VIRGINIA'S roots reach to Bermuda.

As Jamestown prepares to commemorate its 400th anniversary next year, we might do well to consider its sister colony ? Bermuda.

Don't be fooled by our dearth of pink-sand beaches, pastel cottages and cricket matches. Bermuda's and Virginia's histories are intertwined, which helps explain Bermuda Hundred Road, Bermuda Square Shopping Center and other local homages to a group of islands 650 miles east of Hatteras, North Carolina.

Patrick Burgess wants to make sure Bermuda isn't sold short during the Jamestown 2007 commemoration, even as the islands prepare for their own 400th anniversary in 2009.

An editor for , Bermuda's only daily newspaper, Burgess is in Richmond visiting a friend.

"What I can say with certainty is that Jamestown and Bermuda are intimately tied," said Burgess, who studied history at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

"The Jamestown colony was struggling, of course," said Burgess. In 1609, the Virginia Company sent a fleet of nine ships from England with provisions.

But the ships were scattered by a fierce storm in ? you guessed it ? the Bermuda Triangle. One ship, the , grounded at Bermuda with a party that included John Rolfe, the future husband of Pocahontas, and future Virginia governor Thomas Gates.

The marooned found the islands so agreeable they were reluctant to press on to Jamestown, historian Virginia Bernhard wrote in .

"Those marooned English colonists seem to have found Bermuda, with its tropical vegetation, its clear blue waters, and its balmy climate, the nearest they had come to the paradise promised in early descriptions of the New World . . .

"In the winter of 1609-1610, while their countrymen in Virginia were reduced to eating 'doggs Catts Ratts and myce . . . to feede upon Serpents and snakes and to digge the earthe for wylde and unknowne Rootes,' the survivors of the feasted on turtle stew, roast pig, and other island delicacies."

Eventually, the party built two new ships and pushed off for Virginia, "finding the settlers there near starvation", Bernhard wrote.

In 1611, new supplies and colonists arrived at Jamestown and Virginia Company stockholders invested in a colony in Bermuda.

"The two stories are interconnected," Burgess said. "And it would be a shame for Bermuda and Virginia to have their celebrations and not have some recognition of it."

H. Benson Dendy III, co-vice chairman of the Federal Jamestown 400th Commemoration Commission, agrees.

"Bermuda played an important role in sustaining Jamestown during those early days," he said in a November 2002 speech to Bermuda's St. George's Foundation.

"We share a common heritage and Virginia and Bermuda have enjoyed many close ties over the last almost 400 years. Indeed, we were once one. The third charter of the Virginia Company extended the boundaries of the colony out to sea in order to include Bermuda."

During an interview this week, Dendy said that he and other members of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation had been meeting annually with Bermuda's St. George's Foundation. At least one Bermuda exhibit is in the works for Jamestown.

"We have supported various of their efforts in an advisory way," Dendy said. "And they will certainly be involved in our events."

So here's to four centuries of shared history. But given what the colonists knew then, you have to ask: Why did we ever let Bermuda go?