Four hundred and ten years ago today - between nine and ten o'clock in the morning, in fact, the Virginia Company's ship Plough arrived with the first settlers deliberately sent to colonize Bermuda. The VC chose Richard Moore as its first governor, a member of London's Carpenter's Guild who essentially was a professional project manager who supervised teams of craftsmen building large timber frame houses. He was accompanied by a minister and fifty settlers that included men, women, and children. The Plough came through Town Cut and sailed into Smith's Sound, anchoring near St. David's. Moore and company landed and joined in prayers of thanks for their safe arrival. As they prayed, Carter, Chard, and Waters (the three sailors left behind by Sir George Somers who were living on Smith's Island) came over by boat to investigate the newcomers - and learned that the three of them were now living on Virginia Company property!
On Moore's second day in Bermuda, the settlers did.... nothing - it was the Sabbath and was observed with prayer and no work - but on Monday they got to work clearing land and building houses on Smith's Island after moving the
Plough "higher into the harbour, to the place
where these three men had planted themselves." An unknown author documented the settlers' first forty or so days until the
Plough departed and sent his account back to London where it was published with Silvester Jourdain's
Plaine Description of the Barmudas, which was spent hunting hogs, catching birds, fish, and turtles, feasting on palmetto tops, and planting:
"After the time of our landing many of the company digged
certaine plats of ground, and sowed diuers sortes of seedes to
make triall of the ground, and for certaine they were seen aboue
the ground sprung vp the fourth day after their sowing:
and
amongst all the rest of the seeds, the Cowcumber and the
Mellon were forward
:
we haue set and sowed fourescore and
one sorts of seeds,
it
was ten dayes before the shippes comming
away, and for the most part they are all come vp."
The unknown settler-author also forwarded the text of a covenant to which Moore and the other settlers bound themselves on August 2 - arguably Bermuda's first constitution: "Seeing the true worship of God and
a
holy Life
cannot bee severed, wee doe therefore promise
in
the presence
aforesaid, That to the uttermost of our power we will live together
in
doing that which
is just, both towards God and Man" and also " to avoide all things that stand not with
the good estate of
a Christian Church and well governed Commonwealth." Eight years before the more well-known Mayflower Compact, Bermuda's first settlers gathered on Smith's Island to pledge themselves to create an orderly Godly community.
Aside from this window into English first impressions of Bermuda's bounty, this first "Letter from Bermuda" hints at the sorts of features we might find at Smallpox Bay if this was Moore's landfall - houses, gardens, perhaps a well. The account also establishes that Moore relocated to found the Town of St. George only after the Plough departed, or the author would have mentioned this.
Although I would love to report to you that we stood on the very spot where Moore's compact was formalized on
Plough Day, the current 16-24 knot winds buffeting us were not favourable to crossing over from Paget Island in a small boat, so the team enjoyed a surprise day off while I gave public lectures about the
Plough's arrival and Bermuda's first decade of settlement at the Globe Hotel in St. George's. It was a fun time and well attended - but a very wet ride to and from town through whitecaps!
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