In Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, spirit Ariel tells Prospero: “Thou call’dst me up at midnight to fetch dew, From the still-vex’d Bermoothes.”

That is the only direct mention of Bermuda in the entire play about a group of noble people brought to a magical island by a violent storm conjured up by Prospero, Duke of Milan who lives on the Island with his daughter.

American Shakespeare enthusiast David Katham believes that Shakespeare was heavily influenced by the 1609 wreck of the Sea Venture on Bermuda’s shores. Mr Katham is a mutual funds analyst in Chicago, who became passionate about Shakespeare while writing a doctoral degree in linguistics.

He has written many scholarly articles about Shakespeare, with his main focus on proving that Shakespeare did pen such plays as The Tempest. Dr Katham’s main opponents are a group of scholars who believe that The Earl of Oxford wrote The Tempest and other plays attributed to Shakespeare.

“If the Earl of Oxford wrote The Tempest, then it could not have been based on the Sea Venture wreck in 1609, because the Earl died in 1604,” said Dr Kathman.

That fact has made Bermuda’s connection with The Tempest a key plank in proving that Shakespeare is the true playwright.

When Sea Venture survivors finally reached the new world in 1610, they were eager to tell people back in England what had happened, mostly so that they could scare up money from investors to colonise Bermuda properly.

Sea Venture survivors William Strachey and Sylvester Jourdain immediately wrote down their experiences and had them published in pamphlet form in England in 1610.

Mr Strachey had connections with investors who were connected to the theatrical world, and Shakespeare himself had connections to people involved with the Virginia Company that had sent the Sea Venture to the new world.

Dr Katham said there are many strong similarities between their words, and lines in Shakespeare. For example, in 1610, Mr Strachey wrote: “Our clamours dround in the windes, and the windes in thunder. Prayers might well be in the heart and lips, but drowned in the outcries of the officers.”

In The Tempest, Shakespeare wrote: “A plague upon this howling; they are louder than the weather, or our office.” A few lines later: “To prayers! To prayers!”

Mr Strachey described a natural phenomenon called St Elmo’s fire: “like a faint Starre, trembling, and streaming along with a sparkeling blaze” which closely corresponds with a description by The Tempest character Ariel of his magical boarding of the King’s ship.

“Since the early 1900s people had recognised that there were these strong similarities between these accounts of Bermuda shipwreck and various things in The Tempest,” said Mr Katham.

“Shakespeare used the Bermuda pamphlets. He was familiar enough with them that they influenced both the events and wording of The Tempest.”

But he said Shakespeare probably set the play in the Mediterranean because it made more sense to the plotline. The story had to be set somewhere which would have many princes. And Shakespeare used other sources besides the Bermuda descriptions, such as an essay written by a French writer.

Mr Katham is currently working on a book about theatre history.

For more information about Bermuda’s connection to The Tempest visit shakespeareauthorship.com/tempest.html.