University of Virginia Library

THE THREE KINGS OF BERMUDA.
AND THEIR TREASURE OF AMBERGRIS.

At the time that Sir George Somers was preparing to launch
his cedar-built bark, and sail for Virginia, there were three culprits
among his men, who had been guilty of capital offences.
One of them was shot; the others, named Christopher Carter
and Edward Waters, escaped. Waters, indeed, made a very narrow
escape, for he had actually been tied to a tree to be executed,
but cut the rope with a knife, which he had concealed about his
person, and fled to the woods, where he was joined by Carter.
These two worthies kept themselves concealed in the secret parts
of the island, until the departure of the two vessels. When Sir
George Somers revisited the island, in quest of supplies for the
Virginia colony, these culprits hovered about the landing-place,
and succeeded in persuading another seaman, named Edward
Chard, to join them, giving him the most seductive picture of the
ease and abundance in which they revelled.

When the bark that bore Sir George's body to England had
faded from the watery horizon, these three vagabonds walked
forth in their majesty and might, the lords and sole inhabitants

of these islands. For a time their little commonwealth went on
prosperously and happily. They built a house, sowed corn, and
the seeds of various fruits; and having plenty of hogs, wild fowl,
and fish of all kinds, with turtle in abundance, carried on their
tripartite sovereignty with great harmony and much feasting. All
kingdoms, however, are doomed to revolution, convulsion, or decay;
and so it fared with the empire of the three kings of Bermuda,
albeit they were monarchs without subjects. In an evil
hour, in their search after turtle, among the fissures of the rocks,
they came upon a great treasure of ambergris, which had been
cast on shore by the ocean. Besides a number of pieces of
smaller dimensions, there was one great mass, the largest that
had ever been known, weighing eighty pounds, and which of itself,
according to the market value of ambergris in those days, was
worth about nine or ten thousand pounds.

From that moment the happiness and harmony of the three
kings of Bermuda were gone for ever. While poor devils, with
nothing to share but the common blessings of the island, which
administered to present enjoyment, but had nothing of convertible
value, they were loving and united; but here was actual wealth,
which would make them rich men, whenever they could transport
it to market.

Adieu the delights of the island! They now became flat and
insipid. Each pictured to himself the consequence he might now
aspire to, in civilized life, could he once get there with this mass
of ambergris. No longer a poor Jack Tar, frolicking in the low
taverns of Wapping, he might roll through London in his coach,
and perchance arrive, like Whittington, at the dignity of Lord
Mayor.

With riches came envy and covetousness. Each was now for
assuming the supreme power, and getting the monopoly of the
ambergris. A civil war at length broke out: Chard and Waters
defied each other to mortal combat, and the kingdom of the Bermudas
was on the point of being deluged with royal blood. Fortunately,
Carter took no part in the bloody feud. Ambition might have
made him view it with secret exultation; for if either or both of
his brother potentates were slain in the conflict, he would be a
gainer in purse and ambergris. But he dreaded to be left alone
in this uninhabited island, and to find himself the monarch of a
solitude: so he secretly purloined and hid the weapons of the
belligerent rivals, who, having no means of carrying on the war,
gradually cooled down into a sullen armistice.

The arrival of Governor More, with an overpowering force of
sixty men, put an end to the empire. He took possession of the
kingdom, in the name of the Somer Island Company, and forthwith
proceeded to make a settlement. The three kings tacitly relinquished
their sway, but stood up stoutly for their treasure. It
was determined, however, that they had been fitted out at the expense,
and employed in the service, of the Virginia Company;
that they had found the ambergris while in the service of that
company, and on that company's land; that the ambergris therefore
belonged to that company, or rather to the Somer Island
Company, in consequence of their recent purchase of the island,
and all their appurtenances. Having thus legally established
their right, and being moreover able to back it by might, the
company laid the lion's paw upon the spoil; and nothing more
remains on historic record of the Three Kings of Bermuda, and
their treasure of ambergris.

The reader will now determine whether I am more extravagant
than most of the commentators on Shakespeare, in my surmise
that the story of Sir George Somers' shipwreck, and the subsequent
occurrences that took place on the uninhabited island
may have furnished the bard with some of the elements of his
drama of the Tempest. The tidings of the shipwreck, and of
the incidents connected with it, reached England not long before
the production of this drama, and made a great sensation there.
A narrative of the whole matter, from which most of the foregoing
particulars are extracted, was published at the time in London,
in a pamphlet form, and could not fail to be eagarly perused
by Shakespeare, and to make a vivid impression on his fancy.
His expression, in the Tempest, of “the still vext Bermoothes,”
accords exactly with the storm-beaten character of those islands.
The enchantments, too, with which he has clothed the island of
Prospero, may they not be traced to the wild and superstitious
notions entertained about the Bermudas? I have already cited
two passages from a pamphlet published at the time, showing
that they were esteemed “a most prodigious and inchanted place,”
and the “habitation of divells;” and another pamphlet, published
shortly afterward, observes: “And whereas it is reported that
this land of the Barmudas, with the islands about, (which are
many, at least an hundred), are inchanted, and kept with evil and
wicked spirits, it is a most idle false report.”[2]

The description, too, given in the same pamphlets, of the real
beauty and fertility of the Bermudas, and of their serene and

happy climate, so opposite to the dangerous and inhospitable character
with which they had been stigmatized, accords with the eulogium
of Sebastian on the island of Prospero.

I think too, in the exulting consciousness of ease, security,
and abundance, felt by the late tempest-tossed mariners, while
revelling in the plenteousness of the island, and their inclination
to remain there, released from the labors, the cares, and the artificial
restraints of civilized life, I can see something of the golden
commonwealth of honest Gonzalo:

But above all, in the three fugitive vagabonds who remained
in possession of the island of Bermuda, on the departure of their
comrades, and in their squabbles about supremacy, on the finding
of their treasure, I see typified Sebastian, Trinculo, and their
worthy companion Caliban:

I do not mean to hold up the incidents and characters in the
narrative and in the play as parallel, or as being strikingly similar:
neither would I insinuate that the narrative suggested the
play; I would only suppose that Shakespeare, being occupied
about that time on the drama of the Tempest, the main story of
which, I believe, is of Italian origin, had many of the fanciful
ideas of it suggested to his mind by the shipwreck of Sir George
Somers on the “still vext Bermoothes,” and by the popular superstitions
connected with these islands, and suddenly put in circulation
by that event.