Sea Venture was scarcely kept afloat by bailing.  We have a vivid picture of the stanch Somers sitting upon the poop of the ship, where he sat three days and three nights together, without much meat and little or no sleep, conning the ship to keep her as upright as he could, until he happily descried land.  The ship went ashore and was wedged into the rocks so fast that it held together till all were got ashore, and a good part of the goods and provisions, and the tackling and iron of the ship necessary for the building and furnishing of a new ship.

This good fortune and the subsequent prosperous life on the island and final deliverance was due to the noble Somers, or Sommers, after whom the Bermudas were long called “Sommers Isles,” which was gradually corrupted into “The Summer Isles.”  These islands of Bermuda had ever been accounted an enchanted pile of rocks and a desert inhabitation for devils, which the navigator and mariner avoided as Scylla and Charybdis, or the devil himself.  But this shipwrecked company found it the most delightful country in the world, the climate was enchanting, delicious fruits abounded, the waters swarmed with fish, some of them big enough to nearly drag the fishers into the sea, while whales could be heard spouting and nosing about the rocks at night; birds fat and tame and willing to be eaten covered all the bushes, and such droves of wild hogs covered the island that the slaughter of them for months seemed not to diminish their number.  The friendly disposition of the birds seemed most to impress the writer of the “True Declaration of Virginia.”  He remembers how the ravens fed Elias in the brook Cedron; “so God provided for our disconsolate people in the midst of the sea by foules; but with an admirable difference; unto Elias the ravens brought meat, unto our men the foules brought (themselves) for meate:  for when they whistled, or made any strange noyse, the foules would come and sit on their shoulders, they would suffer themselves to be taken and weighed by our men, who would make choice of the fairest and fattest and let flie the leane and lightest, an accident [the chronicler exclaims], I take it [and everybody will take it], that cannot be paralleled by any Historie, except when God sent abundance of Quayles to feed his Israel in the barren wilderness.”

The rescued voyagers built themselves comfortable houses on the island, and dwelt there nine months in good health and plentifully fed.  Sunday was carefully observed, with sermons by Mr. Buck, the chaplain, an Oxford man, who was assisted in the services by Stephen Hopkins, one of the Puritans who were in the company.  A marriage was celebrated between Thomas Powell, the cook of Sir George Somers, and Elizabeth Persons, the servant of Mrs. Horlow.  Two children were also born, a boy who was christened Bermudas and a girl Bermuda.  The girl was the child of Mr. John Rolfe and wife, the Rolfe who was shortly afterward to become famous by another marriage.