Bermuda Coins 90 Dollars Gold Coin 2006 Shipwreck Series, the Sea Venture.
Obverse: Portrait by sculptor Ian Rank-Broadley of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in profile, together with the inscription "BERMUDA", "ELIZABETH II" and the respective year "2006".
Reverse: The sailing ship Sea Venture in the centre and the circumferential lettering with the inscriptions “SEA VENTURE”, “Anno Domini 1609”, a depiction of a hog, and the denomination “NINETY DOLLARS”;
Sea Venture
Sea Venture was a seventeenth-century English sailing ship that wrecked in Bermuda. Sea Venture 's wreck is widely thought to have been the inspiration for Shakespeare's play, The Tempest. She was the flagship of the London Company, and was a highly unusual vessel for her day.
The construction of Sea Venture
In response to the inadequacy of its vessels, the Company built, probably in Aldeburgh, Sea Venture as England's first purpose-designed emigrant ship. She measured "300 tunnes", cost £1,500, and differed from her contemporaries primarily in her internal arrangements. Her guns were placed on her main deck, rather than below decks as was then the norm. This meant the ship did not need double-timbering, and she may have been the first single-timbered, armed merchant ship built in England. The hold was sheathed and furnished for passengers. She was armed with eight 9-pounder (4.1 kg) demi-culverins, eight 5-pounder (2.3 kg) sakers, four 3-pounder (1.4 kg) falcons, and four arquebuses. The ship was launched in 1609, and her uncompleted journey to Jamestown appears to have been her maiden voyage.
The loss of Sea Venture
On 2 June 1609, Sea Venture set sail from Plymouth as the flagship of a seven-ship fleet (towing two additional pinnaces) destined for Jamestown, Virginia as part of the Third Supply, carrying 500 to 600 people (it is unclear whether that number includes crew, or only settlers). On 24 July, the fleet ran into a strong storm, likely a hurricane, and the ships were separated. Sea Venture fought the storm for three days. Comparably sized ships had survived such weather, but Sea Venture had a critical flaw in her newness: her timbers had not set. The caulking was forced from between them, and the ship began to leak rapidly. All hands were applied to bailing, but water continued to rise in the hold. The ship's starboard-side guns were reportedly jettisoned (though two from the port-side were salvaged from the wreck in 1612 to arm the first forts) to raise her buoyancy, but this only delayed the inevitable. The Admiral of the Company himself, Sir George Somers, was at the helm through the storm. When he spied land on the morning of 25 July, the water in the hold had risen to 9 feet (2.7 m), and crew and passengers had been driven past the point of exhaustion. Somers deliberately drove the ship onto the reefs of what proved to be Bermuda in order to prevent its foundering. This allowed all 150 people aboard, and one dog, to be landed safely ashore.