From William Strachey's "True repertory of the wreck and redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, July 15, 1610" (pub. 1625, in Purchas His Pilgrimes, Part Four, Book Nine, Chapter Six,
but almost certainly circulating in manuscript before then)

     S. James his day, July 24, being Monday (preparing for no less all the black night before), the clouds gathering thick  upon us, and the winds singing, and whistling most unusually, which made us to cast off our Pinnace...a dreadful storm and  hideous began to blow from out the North-east, which swelling, and roaring as it were by fits, some hours with more violence then  others, at length did beat all light from heaven; which like an hell of darkness turned black upon us, so much the more fuller  or horror, as in such cases horror and fear use to overrun the troubled, and overmastered senses of all, which (taken up with  amazement), the ears lay so sensible to the terrible cries, and murmurs of the winds, and distraction ëof our company, as who  was most armed, and best prepared, was not a little shaken...
    For four and twenty hours the storm in a restless tumult, had blown so exceedingly, as we could not apprehend in our  imaginations any possibility of greater violence, yet did wee still find it, not only more terrible, but more constant, fury added to  fury, and one storm urging a second more outrageous than the former; whether it so wrought upon our fears, or indeed met with  new forces: Sometimes strikes in our ship amongst women, and passengers, not used to such hurly and discomforts, made us look one upon e the other with troubled hearts, and panting bosoms: our clamors drowned in the winds, and the winds in thunder. Prayers might well be in the heart and lips, but drowned in the outcries of the officers: nothing heard that could give comfort, nothing seen that might encourage hopeÖThe Sea swelled above the clouds, and gave battle unto heaven. It could not be said to rain; the waters like whole rivers did flood in the air. And this I did still observe, that whereas upon the land when a storm hath poured it self forth once in drifts of rain, the wind as beaten down, and vanquished therewith, not long after endureth: here the glut of water (as if throttling the wind ere while) was no sooner a little emptied and qualified, but instantly the winds (as having gotten their mouths now free, and at liberty) spake more loud, and grew more tumultuous, and malignantÖ
    Howbeit this was not all; it pleased God to bring a greater affliction yet upon us; for in the beginning of the storm we had received likewise a mighty leak. And the ship in every joint almost, having spewed out her oakum, before we were awareÖwas grown five foot suddenly deep with water above her ballast, and we almost drowned within, whiles we sat looking when to perish from above. This imparting no less terror than danger, ran through the whole ship with much fright and amazement, startled and turned the blood, and took down the braves of the most hardy Mariner of them all, insomuch as he that before happily felt not the sorrow of others, now began to sorrow for himself, when he saw such a pond of water so suddenly broken in and which he knew could not (without present avoiding) but instantly sink himÖ.The lord knoweth, I had as little hope, as desire of life in the storm, and in this, it went beyond my will; yet we did, either because so dear are a few lingering hours of life in all mankind, or that our Christian knowledges taught us, how much we owed to the rites of Nature, as bound, not to be false to our selves, or to neglect the means of our own preservation; the most despaireful things amongst men, being matters of no wonder no moment with Him, who is the rich fountain and admirable essence of all mercyÖ
    [the governor heartens every man unto his labor; the sea casts the m down, the sky looks so black that even the stars are invisible, and ] on the Thursday night Sir George Summers being upon the watch, had an apparition of a little round light, like a faint star, trembling, and streaming along with a sparkling blaze, half the height upon the mainmast, and shooting sometimes from shroud to shroud, tempting to settle as it were upon any of the four shrouds; [the light stays with them half the night, and suddenly disappears upon the morning watch]. The superstitious seamen make many constructions of this Sea-fire, which nevertheless is usual in storms: the sameÖwhich the Grecians were wont in the Mediterranean to call Castor and Pollux, of which, if one only appeared without the other, they took it for an evil sign of great tempestÖ
    [they steered east and south to try to remain upright, threw overboard their luggage, including beer, hogsheads of oil, cider, wine and vinegar.] But see the goodness and sweet introduction of better hope, by our merciful God given unto us. Sir George Summers , when no man dreamed of such happiness, had discovered, and cried LandÖ[they land as near as they can, 3/4 of a mile within shore.]
We found it to be the dangerous and dreaded island, or rather islands, of the BermudaÖ. And that the rather, because they be so terrible to all that ever touched on them, and such tempests, thunders and other fearful objects are seen and heard about them that they be called commonly, the devils islands, and are feared and voided of all sear travelers alive, above any other place in this world. Yet it had pleased our merciful God, to make even this hideous and hated place both the place of our safety, and means of our deliverance.
And hereby I hope to deliver the world from a foul and general error: it being counted of most, that they can be no habitation for men, but rather given over to devils and spirits; whereas indeed we find them now by experience, as habitable and commodious as most countries of the same climate and situations: insomuch as if the entrance into them were as easy as the place itself is contenting, it had long ere this been inhabited, as well as other islands. Thus shall we make it appear that truth is the daughter of time, and that men ought to deny every thing which is not subject to their own senseÖ
    Sure it is, that there are no rivers nor running springs of water to be found upon any of them: when we came first we digged and found certain gushings and soft bubblings, which being either in bottoms, or on the side of hanging ground, were only fed with rainwater, which nevertheless soon sinketh into the earth and vanisheth awayÖA kind of web-footed fowl there is, of the bigness of an English green Plover, or Sea mew, which all the summer we saw it notÖTheir color is inclining to russet, with white bellies (as are likewise the long feathers of their wings russet and white) these gather themselves together and breed in those islands which are high, and so far alone into the sea, that the wild hogs cannot swim over them, and there in the ground they have their burrows, like conies in a warren, and so brought in the loose mould, though not so deep: which birds we caught. I have been at the taking of 300 in an hour, and we might have laden our boats. Our men found a pretty way to take them, which was standing on the rocks or sands by the seaside, and hallooing, laughing, and making the strangest outcry that possibly they could; with the noise whereof the birds would come flocking to that place, and settle upon the very arms and head of him that so cried, and still creep nearer and near, answering the noise themselves: by which our men would weigh them with their hand, and which weighted heaviest they took for the best and let the others alone, and so our men would take 20 dozen in two hours of the chiefest of them; and they were a good an well relished fowl, fat and full as a partridgeÖthe tortoise is reasonable toothsome (some say) wholesome meat. I am sure our company liked the meat of them very well, and one tortoise would go further among them, than three hogs. One Turtle (for so we called them) feasted well a dozen messes, appointing six to every mess. It is such a kind of meat, as a man can neither absolutely call fish nor flesh, keeping most what in the waterÖ
[there were several mutinies] In these dangers and devilish disquiets (whilst the almighty God wrought for us and sent us, miraculously delivered from the calamities of the sea, all blessings upon the shore to content and bind us to gratefulness) thus enraged amongst ourselves to the destruction of each other, into what a mischief and misery had we been given up had we not had a governor with his authority to have suppressed the same? Yet was there a worse practice, faction and conjuration afoot, deadly and bloody, in which the life of our governor, with many others, were threatened, and could not but miscarry in his fall. But such is ever the will of God (who in the execution of his judgements breaketh the firebrands upon the head of him who first kindleth them), there were those who conceived that our governor indeed neither durst nor had authority to put in execution or pass the act of justice upon anyone, how treacherous or impious soever. They had now purposed to have made a surprise of the Storehouse,  and to have forced from thence, what was therein either of meal, cloth, cables, arms, sails, oars or what else if pleased God that we have recovered from the wreck, and was to serve our general necessity and use, either from the relief of us, while we stayed here, or for the carrying of us from this place again, when our pinnace should have been furnished.
    But as all giddy and lawless attempts, have always something of imperfection, and that as well by the property of the action, which holdeth of disobedience and rebellion (both full of fear) as through the ignorance of the devisers themselves; so in this (besides those defects) there were some of the association, who not strong enough fortified in their own conceits, break from the plot itself, and(before the time was ripe for the execution thereof) discovered the whole order, and every agent, and actor thereof, who nevertheless were not suddenly apprehended, by reason the confederates were divided and separated in place, some with us, and the chief with Sir George Summers in his islandÖbut good watch passed upon them, every man from thenceforth commanded to wear his weapon, without which before, we freely walked from quarter to quarter, and conversed among ourselves, and every man advised to stand upon his guard, his own life not being in safety, whilst his next neighbor was not to be trusted.
[on 13 March, Henry Paine, a gentleman, talks back to his commander,] struck at him, doubled his blows, and when he was not suffered to close with him, went off the guard, scoffing at the double diligence and attendance of the watch appointed by the governor for much purpose, as he said; upon which the watch telling him  if the governor should understand of his insolency, it might turn him to much blame, and haply be as much as his life were worth. The said Paine replied with a settled and bitter violence and in such unreverent terms as I should offend the modest ear too much to express it in his own phrase, but the contents were how the governor had no authority of that quality to justify upon anyone how mean soever in the colony and action of that nature, and therefore let the governor (said he) kiss etc. [the next day Paine is condemned to death by hanging, but pleading his rank as a gentleman, he is shot at sundown instead].
    [Some of the settlers wish to remain in Bermuda, with the governorís support, and put together a petition. the governor grants the petition, but only 2 of the settlers eventually decide to remain on the island.]
[When they finally, arrive at Jamestown, they find it in a state of shocking mismanagement: the settlers canít fish, and thus have difficulty feeding themselves; Strachey speculates  that the colony declined because] they are not an hundred or two of debauched hands, dropped forth by year after year, with penury, and leisure, ill provided for before they come, and worse to be governed when they are here, men of such distempered bodies, and infected minds, whom no examples daily before their eyes, either of goodness or punishment can deter form their habitual impieties, or terrify from a shameful death, that must be the carpenters, and workmen in this so glorious a building.
    [the settlers also had to deal with the original inhabitants of the coast. While one of the colonists was trying to rescue a stranded longboat near a Native village,] 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.
     [Strachey writes a marginal note about this episode: "Can a leopard change his spots? Can a savage remaining a savage be civil? Were not we ourselves made and not born civil in our progenitorsí days? and were not Caesarís Britons as brutish as Virginians? The Roman swords were best teachers of civility to this and other countries near us.]
[Strachey further analyzes the reasons behind the problems of the colony] The ground of all those miseries was the permissive providence of God, who, in the forementioned violent storm separated the head from the body, all the vital powers of regiment being exiled with Sir Thomas Gates in those unfortunate (yet fortunate) islands. The broken remainder of those supplies made a greater shipwreck in the continent of Virginia by the tempest of dissension; every man overvaluing his own worth would be a commander, every man underprizing another's value denied to be commanded.