Paine made many confessions and earnestly desired, being a gentleman, that he be shot to death, and towards the evening he had his desire, the sun and his life setting together.

¿ William Strachey, Secretary-elect for Virginia, 1610

My Dear Friends: On 28 July 2009, the sun will set on 399 years of the settlement of the Bermudas, of which period, it was my privilege to be the Governor for three years from 1619 to 1622. I was so captivated by the place and by the shenanigans before and during my governorship, that I was compelled to write the first comprehensive history of the islands. As I have mentioned before, a new edition of my manuscript is to be published in the very near future and I hope you will buy the book, as not being Royalty, I need all the royalties I can get.

That is not to suggest that I early established the Bermudian tradition of money first, all others last, but to ask that you support all the cultural activities planned for the 400th anniversary in 2009. Heritage and culture is good for your soul and, in places where it is well respected, it is of profound value for tourism economies.

But enough of my editorialising: today. I want to tell you in modern language about some of the life and death circumstances in the first 42 weeks in the settlement of Bermuda.

Your Affectionate Friend, Captain Nathaniel Butler.

Before that fateful day in late July 1609, we now know that there were earlier life and death circumstances at Bermuda, arising out of the wrecking of ships on the reefs that girdle the island. Unfortunately, the islands lie in the middle of the ideal navigational route from the Caribbean to Europe, so once the position of Bermuda was known, pilots tried to avoid them.

This was often not possible in the hours of darkness, or if the weather was up. Contrarily in the case of the Sea Venture, which was leaking badly after hurricane damage, crashing onto a reef off the east end saved the day and all 150 people on board.

Like the crew of the Sea Venture, the marooned seamen usually built a small boat from the plentiful cedar on Bermuda and sailed away. Some, of course, like the men who set out from our group for Virginia in the longboat of the Sea Venture, were never seen again.

While archaeology will reveal more about such fateful interruptions of voyages at Bermuda, one of the earliest known occasions was that of a Portuguese slave ship that sank here in 1543. From this tragedy, the inscription of the "Spanish Rock" at Spittal Pond may derive.

In 1556, a French privateer, one Captain Mesmin, wrecked on the North Rocks (there were more then, but only one rock now, I hear) and managed to get onto the main island.

The crew made a small ship and was about to depart, when the captain and two others attempted to leave by themselves. For that treachery, those three were marooned at Bermuda, but picked up later by another French privateer. There were others, such as Henry May, an Englishman in 1593. Anyway, your antecedent citizens were thrashing their way across the Atlantic to the settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, when their ship was separated from the other six in the fleet by a great storm on July 24, 1609. After four days of wind and water hell, the clearing sky found them heading straight for "de rocks" at Bermuda. The Sea Venture wedged itself between two reefs and the calm seas allowed all, including the chickens and pigs, to escape to St. Catherine's Beach.

There apparently was no welcoming committee, except for some sea birds, during the day. That evening, however, a pack of swarthy Bermudians appeared, for, as I relate in my History, during this first night, those on watch saw their first sight of the wild native hogs of the islands. The wild hogs got the scent of the newcomers, and in particular that of the tame live swine that had survived the sea voyage and had been brought ashore from the ship, and soon came along in the dark of night to see what the ship had brought.

The wild hogs must have been delighted to see the fat and domesticated newcomers, but all they got was the knife for their pleasure, as did the unfortunate and unwary population of cahows.

Using the lone dog of the ship, the newcomers hunted wild pigs as far as Warwick, as suggested in a map of the day made by the group leader, Sir George Somers. Within a few years, they and the cahows were headed for extinction; only the birds survive, hanging out on a remote island for almost 400 years.

Meanwhile, the tourists got down to building the escape vessels and fighting among themselves, being acclimatised some weeks in the Bermudas. Five mutinies took place, for which one man was hanged ,and Henry Paine, self-proclaimed gentleman, was shot at dusk. These were the first executions of capital punishment in Bermuda. Another person died of natural causes and two others were murdered, all in all, a bit of an evil maelstrom in peaceful, almost prehistoric Bermuda.

The five or so deaths were offset by two births and for the feminists, I can report that the first indigenous Bermudian, that is first known to have been here born, was a girl.

She was appropriately named Bermuda Rolfe, her father being John, who latterly in Virginia married the famous princess, Pocahontas. A boy was also born here in the months before all but two of the complement of the Sea Venture departed for Jamestown on May 10, 1610.

The first Bermudian died after a few months and in respect and for history's sake, we should ask: "Where is the body of first-born Bermuda Rolfe?"

Come to think of it, we have recovered very little archaeological evidence of the first decades of the settlement of the island. Perhaps in 2009, the authorities will let the archaeologists dig up the Town Square at St. George's, for we used that as a dump in the early days to fill it in, starting that ecologically-disastrous Bermudian tradition of "taking de trash to de pond".

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Dr. Edward Harris, MBE, JP, FSA, Bermudian, is the Executive Director of the Bermuda Maritime Museum. Comments can be sent to drharrislogic.bm or by telephone to 799-5480.