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Sir George was an
Elizabethan privateer, merchant trader, MP, military leader and founder
of Bermuda (The Somers Isles), England's first Crown Colony. He was also
instrumental in ensuring the survival of the Virginian colony of Jamestown
by sailing to their rescue from Bermuda (where he had been shipwrecked)
with fresh food and supplies.
Sir George Somers was born
in Lyme Regis, Dorset, in
1554, the son of John Somers. A friend of
Sir Walter Raleigh, his career as a merchant trader
and privateer made him a
wealthy man and he was able to buy Berne Manor in Whitchurch
Canonicorum near Lyme Regis in 1587.
As a privateer he took part in the sacking of
Caracas, Venezuela in 1595. In
1600, he commanded HMS Vanguard which
captured a Spanish treasure ship. In 1601, he
captained HMS Swiftsure during the attack
of the Spanish fleet off Kinsale and helped repel
the Spanish invasion of Ireland.
In
1603 he was knighted by King James I and became M.P. for Lyme Regis.
In
1606, he became a founder member
of the Virginia Company, at the time the largest,
most expensive and most ambitious colonial
expedition by any nation, financed privately by
merchants and noblemen.
In
1609 he was made Admiral of the Virginia Company's
Third Supply Relief Fleet, sailing from London and then Plymouth, bound for Virginia. The fleet of 9
ships, with Somers aboard the
flagship Sea Venture, set sail from
Plymouth with fresh supplies and additional
colonists for the new British settlement at
Jamestown. Also aboard were
John Rolfe (who
would become known as the husband of Pocahontas) and
the governor-designate of the settlement, Sir
Thomas Gates. On 25th July during a hurricane, the
Sea Venture was separated from the main
fleet and was wrecked off Discovery Bay, Bermuda.
Somers and all aboard the Sea Venture were
presumed dead by those who continued on to
Virginia.
In fact, the ship was
wrecked between two rocks or reefs and all 150 crew and
colonists were saved. This marked the beginning of the colonisation of
Bermuda, England's first Crown Colony. At the time Bermuda was known
as 'Virgineola' in tribute to the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I. But with
King James I now on the throne, the islands were renamed the Somers
Isles, still today Bermuda's official alternate name.
To continue their journey
to Jamestown the castaways needed new ships, so Somers and
Sir Thomas Gates between them oversaw the
building of the Deliverance and
the Patience from the wrecked Sea Venture
and local timber. There was no lack of food on
Bermuda, and the castaways were able to live well
on fish, sea turtle eggs, fruit and wild hog
(which had been landed and left behind on the
islands by Spanish pirates). So during their
ten months on the islands, the
crew and passengers started the Bermuda colony,
building a church and houses.
On 10th May 1610 the
two small ships set sail with 142 people and some
supplies on board. On
arrival some fourteen days later, they found the Virginia Colony almost
destroyed by famine and disease during what has
become known as the "Starving Time". Very few of
the supplies from the Supply Relief Fleet had
arrived (the same hurricane which caught the
Sea Venture had also badly affected the rest
of the fleet), and only 60 of the original 214
settlers remained alive.
Sir
George Somers wrote to Robert Cecil reporting his
shipwreck on Bermuda while on a voyage to
Virginia, and telling of a famine at Jamestown so
severe that people were forced to eat snakes. He
planned to take the colonists by ship to Bermuda
"the most plentifull place that ever I came to for
Fishe, Hogges and Fowle". However the plan to
abandon Jamestown was shelved upon the arrival of
the fourth relief fleet commanded by Lord Delaware
in July 1610.
It
was only through the arrival of the ships from
Bermuda and the arrival of the fourth relief
fleet that the colony at Jamestown was able to survive.
Sir George returned
to Bermuda in the Patience to collect more
food, but he became ill on the journey and died
"of a surfeit in eating of a pig", on November 9th
1610 in Bermuda. His heart was buried in Bermuda
but his body, pickled in a barrel, was landed on
the Cobb at
Lyme Regis in 1618. A volley of
muskets and cannon saluted his last journey to the
church at Whitchurch Canonicorum where his body is buried.
The
story of what happened to the Sea Venture is
known through the work of Sylvester Jourdan, also
from Lyme Regis, who was on board the Sea
Venture and survived to record what
had happened in a small book he wrote in 1610
called A Discovery of the Barmudas which
was
printed in London.
One
of the backers of the Virginia Company was the
Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare’s patron, and it
is possible that Jourdan’s book about the
shipwreck on the mysterious island, ‘the land of
devils and spirits’, was the inspiration for
Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest.
Lyme
Regis is twinned with St George in Bermuda,
however the town is named after
St George,
the patron saint of England, and not Sir George
Somers, founder of the colony of Bermuda.
Tablet
on the wall of The Cobb, Lyme Regis, celebrating
the achievements of Sir George Somers. Click to
view larger image
©
HUK
Useful links
Destinations UK: Lyme Regis
Jamestown: Birthplace
of a Nation
America's 400th Anniversary: Jamestown, Virginia |
