Archaeologists at Virginia's Jamestown Island have found a ring they believe belonged to a man who knew William Shakespeare and inspired one of his plays: "The Tempest."
William Strachey's brass signet ring emerged last year from the muddy clay of the first permanent English settlement in America as researchers working for the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities were working on the first major excavation of the site in more than 50 years.Strachey's account of the Bermuda shipwreck that briefly stranded him and a band of would-be colonists in 1609 is generally considered by scholars to have been used by Shakespeare as background material in writing a play about a Neapolitan king's grounding in 1610-11.
"To put Jamestown into historical perspective, we have often referred to it as Shakespearean America," said Peter Dun Grover, executive director of the association. "Now we have a direct and tangible link."
The ring is distinctive, featuring a splayed eagle with a cross on its chest. The image was part of Strachey's family crest, registered with the College of Heraldry. Such rings were used to make unique impressions on seals attached to letters and official documents to keep the messages confidential and to verify their authenticity.
Finding anything that can be linked to an individual known to history is rare in archaeology, which often has to make do with objects whose purpose and time are clear but whose ownership is at best tied to a group or household.
"This is a very significant find," said Bill Kelso, director of archaeology for the association. "Although we have found more than 100,000 new artifacts at the site, this is the first that can be tied to a specific individual."
It was located in a part of the excavation that the researchers have dubbed the "towne landfill," just outside the palisades of the original Jamestown fort, whose faint imprint Kelso and his colleagues first reported unearthing last fall.
Also found during the dig was the grave of one of the first settlers, along with pieces of armor and bullets, coins, medallions and many shards of pottery.
Although he was a member of England's landed gentry who moved in London's literary and dramatic circles, Strachey had little family wealth and like many members of his class sought fortune and adventure overseas.
He was aboard the Sea Venture, flagship of a nine-vessel fleet led by Sir William Somers, admiral of the Virginia Company, and Sir Thomas Gates, the colony's new governor in the summer of 1609. The ships were scattered by a hurricane, which eventually wrecked the Sea Venture on the reefs of Bermuda, then an uninhabited island 600 miles short of their destination. Most of those on board survived and spent the next nine months salvaging the wreck and building a new ship, which they eventually sailed on to Jamestown, arriving in May 1610 to the surprise of their compatriots, who thought they had been killed in the storm.
Strachey was to stay on in Jamestown another year, acting as secretary to the colony. Gov. Gates spent less than three months surveying his domain before returning to England, carrying with him a lengthy Strachey letter addressed to an unidentified "Excellent Lady" and dated July 15, 1610.
Another 15 years would pass, and Strachey would be four years in his grave, before the letter was published as the "True Reportory of the Wrack and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates Knight." But his account of the sensational story was widely circulated among backers of the Virginia colony in London that fall, a year before Strachey returned home, as were shorter printed accounts put out from the recollections of other Sea Venture survivors.
Literary historians have found many similarities of scenes and descriptions between Strachey's report and Shakespeare's play.