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

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JI most dreaijul tempest (the manifolddeaths whereif are here to the life described), their wreck on 'Bermuda, and the description if those islands (~~~yXCELLENT LADY, Know that upon ~ '\tI-'+'4 ft Friday late in the evening we brake ~t E ~1f ground out of the sound of Plymouth, ~~~'"12\.,~ our whole fleet then consisting of seven ~~~~:::)) good ships and two pinnaces, all which from the said second of June unto the twenty-third of July kept in friendly consort together, not a whole watch at any time losing the sight each of other. Our course, when we came about the height of between 26 and 27 degrees, we declined to the northward and, according to our governor's instructions, altered the trade and ordinary way used heretofore by Dominica and Nevis in the West Indies and found the wind to this course indeed as friendly as in the judgment of all seamen it is upon a more direct line and by Sir George Somers our admiral had been likewise in former time sailed, being a gentleman of approved assuredness and ready knowledge in seafaring actions, having often 3 4 A VOYAGE TO VIRGINIA IN 1609 carried command and chief charge in many ships royal of Her Majesty's and in sundry voyages made many defeats and attempts in the time of the Spaniard's quarreling with us upon the islands and Indies, etc. We had followed this course so long as now we were within seven or eight days at the most, by Captain Newport 's reckoning, of making Cape Henry upon the coast of Virginia, when on St. James his day, July 24, being Monday (preparing for no less all the black night before ) ,1 the clouds gathering thick upon us and the winds singing and whistling most unusually (which made us to cast off our pinnace, towing the same until then astern), a dreadful storm and hideous began to blow from out the northeast, which, swelling and roaring as it were by fits, some hours with more violence than others, at length did beat all light from Heaven; which, like an hell of darkness, turned black upon us, so much the more fuller of horror as in such cases horror and fear use to overrun the troubled and overmastered senses of all, which taken up with amazement, the ears lay so sensible to the terrible cries and murmurs of the winds and distraction of our company as who was most armed and best prepared was not a little shaken. For surely, noble Lady, as death comes not so sudden IMarginal comment: "A terrible storm expressed in a pathetical and rhetorical description." Most of the marginal notes accompanying Purchas' printing of Strachey's narrative merely summarize the text and consequently have been omitted. "A TRUE REPORTORY" 5 nor apparent, so he comes not so elvish2 and painful (to men, especially, even then in health and perfect habitudes of body) as at sea; who comes at no time so welcome but our frailty (so weak is the hold of hope in miserable demonstrations of danger) it makes guilty of many contrary changes and conflicts. For, indeed, death is accompanied at no time nor place with circumstances every way so uncapable of particularities of goodness and inward comforts as at sea. For it is most true, there ariseth commonly no such unmerciful tempest , compound of so many contrary and divers nations [ ? motions], but that it worketh upon the whole frame of the body and most loathsomely affecteth all the powers thereof. And the manner of the sickness it lays upon the body, being so unsufferable, gives not the mind any free and quiet time to use her judgment and empire ; which made the poet say: 2Spitefully. Hostium uxores, puerique caecos Sentiant mO'lus orientis Haedi, et Aequoris nigri fremitum, et trementes Verbere ripas.s S"May the wives and children of our foes be the ones to feel the blind onset of rising Auster and the roaring of the darkling sea, and the shores quivering with the shock!" (Horace Odes iii.27.21-24). Where Haedi appears in Strachey's quotation, the original reads l1ustri (the south wind). The translation is that of C. E. Bennett for the Loeb edition (New York: Harvard University Press, 1939). 6 A VOYAGE TO VIRGINIA IN 1609 For four-and-twenty hours the storm in a restless tumult had blown so exceedingly as...