George Somers
Sir George Somers | |
---|---|
Member of Parliament for Lyme Regis | |
In office 19 March 1604 – 10 February 1610 | |
Personal details | |
Born | before Virginia Company of London | 24 April 1554
Military service | |
Branch | Royal Navy |
Years of service | 1595–1606 |
Rank | Captain |
Wars | Anglo-Spanish War |
Sir George Somers (before 24 April 1554 – 9 November 1610) was an English privateer and naval hero, knighted for his achievements and the Admiral of the
Career
Somers was born in Lyme Regis, Dorset, in 1554, the son of John Somers and his wife. From a young age he became a skilled and well-known seaman and owned at least one ship, the Julian, whose home port was Lyme Regis. Somers' first venture in command of the Flibcote, in company of three other vessels during the undeclared Anglo-Spanish War, on a raid to Spain; he brought home Spanish prizes worth more than £8,000.[1]
Preston Somers Expedition
Somers then joined up with another seaman
After the failure of a
Virginia Company
In 1609, Somers was appointed as admiral of the
On 25 July, the fleet ran into a strong storm, probably a
When he spied land on the morning of 28 July, the water in the hold had risen to nine feet, and crew and passengers had been driven past the point of exhaustion. Somers deliberately drove the ship onto the reefs of what proved to be Bermuda in order to prevent its foundering. This allowed all 150 people and the dog aboard to reach shore safely, at what they later named Discovery Bay. Not seeing them again, those who continued on to Virginia presumed that Somers and the others had died in the storm, which had battered the relief fleet and damaged its supplies.
Somers and his company remained in Bermuda for 10 months, living on food they could gather on the island and fish from the sea. Some commentators believe that this incident inspired William Shakespeare's play The Tempest.[5] During their time on the islands, the crew and passengers built a church and houses, the start of the Bermuda colony. Somers and Sir Thomas Gates oversaw the construction of two small ships, the Deliverance and the Patience. They were built from local timber (Bermuda Cedar) and the salvaged spars and rigging of the wrecked Sea Venture.
In May 1610, the ships set sail for Jamestown, with the surviving 142 castaways on board taking food from the island. When they reached the settlement, they found it nearly destroyed by the
Somers returned to Bermuda in the Patience to collect more food, but he became ill on the journey. He died in Bermuda on November 9, 1610, at age 56. Local legend says that he loved Bermuda so much that he requested that his heart be buried there. A marker in Somers' Gardens in St. George's marks the approximate location where his heart was supposed to have been buried. The remainder of his body was taken back to England and buried in his home hamlet of Whitchurch Canonicorum near to the town of Lyme Regis.
References
Footnotes
- ^ Shorto, Gavin (13 June 2013). "George Somers, Amyas Preston and the Burning of Caracas". The Bermudian. Archived from the original on 13 May 2016. Retrieved 28 April 2016.
- ^ Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900. p 305 .
- ^ John Lombardi, Venezuela, Oxford, England, 1982, p 72
- ^ Navy and Army Illustrated, Volume 15. Hudson & Kearns. 1902. p. 409.
- ISBN 978-0-670-02096-6
Bibliography
- Dwyer, Jack. 2009. Dorset Pioneers, ISBN 978-0-7524-5346-0
- Glover, Lorri and Daniel Blake Smith. The Shipwreck That Saved Jamestown: The Sea Venture Castaways and the Fate of America, New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2008
- Mayden, David. 1998. Wars of the Americas: A Chronology of Armed Conflict in the New World, 1492 to the Present. Editorial ABC-CLIO.
- Raine, David. Sir George Somers: A Man and his Times