Free A Brave Vessel: The True Tale of the Castaways Who Rescued Jamestown and Inspired Shakespeare'sThe Tempest by Hobson Woodward

come.
    As the ship was pushed northeast into the Atlantic with the hurricane, the wind and rain that had begun on Monday continued to lash the vessel. To the people on the Sea Venture the storm seemed endless. As Thursday night fell the voyagers were in a dark mood, but it was a mood that would be unexpectedly brightened at the darkest hour. Near midnight George Somers noticed an eerie luminescence in the rigging of the ship. Knowing that his fellows could do with a diversion, he called to them and pointed to the flitting radiance on the masts and yards. Strachey was among the off-duty bailers who ventured above.
    “Upon the Thursday night,” Strachey reported, “Sir George Somers being upon the watch had an apparition of a little round light like a faint star, trembling and streaming along with a sparkling blaze half the height upon the mainmast, and shooting sometimes from shroud to shroud, attempting to settle as it were upon any of the four shrouds, and for three or four hours together, or rather more, half the night it kept with us, running sometimes along the main yard to the very end, and then returning, at which, Sir George Somers called diverse about him, and showed them the same, who observed it with much wonder and carefulness.”
    Static electricity had built up on the rigging as the ship moved across the surface of the sea, so much so that the rigging was alight with the plasma energy known as St. Elmo’s fire. The phenomenon is often a sign of an imminent lightning strike, but on the Sea Venture it proved only a benign distraction. The uneducated people on board were awed by it, Strachey said, but the experienced officers and learned gentlemen saw it only as a curiosity. The luminescence dissipated with the first gray of dawn. “Towards the morning watch they lost the sight of it and knew not what way it made,” Strachey said. “The superstitious seamen make many constructions of this sea fire, which nevertheless is usual in storms.”
     
     
    In the dawn of Friday morning the marvel of St. Elmo’s fire was gone. The Sea Venture voyagers were incredulous that the storm still raged around them after four days, but they stayed at their tasks. The flood in the hold continued to gain on the bailers and pumpers, and the leaders of the expedition began to consider other ways to lighten the ship. The step of last resort was contemplated but so far not done—some on the Sea Venture , Strachey reported, “purposed to have cut down the mainmast, the more to lighten her, for we were much spent, and our men so weary, as their strengths together failed them, with their hearts, having travailed now from Tuesday till Friday morning, day and night, without either sleep or food.”
    Despite the efforts of Somers and Gates to keep the men working, most were in despair. “It being now Friday, the fourth morning, it wanted little but that there had been a general determination to have shut up hatches and commending our sinful souls to God, committed the ship to the mercy of the sea,” Strachey said. “Surely that night we must have done it, and that night had we then perished.” Passenger Silvester Jourdain recalled that many of the off-duty pumpers and bailers were lying down in dark places on the ship. “They were so overwearied and their spirits so spent with long fasting and continuance of their labor that for the most part they were fallen asleep in corners and wheresoever they chanced first to sit or lie.” Flasks were passed and final toasts were made. “Some of them having some good and comfortable waters in the ship fetched them and drunk one to the other taking their last leave one of the other, until their more joyful and happy meeting in a more blessed world.”
    On the late morning of Friday, July 28, 1609, not everyone on the Sea Venture was asleep, but George Somers was losing his ability to keep the men working. Though the pumping and bailing continued, many of the off-duty workers appeared unlikely