Sir George Somers

Who is Sir George Somers?

Sir George Somers was an English admiral and privateer whose accidental shipwreck led directly to the founding of the Bermuda colony. In 1609, while serving as admiral of a fleet carrying settlers and supplies to Jamestown, Virginia, Somers deliberately drove his flagship, the Sea Venture, onto the reefs of Bermuda during a violent storm to save the passengers and crew from drowning. All aboard survived, becoming the first English settlers on the previously uninhabited islands. During the months the castaways spent building new ships from Bermuda cedar and salvaged materials, they explored and documented the islands, and their eventual voyage on to Virginia carried news of Bermuda back to England, prompting the Virginia Company to claim the territory soon after. Somers himself returned to Bermuda in 1610 to fetch food supplies for the struggling Jamestown colony but died there later that year. The colony's original name, the Somers Isles, still appears on Bermuda's coat of arms in his honor, and the wreck of the Sea Venture is widely credited as an inspiration for elements of Shakespeare's play The Tempest.

Sources: William Strachey, A True Reportory of the Wracke and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, Knight (1610 letter) · Sylvester Jourdain, A Discovery of the Bermudas, Otherwise Called the Isle of Devils (1610) · Bermuda National Trust, historical records on the settlement of Bermuda