A Voyage to Virginia in 1609: Two Narratives: Strachey's "True Reportory" and Jourdain's Discovery of the Bermudas

Introduction

INTRODUCTION HEN William Shakespeare sat down to ~OO«! write The Tempest he had fresh in his ~. W ~"memory a vivid description of a hurricane oo~ and shipwreck from the pen of a pas- ~ senger on the ill-fated ship, the "Sea Venture ,"l that foundered, en route to Virginia, in a tropical storm off the Bermuda Islands on July 28, 1609. The author was William Strachey, a gentleman-adventurer, one of a company of more than 600 colonists bound for Jamestown, who set out from Plymouth, England, on June 2, 1609, in seven ships and two pinnaces. The flagship of the fleet was the "Sea Venture," commanded by Captain Christopher Newport, who had led the first expedition to Jamestown two years before. On board the "Sea Venture" were Sir Thomas Gates, who had been appointed governor of the colony of Virginia pending the arrival of Lord De La Warr, and Sir IThe name of the ship is given in contemporary documents as both the "Sea Venture" and the "Sea Adventure." xvii xviii INTRODUCTION George Somers, who held the title of admiral of the flotilla. Using timbers and materials from their wrecked ship, supplemented by cedarwood from Bermuda, the castaways managed to build two seaworthy vessels in which they eventually reached Virginia. Strachey wrote an account of their experiences, in the form of a long letter addressed to an unidentified noble lady, and sent it back from Virginia. It was this letter that Shakespeare had obviously read before writing The Tempest. The letter was not published in Shakespeare's lifetime but first appeared in print in Samuel Purchas' Pilgrims (1625) with the title, "A true reportory of the wracke, and redemption of Sir Thomas Gates Knight; upon, and from the Ilands of the Bermudas: his comming to Virginia, and the estate of that Colonie then, and after, under the government of the Lord La Warre, July 15. 1610. written by William Strachey, Esquire."2 The identity of the noble lady is a matter of conjecture . Dr. S. G. Culliford in an unpublished dissertation , "William Strachey, 1572-1621," suggests that the recipient of the letter was Sara, wife of Sir Thomas Smith, treasurer of the Virginia Company of London. This is plausible, for Strachey was himself obviously in the good graces of officials of the company and a little later was made secretary of the colony at Jamestown. 2The letter or "True Reportory" is printed in the modern edition of Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas His Pilgrims (Glasgow , 1906), XIX, 5-72. INTRODU eTION XIX It would be reasonable for him to address an account of the shipwreck and of the subsequent adventures of the castaways on the island to the wife of his prospective patron. Shakespeare also had connections with members of the Virginia Company. His own patron, the Earl of Southampton, was one of the promoters of the enterprise , as were two other noblemen who befriended him, William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and Philip Herbert , Earl of Montgomery. Strachey himself had moved in the literary circle that included Shakespeare. He was a friend of Ben Jonson and was a shareholder in an acting company known as the Children of the Queen's Revels, which had rented the Blackfriars playhouse from Shakespeare's colleague Richard Burbage. In a small group of this sort Strachey's erstwhile friends would have heard something of his adventures. If the letter addressed to the noble lady did not circulate in manuscript in this group, they would at least have known about the substance of it. The expedition led by Gates was the largest that had yet gone out to Virginia, and news of the disaster that befell it created great excitement throughout London, particularly among the shareholders in Shakespeare's circle who stood to lose large sums on their investment. Strachey, who wrote so dramatically of the wreck of the "Sea Venture," was a native of Saffron Walden in xx INTRODUCTION Essex, where his family belonged to the minor gentry.s He was born in 1572; in 1588, the year of the Armada, he entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Records do not show whether he graduated. In I595 he married Frances Forster of Crowhurst in Surrey. By 1605 he was living in London and was a member of Gray's Inn, where he had an opportunity of meeting many rising young lawyers and men of letters. He himself dabbled in literature, and we...