DATE: Tuesday, November 18, 1997            TAG: 9711180035

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY PAUL CLANCY 

        STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  134 lines

SHIPWRECKS IN HAMPTON ROADS FATE HAS BEFALLEN MANY IN TREACHEROUS WATERS OF VIRGINIA LIKE AND UNFORTUNATE BAND SEEKING "EDEN"

THEY CAME in search of a new Eden and found, instead, sickness, starvation and death.

On a blustery January day in 1739, a small ship that had endured five grueling months at sea entered Hampton Roads. Having left England with at best two months of provisions, the remnants of the original band of 300 Swiss settlers were so desperate for food that they could not endure another two hours to Hampton.

They prevailed upon the crew to anchor instead in Lynnhaven Bay and search for food and shelter.

For most it would be the last night of their lives.

While nearly 260 years has all but wiped out traces of the little sailing vessel that went down just around the corner from Cape Henry, the passage of time has been no kinder to the memories of hundreds of shipwrecks that now rest in the mud and sand of Virginia waterways.

Joan Charles of Hampton, formerly on staff at that city's Syms-Eaton Museum, has dug up records of more than 300 shipwrecks from Smith Island to Craney Island, from Assateague to False Cape - all of them before 1900.

The wreckage continued well past the turn of the century. From just 1900 to 1914, the U.S. Life Saving Service, which had stations all along the Virginia coast, recorded more than 130 shipwrecks.

John Broadwater, who was Virginia's underwater archaeologist for 12 years, says: ``There's such a wealth of history out there. The stories that could be told are almost limitless.''

Broadwater became manager of the sanctuary off Cape Hatteras where the Civil War ironclad Monitor lies. When his office was closed in 1989, much of the state's attention to its maritime history was shelved.

The ocean near North Carolina's Outer Banks may be the Graveyard of the Atlantic, but Virginia's coast and inland bays are themselves significant burial grounds.

And that term may be taken literally, because many of the earlier ships that went to the bottom did so with all hands aboard.

Shipwrecks, particularly tragic ones, hold an enduring fascination. Witness an exhibit, ``Disasters at Sea,'' planned for the Mariners' Museum in Newport News in mid-December. Paintings, photographs, newspaper clippings, menus and other memorabilia will be on display. A related exhibit on the Titanic also is headed to the museum.

The deadliest spot for ships in Virginia waters was near Cape Henry at the mouth of Hampton Roads, according to Charles. Between 1766 and 1891, the list includes 53 shipwrecks not far from the historic Cape Henry Light. There were 16 off Cape Charles and 18 in the ``Virginia Capes,'' the area shared by the two capes.

There were eight near Craney Island at the entrance of the Elizabeth River. And, perhaps the most surprising, seven in the seemingly protected Lynnhaven Bay.

The oceanfront south of Cape Henry was no kinder.

Charles happened to be in a library in Salem, Mass., when she found in an aged Boston newsletter an account of a privateer that sank off Virginia Beach in 1704. The Seaflower, a British ship with a license to steal from vessels sailed by enemies of Queen Anne, sank in a violent storm off what is now Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge.

The report said residents of Princess Anne County helped themselves to casks of linens, lace and silk that washed ashore. Also on board were 6,000 silver and 1,000 gold ``pieces of eight,'' Spanish coins that could be worth thousands of dollars apiece. The colonial government instructed the sheriff to get back the booty, but the items were too well hidden.

The crew apparently escaped with their lives.

Wagner Associates, a Paoli, Pa., company with offices in Hampton, specializes in underwater surveys and may do some preliminary searches for the Seaflower this fall.

Charles admits that her searches, which take her to courthouses, libraries, graveyards, private papers and legends, amount to an addiction. But the stories of people are as compelling as mystery novels.

``When I was a kid and they taught history, they taught battles and generals and not people,'' she says. ``I'm interested in people.''

And the people heading for ``Eden'' were especially compelling.

``For stark, sheer tragedy, no recorded Virginia shipwreck can approach it,'' wrote historian Lloyd Williams.

It all started with William Byrd II, a wealthy landowner who in 1735 got a sweet deal from the Virginia Council, the colony's governing body. The council gave him 100,000 acres on the Roanoke River southwest of Richmond on condition that he populate the land with at least one family for every thousand acres.

Where was he going to find 100 families willing to settle in the then-vast wilderness?

Historian Michael Nicholls says Byrd placed an ad in several magazines in Switzerland, appealing to German-speaking readers to come to his ``new-gefundenes Eden,'' new-found Eden.

It took years, but finally, in August 1738, a small, overcrowded ship stood out to sea from Portsmouth, England, and headed for Hampton Roads. Her destination was midriver on the James, about halfway to Richmond, with a stop at the customs house at Hampton.

The would-be settlers were probably not wealthy, but they weren't poor either. What they had not sold they brought with them, and one account called their vessel, whose name has never been found, ``one of the richest ships to enter the colonies for many years.''

And one of the most tragic.

Typically, ships crossed the Atlantic in one to two months, and it's safe to say the new colonists' ship was provisioned for a maximum of 60 days. Why it took five months, no one knows, but there is no doubt that starvation was a gnawing reality on board. At least 50 people, including the captain, mate and several children, died at sea.

On Jan. 3, 1739, according to the Virginia Gazette, a newspaper of the period, the ship cleared Cape Henry. It would have taken only a few more hours to reach Hampton, but the passengers, ``in great distress for want of provisions,'' persuaded the crew to drop anchor in Lynnhaven Bay to try to find food. A party went ashore and found nothing but marshy wilderness.

Their misery was compounded in late afternoon when a cold front came screaming through and the wind shifted to the northwest.

One of the ship's anchors came free and the other began to drag as fierce winds and tall waves pushed the doomed vessel toward shore. Then it struck bottom violently, and water came rushing into the ship's hold and flooding its compartments. Fifty or more people, weak from starvation, were unable to escape the rushing water and drowned.

Those who made it to the marshy, uninhabited shore were not much better off in what turned out to be one of the coldest nights of the year.

Most of those remaining froze to death that night, some on the beach and some in the marshes. The Gazette reported that only 60 of the original 300 survived the ordeal, and their condition was regarded as doubtful.

``I was practically in tears - the poor souls,'' Charles said when she read of their plight.

Byrd eventually got his land, but he had to buy it. A few of the settlers apparently made it to the promised land and may have gone on to populate the southern part of the state.

Joan Charles is still trying to find their descendants and could spend months or even years on their trail. Her only explanation is the burning curiosity she feels about missing pieces of history's puzzle.

``I just want to see, after all the trouble and heartache these people went through, if any of them made it,'' she said. ILLUSTRATION: [Illustration]

FOR MOST IT WOULD BE THE LAST NIGHT OF THEIR LIVES.

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