Isle of Devils

Englishman Samuel Silas Jordan was sailing to the Jamestown Colony when disaster struck. In 1609, a powerful hurricane drove his ship, The Sea Venture, off course wrecking it on a remote island known as the Isle of Devils—today called Bermuda.

At the time, Bermuda was feared by sailors. Strange sounds, violent storms, and its isolation had given it a reputation as a cursed place. Yet the survivors of The Sea Venture discovered something unexpected: abundant food, and the means to rebuild ships. They collected rain water in barrels pulled from the wreckage. Against all odds, they lived.

News of the dramatic shipwreck and survival spread quickly in England. Detailed, firsthand accounts described the storm, the wreck, and life on the island. Not long afterward, William Shakespeare wrote The Tempest, a play set on a mysterious island shaped by shipwreck, magic, and transformation.

While The Tempest is a work of imagination, many scholars believe Shakespeare drew inspiration from reports of the Sea Venture disaster. The parallels - violent storms, isolation, and survival are striking.

This children’s story explores a real event at sea that lives on, both in the Coat of Arms of Bermuda and perhaps became part of literature, showing how history can spark imagination.

I include this lineage (click on book pages below) not as a claim of ownership, of course, but as an invitation to inquiry (and as entertainment for my own grandchildren). This book, while planting only a seed for a child’s future learning “connections,” explores how people can bravely survive and prosper even under the most challenging situations.

The coat of arms for the Bermuda Company (a version of which was adopted as the country's official coat of arms in 1910). A red lion holds the scene of the wreck in his paws beneath the Latin inscription Quo fata Ferunt, or "whither the Fates carry [us]." That phrase, taken from Virgil's Aeneid, would become the official motto for Bermuda.