The time was July, 1609. A perfect hurricane with violent winds 300 miles wide moves majestically out of the Caribbean, leaving devastated islands in its wake.

At about 30 degrees of northern latitude, some 200 leagues from an uninhabited coral archipelago known as the Isles of Devils, the terrible hurricane roars over seven insignificant dots upon the vast Atlantic ocean. They are the ships of a British fleet heading for Jamestown in the new Colony of Virginia.

At first light on Monday, the 24th of July, Sir George Somers, Admiral of the fleet, was pacing the poop deck of his flagship, the Sea Venture, scowling at the ominous approaching weather.

All the black night before the crew had made the ship ready for the onslaught.

Below deck passengers were violently ill in the pitching ship. The order was bellowed to cast off their pinnance.

"The clouds gathered thick about us and the winds winging and whistling most unusually, William Strachy, one of the passengers later wrote, and then a stern and dreadful storm, and hideous, began to blow out of the North-east, swelling and roaring, by fits, at length did beat all light from heaven, which like hell turned black upon us... the ears lay so sensible to the terrible cries and murmurs of the winds...that who was most armed and prepared, was not a little shaken.'' The storm imperiously scattered the fleet, in minutes the Sea Venture was on its own, utterly alone in a black tumult, its frail human cargo of 140 men, women and children desperate to survive.

Strachy wrote that such was the force of wind and wave that at times eight men were not enough to hold the whipstaffe in the steerage and the tiller below in the gun room.For 24 hours it grew, impossibly, into greater intensity.

Excerpts from Strachy follow below: "The seas swelled above the clouds and gave battle to heaven....raine like rivers did flood the air...wind and seas were as mad as fury and rage could make them, Strachy wrote. He had already suffered though storms off the notorious Barbary coast and Algeria, the Levant and the Adriatic, and it was his considered opinion that this storm was worse than all those combined.

"The women and passengers, not used to such hurly and discomforts, looked upon one another with troubled hearts and panting bosoms, our clamours 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.

"Indeed everything was about to get worse. The great storm had holed the sturdy Sea Venture. She had spewed out her oakumand water was five feet deep above the ballast before it was noticed. Terror swept through the imperiled ship.

"There might be seen Master, Masters Mate, Boateswain, Quarter Master, Coopers, Carpenters, and who not, with candles in their hands, creeping along the ribs viewing the sides, searching every corner and listening in every place if they could hear the water run,Strachy wrote.

"Leaks were found and stuffed up with anything handy, a large hole in the Gun Room with many pieces of beef; and yet the water continued to pour in. Pumps and buckets were manned in the f's'cle, the waist and hard by the bittack until men dropped. The Admiral and Governor designate of Virginia, side by side with sailors stripped to the waist, pumped and bailed with buckets, barracoes and kettles for their lives, their legs awash in salt water.

"Those who in all their life times had never done an hours work before, were able twice fortie eight hours together to toil with the best. ... at each pump four thousand stroakes at least in a watch...every four hours we quitted one hundred tunnes of water...and from Tuesday noone until Friday noone we bailed and pumped two thousand tunnes, "The pumps choked up with biscuit. The carpenter staggered down to the Bread Room where 10,000 weight of biscuit was stored, and tore the place apart looking for the leak but found nothing.

"The Sea Venture , without a stitch of sail and heavy with water, was nevertheless making nine or ten leagues in a watch. At one point a huge wave broke over the Sea Venture, stunning it to a shuddering halt, smashing the helmsmen into the side of the ship, and momentarily burying the Governor Gates down below at the Capstone and all labouring there. All thought this was it, she would sink after such a blow.

"For my part I thought her already in the Bottome of the Sea, and I heard him say, wading out of the flood, all his ambition was but to climbe up above hatches and to die Aperto coelo, and in the company of his friends.

"Amazingly, the Sea Venture continued to float, but just. Every effort was made to lighten the ship.

"We much unrigged the our ship, threw overboard much luggage, many a trunk and chest and many a butt of Beere, Hogsheads of Oyle, Syder, Wine and Vingar, and heaved away all our Ordnance on the star-boord side, and now prepared to cut down the Maine Mast.

"During all this time the heavens looked so black upon us that it was not possible the elevation of the Pole might be observed, nor a Starre by night, not Sunne beam by day was to be seen.

Continued on page 12 Sir George Continued from page 15 "Only upon the Thursday night Sir George Somers being upon the watch, had an apparition of a little round light, like a faint Starre, trembling, and streaming along with a sparkling blaze, half the height upon the Maine Mast, and shooting sometimes from Shroud to Shroud , half the night.

"For four days and nights, the crew and passengers had no food. as the hold was flooded and it was impossible to light a fire in the Cookehouse. Fear had driven them beyond their normal strengths and they were no reserves left.

Their spirit was broken and they gave up.

"There had been a general determination to have shut up hatches and commending our sinful souls to God ....

"But just then, through the swirl of salt spray and rain, land was glimpsed for a moment, seeming a mirage, but hope soared.

"As the day wore on, the storm moderated enough to see that there was indeed land ahead, most probably the Isles of Devils, surrounded by needle sharp reefs that could reduce a ship to splinters and strip a man flesh off to the bone. It looked wonderful.

"The Admiral managed to con his sinking ship into four fathoms of water and under a mile from shore. The great storm carelessly tossed the ship onto a reef, like a child bored with a toy, and moved off to find other things to play with. The ship miraculously held fast.

"By the mercy of God unto us, making out our boates, we had ere night brought all our men, women and children, about the number of one hundred and fifty, safe unto the Iland.

"Once ashore, the ship's company, stunned by extreme weariness, had to pinch themselves. They found themselves not in the Devil's domain, but delivered into a paradise that provided their every need.

"They were able to bring tools ashore and from the timbers of the Sea Venture fashioned, in time, a boat called the Patience, which set sail for Jamestown in May, 1610.'' Courtesy of Bermuda Archive: Bermuda News Bureau Collection Portrait of Sir George Somers.