Whither the Fates Carry

Whither the Fates Carry Anchors aweigh in 1609, Anno Domini! A convoy of ships laden with cargo set sail And departed Plymouth harbour to cross the Atlantic For Jamestown, Virginia, in the New World. But a hurricane wreaked havoc in the Sargasso, Pitching and rolling the vessels in the maelstrom. The flagship Sea Venture struggled to stay on course Until separated from the others by the storm. This being her maiden voyage and the timbers not yet set, The stricken ship took on water during the tempest, And the crew and passengers bailed until exhaustion: “Whither the fates carry!” on a sea of sargassum. When Admiral Somers sighted the Virgineola coastline, He ran the Sea Venture onto a reef near to Gates Bay, Between the Isle of Devils and the open water, And not a castaway was lost as they settled on Somers Isles. Within years, the Sea Venture was stripped And then quietly slipped into the depths. Today she is depicted in Bermuda’s coat of arms, On a shield battling the storm held by a red lion. *** Note: On June 2, 1609, a convoy of seven ships and two pinnaces departed Plymouth, England, carrying passengers and supplies bound for the Jamestown Colony in Virginia, in the New World, which had been established earlier, in 1607. The Sea Venture (a 300-ton vessel carrying 150 passengers and crew) was on her maiden voyage as the flagship, commanded by Admiral Sir George Somers (1554–1610). Sir George Somers is credited as the founder of the English colony on the islands of Bermuda, which were named in his honour, the Somers Isles. The Bermuda Islands (aka the Isle of Devils) were uninhabited by indigenous people when discovered by the 16th-century Spanish explorer Juan de Bermúdez around 1505. On July 24, 1609, the convoy sailed into a storm that separated the Sea Venture from the other ships. Because the Sea Venture was relatively new, and her timbers not yet set, she began taking on water, and all attempts to bail out the water failed. On July 28, 1609, Admiral Somers sighted land and ran the ship onto the reefs near to Gates Bay of St. George’s Island in the Bermudian Islands archipelago. No lives were lost. Ironically, the Sargasso Sea is the calmest sea on the planet, and yet it, along with the Bermuda Islands, is located in the path most frequently taken by Atlantic hurricanes, often referred to as Hurricane Alley. Bermuda’s Coat of Arms motto, “Quo Fata Ferunt” (Whither the Fates Carry [Us]) is taken from Virgil’s Aeneid (Book V: 707–710), in which Aeneas (a shipwrecked Trojan sailor on the island of Sicily) has a vision of his father speaking to him, “... Quo fata trahunt (or ferunt) retrahuntque sequamur; Quidquid erit, superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est.” (“...let us follow where the Fates take us or take us back; Whatever will be, every fortune/misfortune can be overcome through perseverance”). The Bermudian Coat of Arms depicts a red lion holding a shield (representing Bermuda’s relationship with Great Britain) and a ship in a storm (representative of the Sea Venture caught up in the tempest and the prelude to the settlement of Bermuda by the castaway passengers and crew). The Coat of Arms has been in use since 1624 and was formally adopted as Bermuda’s Coat of Arms in 1910 by Bermuda.