hips of Spain. Such, at any rate,
were his instructions, and for seven weeks out of Plymouth all went
well. But then a storm struck, no doubt an early hurricane of the sort
so familiar to residents of the east coast today, a storm which
separated the _Sea Adventure_ from the other vessels and carried it to
destruction off the coast of Bermuda. Providence brought crew and
passengers, all 150 of them, safely ashore to begin an idyll that would
be celebrated in Shakespeare's _Tempest_ and would be turned to
advantage by the adventurers in their later propaganda. In Bermuda they
found food in plenty--fish, fowl, and hogs that ran wild--and a most
healthful climate. But for almost a year Virginia would struggle
without the leadership of Somers, Newport, or Gates, and without the
sure authority of instructions and commissions they had carried aboard
the _Sea Adventure_.

After ten months the shipwrecked colonists had fashioned from the
cedars of Bermuda, which reminded them of the cedars of Lebanon, two
small vessels named the _Patience_ and the _Deliverance_. The ships
were stoutly enough built to carry the full company to Virginia in May
1610, but at Jamestown they found only want and confusion. The other
vessels in Somers' fleet had straggled into the bay the preceding
summer with their storm-tossed passengers, but the following winter had
been a nightmare. This was the winter that was destined long to be
remembered as the starving time, the time when one man was reported
even to have eaten his wife. Only a handful of the settlers, new and
old, had survived, and Somers and Gates saw no choice but to abandon
the colony. It was saved by the providential arrival early in June of
Lord De la Warr, who brought with him 150 new colonists and a
commission as the colony's governor. Somers went back to Bermuda in the
hope of laying in a stock of pork for Virginia, but there he died and
his seamen ran for England.

The disturbing news of these tragic events reached London piecemeal.
First came the news in the fall of 1609 that the _Sea Adventure_, with
Somers, Gates, Newport, and Strachey, had been lost. This was a severe
blow to the leaders of the company, who had planned to send De la Warr
out with perhaps as many colonists as Somers had carried. Already the
enthusiasm engendered by the promotional campaign of the preceding
spring had begun to decline, as some men took second thought.
Subscriptions at that time had been enlisted