The Starving Time
Again winter drew on at Jamestown, and with it misery on misery.
George Percy, now President, lay ill and unable to keep order. The
multitude, "unbridled and heedless," pulled this way and that.
Before the cold had well begun, what provision there was in the
storehouse became exhausted. That stream of corn from the Indians in
which the colonists had put dependence failed to flow. The Indians
themselves began systematically to spoil and murder. Ratcliffe and
fourteen with him met death while loading his barge with corn upon
the Pamunkey. The cold grew worse. By midwinter there was famine.
The four hundred--already noticeably dwindled--dwindled fast and
faster. The cold was severe; the Indians were in the woods; the
weakened bodies of the white men pined and shivered. They broke up
the empty houses to make fires to warm themselves. They began to die
of hunger as well as by Indian arrows. On went the winter, and every
day some died. Tales of cannibalism are told . . . .This was the
Starving Time.
When the leaves were red and gold, England-in-America had a
population of four hundred and more. When the dogwood and the
strawberry bloomed, England-in-America had a population of but
sixty.
Somewhat later than this time there came from the pen of Shakespeare
a play dealing with a tempest and shipwreck and a magical isle and
rescue thereon. The bright spirit Ariel speaks of "the still-vex'd
Bermoothes." These were islands "two hundred leagues from any
continent," named after a Spanish Captain Bermudez who had landed
there. Once there had been Indians, but these the Spaniards had
slain or taken as slaves. Now the islands were desolate,
uninhabited, "forlorn and unfortunate." Chance vessels might touch,
but the approach was dangerous. There grew rumors of pirates, and
then of demons. "The Isles of Demons," was the name given to them.
"The most forlorn and unfortunate place in the world" was the
description that fitted them in those distant days:
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All torment, trouble,
wonder and amazement Source: William Shakespeare, The Tempest |
When Shakespeare so wrote, there was news in England and talk
went to and fro of the shipwreck of the Sea Adventure upon the rocky
teeth of the Bermoothes, "uninhabitable and almost inaccessible,"
and of the escape and dwelling there for months of Gates and Somers
and the colonists in that ship. It is generally assumed that this
incident furnished timber for the framework of The Tempest.
The storm that broke on St. James's Day, scattering the ships of the
third supply, drove the Sea Adventure here and there at will. Upon
her watched Gates and Somers and Newport, above a hundred men, and a
few women and children. There sprang a leak; all thought of death.
Then rose a cry "Land ho!" The storm abated, but the wind carried
the Sea Adventure upon this shore and grounded her upon a reef. A
certain R. Rich, gentleman, one of the voyagers, made and published
a ballad upon the whole event. If it is hardly Shakespearean music,
yet it is not devoid of interest.
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. . . The Seas did rage,
the windes did blowe, Using the ship's boats they got to shore, though with toil and danger. Here they found no sprites nor demons, nor even men, but a fair, half-tropical verdure and, running wild, great numbers of swine. And then on shoare the
iland came They did not, however, starve. A thousand hogges that
dogge did kill Source: William Shakespeare, The Tempest |
Ten months the Virginia colonists lived among the "still-vex'd
Bermoothes." The Sea Adventure was but a wreck pinned between the
reefs. No sail was seen upon the blue water. Where they were thrown,
there Gates and Somers and Newport and all must stay for a time and
make the best of it. They builded huts and thatched them, and they
brought from the wrecked ship, pinned but half a mile from land,
stores of many kinds. The clime proved of the blandest, fairest;
with fishing and hunting they maintained themselves. Days, weeks,
and months went by. They had a minister, Master Buck. They brought
from the ship a bell and raised it for a church-bell. A marriage, a
few deaths, the birth of two children these were events on the
island. One of these children, the daughter of John Rolfe,
gentleman, and his wife, was christened Bermuda. Gates and Somers
held kindly sway. The colonists lived in plenty, peace, and ease.
But for all that, they were shipwrecked folk, and far, far out of
the world, and they longed for the old ways and their own kin. Day
followed day, but no sail would show to bear them thence; and so at
last, taking what they could from the forests of the island, and
from the Sea Adventure, they set about to become shipwrights.
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And there two gallant
pynases, Source: William Shakespeare, The Tempest |
And so to Virginia came . . .
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