This is the non-fiction
version (the fictional one is the blog of 12/20).
The sixth of July, Sir
Thomas Gates, lieutenant general, coming down to Point Comfort, the north wind
blowing rough he found had forced the longboat belonging to Algernon Fort to
the other shore upon Nansemond side, [about eight miles across] somewhat short of Weroscoick, which to recover again, one of the
lieutenant general’s men, Humfrey Blunt, in an old canoe made [went] over. But the wind driving him upon the
strand [shore], certain Indians
watching the occasion seized the poor fellow and led him up into the woods and
sacrificed him. It did not a little trouble the lieutenant governor, who since
his first landing in the country, how justly soever provoked, would not by any
means be wrought to a violent proceeding against them, for all the practices of
villainy with which they daily endangered our men, thinking it possible by a
more tractable course to win them to a better condition. But now, being
startled by this, he well perceived how little a fair and noble entreaty works
upon a barbarous disposition, and therefore in some measure purposed to be
revenged.
--William Strachey, “A True Reportory....” July 1610. Strachey sent
this long letter to a mysterious “unknown lady” in England. Its account of the
shipwreck on Bermuda inspired Shakespeare’s The
Tempest in 1611.
Revenge would come three
days later.
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