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In reply to the discussion: Tell us some famous event an ancestor of yours was involved in? My grandfather found [View all]Waiting For Everyman
(9,385 posts)400+ years ago in 1607. The ship was hit by a hurricane off of Bermuda (which was unclaimed until then), and delayed quite a bit. All aboard the ship survived, not one life was lost out of 100+ people, but it took months to rebuild it out of native wood to set off again for Virginia. Unfortunately, few of the Virginians were left alive by then. Because my ancestor was a stockholder in the Virginia Company, he automatically became a stockholder of the Bermuda company as well. It is said that he made more than a million pounds from ambergris on Bermuda. I'm not sure I believe that's even possible, but that would be in 1600's currency. Over and over again my branch of the family kept being swindled out of its land/inheritance, so it didn't do me any good, I'm broke as a church-mouse.
Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' was inspired by the shipwreck incident. What I can't get over is... imagine being out in the ocean in one of those smallish ships and, first of all, being unlucky enough to be shipwrecked, but then at the same time being lucky enough to land on tiny Bermuda in the midst of all that water.
I do know this much - every boat I've been on (6 in my lifetime) has sunk. I don't "test it" anymore, as of decades ago. I just stay off the water. And Waters was the family name involved. Weird, isn't it? My ancestor's arms were three swans divided by silver and blue wavy lines on a black shield.
125 years before that, in the mid to late 1400's, an ancestor in the same family, was the York herald for Edward IV and Richard III. He was the first York herald actually documented in records which still exist today, even though two slightly earlier ones are known but no records of them survive.