@$:[AT]bylinefrank:By Peter Backeberg[AT]bodyfrank:The following is a collection of excerpts taken from William Strachey's first hand account of Sea Venture's struggle to survive while trapped in the teeth of a hurricane. It is, of course, well known that the storm ultimately shipwrecked Sir George Somers' vessel, bound from Plymouth, England to Jamestown, Virginia in the summer of 1609, on Bermuda's reefs and resulted in the British colonisation of these islands. Strachey's account is also renowned as the inspiration for Shakespeare's play The Tempest.The account is as vivid a description as one could hope to find of immense and terrifying power of a hurricane. For four days and three nights the crew struggled to keep their ailing ship afloat with little hope of redemption.Written in the verbose prose of time it is a captivating read leaving no doubt as to the sense of salvation those historic mariners must have felt when finally scrambling onto Bermuda's terra firma. It also bears witness to the incredible daring required to venture over the horizon in search of a new world 400 years ago. This journey is nothing short of miraculous and duly highlights Bermuda's intrinsic relationship with both the sea and the storm.The account is part of a letter addressed to an unknown "Excellent Lady" and was not published until four years after Strachey's 1621 death.Below the tale is picked up as the storm descends upon the ship and her 150 passengers and crew:"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' day, July 24, the clouds gathering thick upon us and the wind singing and whistling most unusually, a dreadful and hideous storm began to blow from out the northeast, which swelling and roaring it were by fits, some hours with more violence than others, at length did beat all light from Heaven; which, like a hell of darkness, turned black upon us.…"For four-and-twenty hours, the storm in a restless tumult had blown so exceedingly as we could not apprehend in our imaginations any possibility of greater violence; yet did we still find it not only more terrible, but more constant, fury added to fury, and one storm urging a second more outrageous than the former… Sometimes shrieks in our ship amongst women and passengers not used to such hurly and discomforts made us look one upon the other with troubled hearts and panting bosoms, our clamors drowned in the winds, and the winds in thunder. Prayers might well be in the heart and lips, but drowned in the outcries of the officers. Nothing heard that could give comfort, nothing seen that might encourage hope.…"Our sails wound up, lay without their use, and if at any time we bore but a hullock or half forecourse (sail) to guide her before the sea, six and sometimes eight men were not enough to hold the whipstaff in the steerage and the tiller below in the gunner room; by which may be imagined the strength of the storm, in which the sea swelled above the clouds and gave battle unto Heaven. It could not be said to rain: the waters like whole rivers did flood in the air… What shall I say? Winds and seas were as mad as fury and rage could make them.…"For my own part, I had been in some storms before, as well upon the coast of Barbary and Algiers, in the Levant, and once, more distressful, in the Adriatic gulf in a bottom of Candy… Yet all that I had ever suffered gathered together might not hold comparison with this. There was not a moment in which the sudden splitting or instant oversetting of the ship was not expected.…"Howbeit this was not all. It pleased God to bring a greater affliction yet upon us; for in the beginning of the storm we had received likewise a mighty leak. And the ship, in every joint almost, having spewed out her oakum before we were aware, was grown five foot suddenly deep with water above her ballast, and we almost drowned within whilst we sat looking when to perish from above. This, imparting no less terror than danger, ran through the whole ship with much fright and amazement, startled and turned the blood, and took down the braves of the most hardy mariner of them all.…"Our governor upon the Tuesday morning (at what time the leak was first discovered) had caused the whole company (about 140, besides women) to be equally divided into three parts, and appointed each man where to attend; and thereunto every man came duly upon his watch, took the bucket or pump for one hour, and rested another. Then men might be seen to labour, I may well say, for life; and the better sort (even our governor and admiral themselves), not refusing their turn and to spell each the other, to give example to other. The common sort, stripped naked as men in galleys, the easier both to hold out and to shrink from under the salt water which continually leapt in among them, kept their eyes waking and their thoughts and hands working with tired bodies and wasted spirits three days and four nights, destitute of outward comfort and desperate of any deliverance, testifying how mutually willing they were yet by labour to keep each other from drowning, albeit each one drowned whilst he laboured.…"Once so huge a sea brake upon the poop and quarter upon us as it covered our ship from stern to stem like a garment or a vast cloud; it filled her brim full for a while within, from the hatches up to the spar deck. The source or confluence of water was so violent as it rushed and carried the helmsman from the helm and wrested the whipstaff out of his hand, which so flew from side to side that when he would have seized the same again it so tossed him from starboard to larboard as it was God's mercy it had not split him… It (the wave) so stunned the ship in her full pace that she stirred no more than if she had been caught in a net. Yet without bearing one inch of sail, even then she was making her way nine or ten leagues in a watch.…"East and by south we steered away as much as we could to bear upright, which was no small carefulness nor pain to do, albeit we much unrigged our ship, threw overboard much luggage, many a trunk and chest (in which I suffered no mean loss), and staved many a butt of beer, hogsheads of oil, cider, wine, and vinegar, and heaved away all our ordnance on the starboard side, and had now purposed to have cut down the main mast, the more to lighten her, for we were much spent and our men so weary as their strengths together failed them with their hearts, having travailed now from Tuesday till Friday morning, day and night, without either sleep or food; for the leakage taking up all the hold, we could neither come by beer nor fresh water; fire we could keep none in the cook room to dress any meat; and carefulness, grief, and our turn at the pump or bucket were sufficient to hold sleep from our eyes.…"And surely, madam, it is most true, there was not any hour (a matter of admiration) in all these days, in which we freed not twelve hundred barricoes of water, the least whereof contained six gallons; besides three deep pumps continually going, two beneath at the capstan and the other above in the half deck, and at each pump four thousand strokes at the least in a watch. So as I may well say, every four hours we quitted one hundred tons of water, and from Tuesday noon till Friday noon we bailed and pumped two thousand ton… And it being now Friday, the fourth morning, it wanted little, but that there had been a general determination to have shut up hatches, and commending our sinful souls to God, committed the ship to the mercy of the sea. Surely that night we must have done it, and that night had we then perished, but see the goodness and sweet introduction of better hope by our merciful God given unto us: Sir George Somers, when no man dreamed of such happiness, had discovered and cried land.…"The boatswain, sounding at the first, found it thirteen fathom, and when we stood a little, in seven fathom; and presently, heaving his lead the third time, had ground at four fathom; and by this we had got her within a mile under the southeast point of the land, where we had somewhat smooth water. But having no hope to save her by coming to an anchor in the same, we were enforced to run her ashore as near the land as we could, which brought us within three quarters of a mile of shore; and by the mercy of God unto us, making out our boats, we had ere night brought all our men, women, and children, about the number of one hundred and fifty, safe into the island."This article is taken in part from a 'modern' version of Strachey's account and used with permission from www.virtualjamestown.org