540 A. K Verrill—The Bermuda Islands. 



I have heard him say, wading out of the floud thereof, all his ambi- 

 tion was but to climb above hatches to die in Aperto ccelo, and in 

 the company of his old friends." 



According to Jonrdan, Admiral Somers showed great courage and 

 endurance. He says that the admiral descried the land while sitting 

 " on the Poope," " where he sate three days and three nights 

 together, without meales, meate, and little or no sleepe, conning the 

 ship to keep her as upright as he could, for otherwise shee must 

 needes have instantly foundered." With all that they could do she 

 had nine feet of water in the hold. 



On the 28th of July, when they had nearly given up in despair, 

 they made the islands of Bermuda and tried to run the ship ashore 

 on a sandy beach that they saw, but fortunately she struck on an 

 outlying reef, which, according to Somers' own report, in 1610, was 

 a quarter of a mile from the shore. She lodged in an upright posi- 

 tion between two rocks, and was so firmly wedged there that she 

 remained in that position, so that the entire party, including some 

 women and children, were safely taken ashore in the boats. 



They landed in a "goodly bay," "upon which our governor did 

 first leape ashore, and therefore called it, as aforesaid, Gates-his- 

 Bay." This name, Gates' Bay, does not appear on any modern maps, 

 nor even on the early ones of Norwood, 1022 and 1663. 



Governor Butler, in his " Historye," stated that this was the bay or 

 cove close by Fort Catherine. He was undoubtedly familiar with 

 the details of this shipwreck. Certainly there were, in his time, some 

 of the wrecked company living on the islands, and certain parts of 

 the wreck were still visible. Indeed, in 1622, he recovered from the 

 wreck two pieces of ordnance; one of these, called a " saker," was 

 not much damaged; also a large sheet anchor, and sundry bars of 

 iron, steel, and lead, all of which the colony much needed, as he stated 

 in his history. 



But if this cove were the Gates' Bay referred to. either the 

 modern location of the " Sea Adventure Shoals," on the Admiralty 

 Chart, is incorrect, or else Sir George Somers much underestimated 

 the distance from the shore,* for the shoals so named are put on the 

 chart at a distance of about one mile from the beach at Fort 

 Catherine, but only half a mile from that of the nearer bay, now 

 called Buildings Bay. If the site of the wreck he correctly located 



* Wm. Strachy, in his narrative, stated that the distance was three-quarters 

 of a mile. Silvanus Jonrdan, one of the same company, stated that it was "half 

 an English mile." Tin- admiral's estimate would, naturally, be the more cornet. 



