Bermuda

            
            
             In 1505, the Bermudas were accidentally discovered by Juan de Bermudez when his ship, La Garza, ran aground on the shallow shoals that surrounded the island. However, Bermuda stayed uninhabited until 1609 when Admiral George Somers landed there. In 1609, Somers was made admiral of the Virginia Company's nine vessel Third Relief Fleet that sailed from London, to Plymouth, and then left for Virginia.
             At the time it was the largest, most expensive colonial expedition by any nation, financed privately by London based merchants and nobleman. Their intentions were to colonize the New World for Britain in competition with Spain, France and the Netherlands. John G. Reid wrote that "they wanted to give Britons a fresh start in virgin lands, to relieve overcrowding in Britain's cities; and to be seen as the men who engineered such initiatives." This was the way that colonization was handled then.
             For many days, all went well, and as planned. The Sea Venture was a newly built from an English shipyard. However, the weather started to go bad. On July 25, 1609 the Sea Venture was caught in a fierce hurricane off the coast of the Azores. The extreme winds carried the ship hundreds of miles off of the scheduled course. All of the passengers were sea sick and miserable. Then she was wrecked off the reefs of Bermuda's present day Discovery Bay, with no loss of life. Admiral Sir George Somers was the first man to explore and map Bermuda.
             Bermuda was then known as Virgineola, which was a smaller edition of Virginia, the British colony founded a few years earlier in tribute to the late Queen Elizabeth. For leadership, courage at sea and other skills Admiral Somers showed, the islands became known as the Somers Isles, still Bermuda's official alternate name. In the meantime seven of the nine vessels of the Third Supply Relief Fleet eventually reached Virginia in August 1609. The others were the Diamond, Blessing, Falcon, Unitie, Lion, and The Swallow.