nightfall. So great, right, you
know they're they've been saved. They made it through the tempest.
They're on land. Not so fests, no, because they're actually
in hell. They realize, like they really think they're in Hell.
They're on the Devil's Islands, which kind of reminds me
of Lost Everybody sorry. And the Devil's Islands were discovered
(06:36):
by Wanda Bermudas a century before, and they were named
for the devil screams that the Spanish heard there. Um Fortunately,
though it's not Hell, they realized pretty quickly that the
Devil's screams are really just some bird squawking, some delicious birds,
as they soon discover, and they like eating their eggs
as well their Bermuda patrols, but no natives or europe
(07:00):
Hands had lived on the island, but they find evidence
of Spanish influence. Someone has been there, including feral hogs
that probably escaped from capsized galleons. So they've got petrol,
pork and mulberries, cedar berries and the prickly pear um
from the land, and tons of fish and tortoises. So
(07:21):
again not really Hell yeah, Devil's Island turns out to
be a paradise and they build structures, including a church.
They thatch it with a palmetto roof, and maybe this
is this is probably a legend, but they are supposed
to have salvaged the ship's bell for their church, and
they have funerals there for John Rolf, who is aboard
(07:43):
his his wife dies, and their baby, who was born
on the island and named Bermuda, dies there um. They
also celebrate a wedding though some baptisms, and they get
to work building new ships. They're not going to just
kick back and enjoy this pork filled paradise that they've
landed on. They're gonna work on getting back to their mission, right,
(08:05):
So they salvage the rigging and iron bolts from their
wreck and they harvest cedar from the forests, as well
as barrels of wax from wrecked Spanish ships that they find,
and they use that to help culk thears and Bermuda
limestone acts as a ballast. There's only one shipwright, but
he helped build the thirty ton Patients and the eight
(08:27):
ton deliver and astute named ships, and the nobles and
the countrymen all work together on building these ships. Are
very democratic. Yeah, it's kind of this feel good story. UM,
at least at first glance. Admiral Summers is supposed to
have labored from morning until night as duly as any workman,
which has some fun kind of old timey spelling to that. UM.
(08:50):
But it's it's not a perfect paradise here. Some people
don't want to leave, um, and they refuse to help
build the ships. Others mutiny against the gold in her
because of course his contract isn't uh specifically allowing him
to govern Bermuda, it's for Jamestown in Virginia, um. And
then some people are coveting their their wealthier neighbors goods
(09:15):
that they managed to save from the ships. Somewhere right,
at least one man is executed, one or two were murdered,
and two were left behind because they were hiding from punishments.
But how bad would that be really? I mean, apparently
execution got caught and I guess, yeah, pork and petrol
if you didn't well. Anyways, by May tenth, ten months
(09:39):
after they landed, a hundred and forty two castaways leave
for Jamestown and they reached Chesspeake Bay after ten days
of sailing. And you'd think their shiftwreck survivors, they're coming
to Jamestown, they'd probably expect, you know, a decent settlement there.
They know it's not going to be amazing, but they'd
(09:59):
expect thing. Instead, they find a ghost town, ruined houses,
the gates are hanging off their hinges. No one is
in sight. They go into the church and ring the
bell and a few people trickle out of the fort.
It turns out that only sixty of the six hundred
settlers of Jamestown are left, right, because the winter of
sixteen o nine sixteen ten was starving time, and we're
(10:23):
arriving right after that. So let's tuck a little bit
about what was happening while our shipwrecked people were in Bermuda.
So the survivors of the fleet, you know, the rest
of the fleet was separated from the C Venture. The survivors,
who don't think, managed to struggle on through the tempest
to Jamestown and they got there the previous August, which
(10:44):
was later than they were supposed to get there, but
but not too much later. They come with a really
bad news that the C Venture was lost. Presumably everyone
on board is dead, when all of their leaders, all
their leaders, yeah, the governor of the admiral, and this
is devastating news for the colonists at Jamestown who are
(11:04):
who are counting on all the supplies and the leadership
and the new people coming in um from there, some
of the fleet returns to England and they carry on
this bad news. So it's it's also terrible stuff to
hear for the investors of the Virginia Company when some
of them stay in Jamestown but without again those strong
leaders and the democratic example of Gates, a lot of
(11:27):
them are simply too hoity toity to work, or they
go off looking for gold instead of you know, harvesting
crops or something helpful. Yeah, and other people in Jamestown
just become consumed by the internal politics of the city
and they waste all their time trying their former governor
gowner John Smith for all these crimes and sending and
(11:49):
packing for England instead of doing stuff like, you know,
finishing the harvest and storing it all up for winter,
when this isn't exactly a good time to be playing around,
because again, this is where Powaton is considering exterminating these
very mettlesome settlers, and we're in the middle of the
worst tidewater drought in eight hundred years, so there's absolutely
(12:12):
no room for air um and they're making every conceivable
air But obviously the winter doesn't go well. The people
are reduced to eating the start from their Elizabethan roffs
and bugs and horses, and eventually eating each other. And
the Sea Venture survivors find the Jamestown settlers much worse
(12:33):
off than they are themselves, and many of them are
too weak to stand there. Well has collapse that they
don't have fresh water anymore, and they're clearly on the
brink of death. But fortunately the Sea Venture rescue crew
has lots of that yemmy bermudan food that they found
deliverance from the Deliverance, and Gates is a very compelling leader,
(12:55):
but even he, after a few days, has come to
the realization that this isn't going to work. Jamestown is done.
They've got to get out of Jamestown. So they pack
up the two ships that were made in the in
Bermuda and on June seven, sixteen ten, everybody gets on
board head back to England, maybe by way of Newfoundland.
But the Jamestown people are so ashamed of their failure
(13:19):
of this. You know, it must be a horrible memory.
If you're cannibals the winter before, you're probably pretty upset by, um,
how things went. So let's set the city on fire.
They want to just erase it from history. Gate says, no,
you know, maybe somebody else will come here eventually and
it will be of use to them, and the group sales.
They're almost in open water when they run into an
(13:41):
English fleet that's coming to save them, which is if
this were Burke and Wills, I think they'd miss each
other probably and they wouldn't leave a note. But um, yeah,
the new fleet has provisions to re establish Jamestown. They
have new people, and they're saved. Although It's an important
note that if the James towners had had to rely
(14:02):
on this fleet's arrival, they would have been dead by this.
It was the Bermudan ships that saved them. So of
course this is a really fantastic story, and popular accounts
start to come out back in England. Sylvester Jordana wrote
Discovery of the Bermudas otherwise called Isle of Devils, which
(14:24):
may have been the first best seller about colonial America,
and William Strakey's account, which is the one we've been
quoting for, was even more candid and intense. It was
originally a letter, so you know, it's got lots of
juicy details in it. Um Sarah, do you wonder if
maybe the story would be good enough for a play?
(14:45):
It might be. I think it's pretty inspirational, so I'm
sure you know where we're going with this. It's right
to Shakespeare and the writing of the Tempest. Alden Vaughan,
a professor of history at Columbia, thinks that the Wreck
of the Sea venture was, unquestioned doubly an inspiration for
Shakespeare's writing of the Tempest, which is a romance about
a terrible storm, a shipwreck, and a mysterious island. Some
(15:08):
don't think though, that that's the case, that Shakespeare writing
about the New World was a quote fanciful conceit. But
I'm gonna go with yes. We're gonna lay down our
points at least for for why we think it's pretty viable.
So first, consider that North American exploration and settlement happened
(15:29):
concurrently with Shakespeare's writing career. The Tempest was written in
sixteen ten or sixteen eleven, which is the same year
the accounts were published in England. Point one and second,
Shakespeare definitely knew some of the Virginia Company investors, maybe
even Admiral Somers himself. William Strakey. Also, the guy who
(15:50):
who wrote one of the famous accounts was a poet
in London before going abroad, so uh, we're not sure
Shakespeare knew him, but they may have run in the
same circle. And uh. Our third point is in the language.
Look to the language as English Major Ship always looked
to the language, and the language used to describe the
(16:11):
storm in the play sometimes picks up directly from the
Streaky and Jordana accounts, although the action is different. I
think in the play the nobles Hamper rather than help
save the ship, and obviously Shakespeare drew from lots of
different sources. Um, the Tempest probably has bits of Avid's
metamorphosis and the I needed in it. And also in
(16:34):
the Tempest, the ship is leading from North Africa, so
there's a lot of Mediterranean scenes mixed in with the
Bermuda stuff. But it seems pretty clear that this huge
national event in sixteen ten, you know, the survival of
these lost men at sea, would would maybe have a
little influence on Shakespeare or a lot or a lot.
(16:57):
So The Tempest was first performed at Whitehall Palace November one,
sixteen eleven, for King James, and it's sometimes called Shakespeare's
American Play and it's believed to be his last. But
to sort of wrap this one up, we're gonna go
even broader than the Sea venture, being responsible for saving
(17:17):
james Town and maybe inspiring a great work of literature.
UM investors liked Bermuda. So when these accounts, yeah, I
know what, Katie and I both would like to vacation
in Bermuda now, Um. But when these accounts came back
to England, you know, Strachy and Jordan's um people realize
Bermuda not an isle of devils, actually a really nice place,
(17:40):
maybe a good place to invest some money in a
jewel in fact. Yeah, and it becomes the site of
the first English Parliament in the New World and a
really important, uh important stopping point on journeys to the
New World and important just for setting up other colonies.
The islands become test farms for foods to grow on
(18:02):
the mainland, and just some interesting little they cast money
that has a hog on one side and the Sea
Venture on the other, which is the first English currency
minted in the New World. And even today Bermuda's flag
has the image of a sinking ship on the motto
whichever way the fates should carry us. So this is
(18:26):
why of the story. Yeah, and of course the survivors
of the Cea Venture are also really important, and listeners
suggested that we record this story because of one of
the survivors. But we're gonna start with Gates, who is
very important for the survival of Jamestown, the long term
survival of it. He's a strict leader, but he's successful.
(18:47):
He builds this house of stone over the collapsed well.
So that's a really great image of Jamestown's revival when
he makes his own hearth from that Bermuda limestone ballast. Yeah,
and maybe at least partly because of him, and partly
because of the experience in Bermuda, people are a little
bit less concerned about class distinctions because they work together
(19:10):
to save the ship and to live together in Bermuda.
You know, you've got to think of that relatively, but
still it's something. And then we have our guy Rolf,
who doesn't just marry pocahonas he's more important than that.
He figured in Virginia's first big export. And hint, it's
not gold, it's tobacco. And seven years after Rolf's arrival,
(19:34):
Virginia's tobacco experts were at twenty thousand pounds. Twelve years
after that they were at one and a half million
pounds a year. So this is clearly the big point here.
Rolf figures out that you can grow um West Indies
varieties of tobacco in Virginia, which is the kind that
people back in Europe like, and they can make a
(19:55):
ton of money, and not only someone like Rolf, but
investors back in England. It's the real key to the
financial success of Virginia. So really a shipwreck led us
to a success story, and we would like to end
with a pretty cool quote that Sarah found, and this
is from Shakespeare's The Tempest. Now would I give a
(20:17):
thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground,
long heath, brown furs, anything the wills above be done?
But I would fain die a dry death. And since
we can't follow Shakespeare, we will go to listener mail
and let y'all do it instead. So this is real
(20:37):
mail from Hillary in Portland's She sent us a beautiful
postcard of the Bahamas Um and she's from the island,
so we thought we would we would pick up on
that beam for listener meal today. So she wrote that
she wanted to thank us for helping me step up
my Jeopardy game. Last night, I correctly guessed Lord Byron
for the final Jeopardy clue, and I owe my success
(20:58):
entirely to your podcast. He really does pop up everywhere. Yeah,
it's good to hear we're helping people step up their
Jeopardy games too. If you're not a big center of mail,
you can join our Facebook fan page or follow us
on Twitter at missed in History. And if you'd like
to hear a little bit more about the scientific aspects
of our podcast, this particular one. You can check out
(21:21):
the article what is St. Almo's Fire that Sarah edited
on our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff works dot com and be sure to
check out the stuff you missed in History Glass Blog
on the how stuff works dot com home page.
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm fair Dowdy. And after we
recorded our episode on Pocaconta's Last Fall, listeners like Katrina
(00:22):
and Ron wanted to hear more on one point in particular,
and that was the shipwreck that stalled John Rolfe's arrival
in Jamestown. Yeah, and the shipwreck in itself is a
pretty amazing story. We've got St Elmo's fire and wild
hogs and even the devil um. But it's also a
make or break moment in early American history because the
(00:45):
passengers survived the wreck and they saved Jamestown. And because
they saved Jamestown and send back all these amazing New
World stories of their own, they boost English support for
American colonization. So it's a really good story, so good
in fact, that Shakespeare wrote about it in The Tempest.
(01:05):
So our wrecked ship was bound for Jamestown. So we're
gonna give you a little rundown and start there. Start
with the Virginia Company. So Jamestown was supposed to be
a money making operation for for the Virginia Company. Obviously,
if you're going to invest in something, you wanted to
have a return. And so in sixteen o seven they
sent folks. They're hoping to set up industries like silk manufacturer,
(01:27):
pitch and tar, soap, ashes, glassmaking, lumber, sassafrass. Really anything
would do. Maybe they'd even find some gold. They just
wanted to get some money out of it. But of
course that doesn't happen. And in sixteen o nine, according
to Sarah's outline, Jamestown is terrible, but it's true. It's
built on this marshy land. There's lots of mosquitoes, no
(01:49):
fresh water because the James River is only potable for
part of the year. All of their crops are failing,
and the settlers are warring with the Native Americans and
with each other. So they have an investment of not
only money, but people too. I mean, you can't just
abandon the people you've sent to live in the New World.
So the Virginia Company pours all it has into the
(02:11):
third Supply Relief Mission, and that's going to be a
nine ship fleet headed up by the two forty ton
merchant ship, the Sea Venture, and it's going to have
six hundred new settlers to go and revitalize Jamestown and
a ton of supplies, and also really good leadership and
big names on board. Yeah, and that's important because part
(02:32):
of Jamestown's problems were coming from their their poor leadership
and all their in fighting. So we're going to have
Admiral Sir George Summers, who was a war hero. He's
actually coming out of retirement for this very mission. Captain
Christopher Newport, who's on his fourth voyage to the New World,
which pretty impressive. I mean, this is sixteen o nine.
(02:52):
The first one was sixteen o seven, so very impressive.
And Sir Thomas Gates, who's going to be the governor
and actually has a decree from King James himself seating
the crowns authority to the Virginia Company, which is, uh,
it's kind of a stretch, but that's a little quasi independence.
They're back in sixteen o nine. So this relief mission
(03:15):
leaves Plymouth Harbor on June two, sixteen o nine, and
thinks go well for most of the journey. They're almost
there when something terrible happens, and the night before St
James Day, Monday, July a terrible storm hits this ship,
and the sea venture is separated from the others in
the fleet, and the survivor William Strikey later writes, a
(03:39):
dreadful storm and hideous gant a blow from out the northeast, which,
swelling and roaring, as it were, by fits some hours
with more violence than others. At length diould be all
light from heaven, which like an hell of darkness, turned
black upon us. So a scary scene here. Imagine being
out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on your
(04:00):
um seventeenth century ship, and the ship is beaten by
the storms. Streaky says again, 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. And then these ships starts to
break apart and take on water. The water is already
(04:20):
five ft above the ballast, so they're sinking. So the
crew rushes about with candles to try to plug all
of the leaks, and they plug the leaks with anything
they can find. His account even mentions them using slabs
of beef um. But they can't find that leak that's
sinking the ship, and it's still filling up. So the
governor organizes all of the men on the ship into
(04:42):
three companies to bail water and shifts at three different points.
So imagine um three groups working around the clock in
hour long shifts, just bailing water and manning the pumps,
and even the great men on the ship, like the admiral,
like the governor, take their hour long turns. And remember
they started this on Monday, and by Thursday this is
(05:05):
still going on, so it can't go on much longer.
But the watch spots st. Elmo's Fire, which was named
by Mediterranean sailors and was considered a sign of salvation
because it usually comes at the end of the storm.
But the sea venture, you know, they're not saved yet.
By Friday morning, they're still sinking. They've been bailing water
for days now, and they're getting completely exhausted, and it's
(05:29):
clear that they won't make it through another night, and
as Striky said, they'll have to commit the ship to
the mercy of the sea. But then just miraculously, George
Summers spots land and the land is close enough that
he can even see the trees swaying in the wind.
But they're still not safe. The seafloor is rising so
(05:49):
quickly underneath them that it's possible their ship is going
to break up. You know, their rickety old ship will
break before they can get close enough to the land.
So Summers does some very impressive Blackbeard style maneuvering and
manages to steer hard and wedge the ship between two
rocks about three quarters of a mile off the island,
and all one hundred fifty aboard, including the dog, make
(06:13):
it ashore on longboats by nightfall. So great, right, you
know they're they've been saved. They made it through the tempest.
They're on land. Not so fests, no, because they're actually
in hell. They realize, like they really think they're in Hell.
They're on the Devil's Islands, which kind of reminds me
of Lost Everybody sorry. And the Devil's Islands were discovered
(06:36):
by Wanda Bermudas a century before, and they were named
for the devil screams that the Spanish heard there. Um Fortunately,
though it's not Hell, they realized pretty quickly that the
Devil's screams are really just some bird squawking, some delicious birds,
as they soon discover, and they like eating their eggs
as well their Bermuda patrols, but no natives or europe
(07:00):
Hands had lived on the island, but they find evidence
of Spanish influence. Someone has been there, including feral hogs
that probably escaped from capsized galleons. So they've got petrol,
pork and mulberries, cedar berries and the prickly pear um
from the land, and tons of fish and tortoises. So
(07:21):
again not really Hell yeah, Devil's Island turns out to
be a paradise and they build structures, including a church.
They thatch it with a palmetto roof, and maybe this
is this is probably a legend, but they are supposed
to have salvaged the ship's bell for their church, and
they have funerals there for John Rolf, who is aboard
(07:43):
his his wife dies, and their baby, who was born
on the island and named Bermuda, dies there um. They
also celebrate a wedding though some baptisms, and they get
to work building new ships. They're not going to just
kick back and enjoy this pork filled paradise that they've
landed on. They're gonna work on getting back to their mission, right,
(08:05):
So they salvage the rigging and iron bolts from their
wreck and they harvest cedar from the forests, as well
as barrels of wax from wrecked Spanish ships that they find,
and they use that to help culk thears and Bermuda
limestone acts as a ballast. There's only one shipwright, but
he helped build the thirty ton Patients and the eight
(08:27):
ton deliver and astute named ships, and the nobles and
the countrymen all work together on building these ships. Are
very democratic. Yeah, it's kind of this feel good story. UM,
at least at first glance. Admiral Summers is supposed to
have labored from morning until night as duly as any workman,
which has some fun kind of old timey spelling to that. UM.
(08:50):
But it's it's not a perfect paradise here. Some people
don't want to leave, um, and they refuse to help
build the ships. Others mutiny against the gold in her
because of course his contract isn't uh specifically allowing him
to govern Bermuda, it's for Jamestown in Virginia, um. And
then some people are coveting their their wealthier neighbors goods
(09:15):
that they managed to save from the ships. Somewhere right,
at least one man is executed, one or two were murdered,
and two were left behind because they were hiding from punishments.
But how bad would that be really? I mean, apparently
execution got caught and I guess, yeah, pork and petrol
if you didn't well. Anyways, by May tenth, ten months
(09:39):
after they landed, a hundred and forty two castaways leave
for Jamestown and they reached Chesspeake Bay after ten days
of sailing. And you'd think their shiftwreck survivors, they're coming
to Jamestown, they'd probably expect, you know, a decent settlement there.
They know it's not going to be amazing, but they'd
(09:59):
expect thing. Instead, they find a ghost town, ruined houses,
the gates are hanging off their hinges. No one is
in sight. They go into the church and ring the
bell and a few people trickle out of the fort.
It turns out that only sixty of the six hundred
settlers of Jamestown are left, right, because the winter of
sixteen o nine sixteen ten was starving time, and we're
(10:23):
arriving right after that. So let's tuck a little bit
about what was happening while our shipwrecked people were in Bermuda.
So the survivors of the fleet, you know, the rest
of the fleet was separated from the C Venture. The survivors,
who don't think, managed to struggle on through the tempest
to Jamestown and they got there the previous August, which
(10:44):
was later than they were supposed to get there, but
but not too much later. They come with a really
bad news that the C Venture was lost. Presumably everyone
on board is dead, when all of their leaders, all
their leaders, yeah, the governor of the admiral, and this
is devastating news for the colonists at Jamestown who are
(11:04):
who are counting on all the supplies and the leadership
and the new people coming in um from there, some
of the fleet returns to England and they carry on
this bad news. So it's it's also terrible stuff to
hear for the investors of the Virginia Company when some
of them stay in Jamestown but without again those strong
leaders and the democratic example of Gates, a lot of
(11:27):
them are simply too hoity toity to work, or they
go off looking for gold instead of you know, harvesting
crops or something helpful. Yeah, and other people in Jamestown
just become consumed by the internal politics of the city
and they waste all their time trying their former governor
gowner John Smith for all these crimes and sending and
(11:49):
packing for England instead of doing stuff like, you know,
finishing the harvest and storing it all up for winter,
when this isn't exactly a good time to be playing around,
because again, this is where Powaton is considering exterminating these
very mettlesome settlers, and we're in the middle of the
worst tidewater drought in eight hundred years, so there's absolutely
(12:12):
no room for air um and they're making every conceivable
air But obviously the winter doesn't go well. The people
are reduced to eating the start from their Elizabethan roffs
and bugs and horses, and eventually eating each other. And
the Sea Venture survivors find the Jamestown settlers much worse
(12:33):
off than they are themselves, and many of them are
too weak to stand there. Well has collapse that they
don't have fresh water anymore, and they're clearly on the
brink of death. But fortunately the Sea Venture rescue crew
has lots of that yemmy bermudan food that they found
deliverance from the Deliverance, and Gates is a very compelling leader,
(12:55):
but even he, after a few days, has come to
the realization that this isn't going to work. Jamestown is done.
They've got to get out of Jamestown. So they pack
up the two ships that were made in the in
Bermuda and on June seven, sixteen ten, everybody gets on
board head back to England, maybe by way of Newfoundland.
But the Jamestown people are so ashamed of their failure
(13:19):
of this. You know, it must be a horrible memory.
If you're cannibals the winter before, you're probably pretty upset by, um,
how things went. So let's set the city on fire.
They want to just erase it from history. Gate says, no,
you know, maybe somebody else will come here eventually and
it will be of use to them, and the group sales.
They're almost in open water when they run into an
(13:41):
English fleet that's coming to save them, which is if
this were Burke and Wills, I think they'd miss each
other probably and they wouldn't leave a note. But um, yeah,
the new fleet has provisions to re establish Jamestown. They
have new people, and they're saved. Although It's an important
note that if the James towners had had to rely
(14:02):
on this fleet's arrival, they would have been dead by this.
It was the Bermudan ships that saved them. So of
course this is a really fantastic story, and popular accounts
start to come out back in England. Sylvester Jordana wrote
Discovery of the Bermudas otherwise called Isle of Devils, which
(14:24):
may have been the first best seller about colonial America,
and William Strakey's account, which is the one we've been
quoting for, was even more candid and intense. It was
originally a letter, so you know, it's got lots of
juicy details in it. Um Sarah, do you wonder if
maybe the story would be good enough for a play?
(14:45):
It might be. I think it's pretty inspirational, so I'm
sure you know where we're going with this. It's right
to Shakespeare and the writing of the Tempest. Alden Vaughan,
a professor of history at Columbia, thinks that the Wreck
of the Sea venture was, unquestioned doubly an inspiration for
Shakespeare's writing of the Tempest, which is a romance about
a terrible storm, a shipwreck, and a mysterious island. Some
(15:08):
don't think though, that that's the case, that Shakespeare writing
about the New World was a quote fanciful conceit. But
I'm gonna go with yes. We're gonna lay down our
points at least for for why we think it's pretty viable.
So first, consider that North American exploration and settlement happened
(15:29):
concurrently with Shakespeare's writing career. The Tempest was written in
sixteen ten or sixteen eleven, which is the same year
the accounts were published in England. Point one and second,
Shakespeare definitely knew some of the Virginia Company investors, maybe
even Admiral Somers himself. William Strakey. Also, the guy who
(15:50):
who wrote one of the famous accounts was a poet
in London before going abroad, so uh, we're not sure
Shakespeare knew him, but they may have run in the
same circle. And uh. Our third point is in the language.
Look to the language as English Major Ship always looked
to the language, and the language used to describe the
(16:11):
storm in the play sometimes picks up directly from the
Streaky and Jordana accounts, although the action is different. I
think in the play the nobles Hamper rather than help
save the ship, and obviously Shakespeare drew from lots of
different sources. Um, the Tempest probably has bits of Avid's
metamorphosis and the I needed in it. And also in
(16:34):
the Tempest, the ship is leading from North Africa, so
there's a lot of Mediterranean scenes mixed in with the
Bermuda stuff. But it seems pretty clear that this huge
national event in sixteen ten, you know, the survival of
these lost men at sea, would would maybe have a
little influence on Shakespeare or a lot or a lot.
(16:57):
So The Tempest was first performed at Whitehall Palace November one,
sixteen eleven, for King James, and it's sometimes called Shakespeare's
American Play and it's believed to be his last. But
to sort of wrap this one up, we're gonna go
even broader than the Sea venture, being responsible for saving
(17:17):
james Town and maybe inspiring a great work of literature.
UM investors liked Bermuda. So when these accounts, yeah, I
know what, Katie and I both would like to vacation
in Bermuda now, Um. But when these accounts came back
to England, you know, Strachy and Jordan's um people realize
Bermuda not an isle of devils, actually a really nice place,
(17:40):
maybe a good place to invest some money in a
jewel in fact. Yeah, and it becomes the site of
the first English Parliament in the New World and a
really important, uh important stopping point on journeys to the
New World and important just for setting up other colonies.
The islands become test farms for foods to grow on
(18:02):
the mainland, and just some interesting little they cast money
that has a hog on one side and the Sea
Venture on the other, which is the first English currency
minted in the New World. And even today Bermuda's flag
has the image of a sinking ship on the motto
whichever way the fates should carry us. So this is
(18:26):
why of the story. Yeah, and of course the survivors
of the Cea Venture are also really important, and listeners
suggested that we record this story because of one of
the survivors. But we're gonna start with Gates, who is
very important for the survival of Jamestown, the long term
survival of it. He's a strict leader, but he's successful.
(18:47):
He builds this house of stone over the collapsed well.
So that's a really great image of Jamestown's revival when
he makes his own hearth from that Bermuda limestone ballast. Yeah,
and maybe at least partly because of him, and partly
because of the experience in Bermuda, people are a little
bit less concerned about class distinctions because they work together
(19:10):
to save the ship and to live together in Bermuda.
You know, you've got to think of that relatively, but
still it's something. And then we have our guy Rolf,
who doesn't just marry pocahonas he's more important than that.
He figured in Virginia's first big export. And hint, it's
not gold, it's tobacco. And seven years after Rolf's arrival,
(19:34):
Virginia's tobacco experts were at twenty thousand pounds. Twelve years
after that they were at one and a half million
pounds a year. So this is clearly the big point here.
Rolf figures out that you can grow um West Indies
varieties of tobacco in Virginia, which is the kind that
people back in Europe like, and they can make a
(19:55):
ton of money, and not only someone like Rolf, but
investors back in England. It's the real key to the
financial success of Virginia. So really a shipwreck led us
to a success story, and we would like to end
with a pretty cool quote that Sarah found, and this
is from Shakespeare's The Tempest. Now would I give a
(20:17):
thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground,
long heath, brown furs, anything the wills above be done?
But I would fain die a dry death. And since
we can't follow Shakespeare, we will go to listener mail
and let y'all do it instead. So this is real
(20:37):
mail from Hillary in Portland's She sent us a beautiful
postcard of the Bahamas Um and she's from the island,
so we thought we would we would pick up on
that beam for listener meal today. So she wrote that
she wanted to thank us for helping me step up
my Jeopardy game. Last night, I correctly guessed Lord Byron
for the final Jeopardy clue, and I owe my success
(20:58):
entirely to your podcast. He really does pop up everywhere. Yeah,
it's good to hear we're helping people step up their
Jeopardy games too. If you're not a big center of mail,
you can join our Facebook fan page or follow us
on Twitter at missed in History. And if you'd like
to hear a little bit more about the scientific aspects
of our podcast, this particular one. You can check out
(21:21):
the article what is St. Almo's Fire that Sarah edited
on our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff works dot com and be sure to
check out the stuff you missed in History Glass Blog
on the how stuff works dot com home page.
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