touch, but the approach was dangerous. There grew rumors of pirates, and
then of demons. "The Isles of Demons," was the name given to them. "The
most forlorn and unfortunate place in the world" was the description that
fitted them in those distant days:

All torment, trouble, wonder and amazement Inhabits here: some heavenly
power guide us Out of this fearful country.

When Shakespeare so wrote, there was news in England and talk went to and
fro of the shipwreck of the Sea Adventure upon the rocky teeth of the
Bermoothes, "uninhabitable and almost inaccessible," and of the escape and
dwelling there for months of Gates and Somers and the colonists in that
ship. It is generally assumed that this incident furnished timber for the
framework of The Tempest.

The storm that broke on St. James's Day, scattering the ships of the third
supply, drove the Sea Adventure here and there at will. Upon her watched
Gates and Somers and Newport, above a hundred men, and a few women and
children. There sprang a leak; all thought of death. Then rose a cry "Land
ho!" The storm abated, but the wind carried the Sea Adventure upon this
shore and grounded her upon a reef. A certain R. Rich, gentleman, one of
the voyagers, made and published a ballad upon the whole event. If it is
hardly Shakespearean music, yet it is not devoid of interest.

. . . The Seas did rage, the windes did blowe,
Distressed were they then;
Their shippe did leake, her tacklings breake,
In daunger were her men;
But heaven was pylotte in this storme,
And to an Iland neare,