George Somers Tempest". During their time on the islands, the crew and passengers built a church and houses, the start of the Bermuda colony. Somers and Sir Thomas Gates oversaw the construction of two small ships, the "Deliverance" and the "Patience." They were built from local timber (Bermuda Cedar) and the salvaged spars and rigging of the wrecked "Sea Venture." In May 1610 the ships set sail for Jamestown, with the surviving 142 castaways on board taking food from the island. When they reached the settlement, they found it nearly destroyed by the famine and disease of what has been called the
Crooked Island, Bahamas Crooked Island, Bahamas Crooked Island is an island and district, part of a group of Bahamian islands defining a large, shallow lagoon called the Bight of Acklins, of which the largest are Crooked Island in the north and Acklins in the south-east, and the smaller are Long Cay (once known as Fortune Island) in the north-west, and Castle Island in the south. The islands were settled by American Loyalists in the late 1780s who set cotton plantations using over 1,000 slaves. After the abolition of slavery in the British Empire these became uneconomical, and the replacement income from sponge diving