Bermuda Featured In Archaeology Magazine
Bermuda has been featured in Archaeology magazine in an article titled “After the Sea Venture: Archaeology at Bermuda’s Smith Island.”
The report said, “In 1609, the Sea Venture, one of nine English ships carrying settlers and supplies to Jamestown, Virginia—the first permanent English settlement in the New World—was separated when a violent hurricane struck the fleet as it approached the Chesapeake Bay. After four days of trying to stay afloat, Admiral George Somers and Captain Christopher Newport miraculously spotted Bermuda, a remote mid-Atlantic island, and wedged the ship between two reefs off the coast of St. George’s Island in order to prevent the broken vessel from capsizing or sinking. All of the ship’s 150 passengers and crew and one dog made it safely to shore. Accounts of their experience are believed to have inspired The Tempest by William Shakespeare, first performed in 1611.
“Located three-quarters of a mile offshore near Fort St. Catherine’s beach, the wreck of the Sea Venture was discovered by Edmund Downing in 1958. It wasn’t until the 1980s, however, that its identity was confirmed based on maritime archaeology and an assemblage of artifacts dating from 1603 to 1610, including lead weights, clay pipes, Bellarmine jugs, and earthenware pottery that matched pottery from Plymouth, England, and Martin’s Hundred in Virginia. The only English ships sailing near Bermuda during that time were those of the Virginia Company, and only one of their ships, the Sea Venture, was wrecked.
“The Sea Venture passengers lived in Bermuda, a fishhook-shaped archipelago about 650 miles east of North Carolina, for 10 months while they built two new vessels using Bermuda cedar and sails, rigging, and other material salvaged from the shipwreck. They continued their journey to Jamestown in May 1610. Although they brought food supplies with them, they had no idea that the settlers at James Fort were starving. Only 60 of the original 500 colonists were alive when they arrived, and some had resorted to cannibalism to survive. “If Bermuda hadn’t been there, the Sea Venture passengers would have drowned, and the people at Jamestown would have likely died,” said archaeologist Dr. William Kelso, retired director of Jamestown Rediscovery.”
You can read the full story here on the Archaeological Conservancy.
