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Plymouth the twentieth day, where Sir George Somers with two small vessels consorted with us. Here we took into the Blessing (being the ship wherein I went) six mares and two horses, and the fleet laid in some necessaries belonging to the action, in which business we spent till the second of June.”
    The port town on the Devon coast was well equipped to supply the fleet. A stone quay built in 1572 had proved its utility when British ships put in for provisions before going against the Spanish Armada in 1585. A freshwater stream was diverted to the town in 1591, providing a ready supply of water to fill the casks of outbound ships. Warehouses served by cranes lined Plymouth harbor and African slaves were among the shore-men who loaded ships. Here the vessels of the Jamestown fleet tied up and prepared to take on stores.
    The Swallow and the Virginia joined the expedition at Plymouth and brought the fleet to a full complement of nine sail. The Virginia was a pinnace—a small sailing vessel designed for coastal waters—and had been constructed in 1607 at the Sagadahoc colony on the coast of present-day Maine, the second vessel ever built in English America. Meeting the fleet at Plymouth, too, was its admiral. A fellow colonist mistakenly judged the fifty-five-year-old George Somers to be “three score years of age at the least,” presumably due to a white head of hair. One voyager reported him to be in possession of a “worthy and valiant mind.” To another contemporary he was “a man very industrious and forward,” and to Strachey he was “a gentleman of approved assuredness and ready knowledge in seafaring actions.” Perhaps the best description of the admiral contrasted his demeanor on land and sea: “Sir George Somers was a lamb on the land, so patient that few could anger him, and (as if entering a ship he had assumed a new nature) a lion at sea, so passionate that few could please him.”
    The admiral of the Third Supply was born in 1554 in Lyme Regis on the Dorset coast and had more than a decade of West Indies experience. Somers came out of retirement to join the expedition. During the last five years he had spent enough time on land to serve as mayor of his native town and to occupy a seat in Parliament. He joined the fleet late because he had been detained in Dorset for the making of his will. On April 23, 1609, he declared in the will that he was “intending to pass the seas in a voyage towards the land called Virginia.” In case of death he left his property to his wife Joan (who would stay behind) and, being childless, his nieces and nephews. One of those nephews was Matthew Somers, who would voyage to Virginia in the present convoy aboard the Swallow .
    During the twelve days at Plymouth, the elite of the expedition may have stayed at a lodging house in a former monastery called the Mitre Inn and visited the house of the notoriously gregarious mayor. A contemporary observer gave the names of the officers of the fleet—Ratcliffe, King, Martin, Nellson, Adams, Wood, Pett, Webb, Moone, Philes, and Davies—and described them as “expert captains and very resolute gentlemen.” Lower ranking crewmen and the artisan crowd slept on board the ships, but some of them surely made their way through the doors of the Rose & Crown Tavern and the Pope’s Head Inn for beer and sack (white wine). The timing of the stopover worked well, since in early June the Plymouth fishing fleet was away at the Newfoundland banks. Few ships were in the harbor and plenty of workers were available to haul crates and operate pulleys and cranes.
    The Sea Venture would carry one hundred and fifty-three people to the New World. On the flagship the personnel breakdown was about thirty-five mariners, with the other hundred and eighteen comprising gentlemen (and a few gentlewomen and children), servants, artisans, and peasants (also including a few family members). Only the total number and a few of the names are known, as no passenger