Cape of Good Hope as director of hospitals. After several years he retired to England, served in the home district, and then went as staff physician to Jamaica. After two years he returned to England in ill health, and on recovery joined the army in the Peninsula, where the Marquis of Wellington in 1812 appointed him physician in chief to the allied forces. On 18 Jan. 1816 he was nominated a deputy medical inspector, and retired on half pay. He died in London in 1824.
Somers was the author of: 1. ‘Dissertatio Physico-medica Inauguralis de Sonis et Auditu,’ Edinburgh, 1783, 8vo. 2. ‘Medical Suggestions for the Treatment of Dysentery and Fever among Troops in the Field,’ London, 1816, 8vo (published in both Latin and English).
[Munk's Coll. of Phys. ii. 419; Pantheon of the Age, 1825, iii. 418–19; Army Lists.]
SOMERS or SUMMERS, Sir GEORGE (1554–1610), virtual discoverer of the Bermudas, born at or near Lyme Regis, Dorset, in 1554, was son of John Somers of that town. He bore the same arms as those of the family of John, lord Somers [q. v.], but the exact connection has not been traced. At an early age he took to the sea. With Sir Amyas Preston [q. v.] he joined in a buccaneering voyage to the Spanish Main in 1595, and captured the town of St. Jago de Leon, an exploit in which he displayed much heroism. Somers and his companions returned to London in September (Hakluyt, Voyages, 1600, iii. 578 seq.) Other expeditions of a like kind occupied him in the following years. He took part in the Island's voyage (to the Azores) in the summer of 1597. Coming back in charge of a small ship, he was separated from the main fleet in a storm in the Bay of Biscay, and was given up for lost. On 29 Oct. 1597 Sir Walter Ralegh, Lord Thomas Howard, and Charles Blount, sixth lord Mountjoy, the leaders of the expedition, who arrived before him in safety at Plymouth, wrote hastily to Essex, their colleague and commander-in-chief: ‘Wee have this Saterday night received the cumfortabell newse of George Summers arivall, whose letter we have here withall sent your lordshipp’ (Edwards, Life of Ralegh, ii. 180–1). In 1600 Somers again sailed—as captain of the Vanguard—for the Azores, on a vain look-out for Spanish treasure-ships (Monson, p. 196). In 1601 he was in command of the Swiftsure at the attack on the Spanish fleet in the harbour of Kinsale (ib. p. 197). In September 1602 he set sail for a third time for the Azores, now in command of the Warspight. Eight other ships formed part of the expedition, which was in charge of Sir Richard Leveson. On the voyage home a carrack was seized off Lisbon (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1601–3, p. 161).
Somers was knighted at Whitehall on 23 July 1603 (Metcalfe, Knights, p. 147), and apparently remained quietly at his native place for the next five or six years. He was elected M.P. for Lyme Regis on 25 Feb. 1603–4, and in 1605 he was mayor of the town. A laudatory sonnet on Somers, by Thomas Winter, is appended to the latter's translation of Du Bartas's ‘Third Dayes Creation’ (1604).
In 1606 Somers was one of the chief movers in the formation of the London or South Virginian Company for the colonisation of Virginia. On 23 May 1609, when James I granted the company a new charter, he was nominated admiral of the association. He had the reputation of ‘a man of good skill in all passages’ (Neill, Virginia Company, i. 53). At the same date a fleet of nine vessels was formed under Somers's command to convey a body of settlers to the colony. His companions included Sir Thomas Gates [q. v.], lieutenant-general; Thomas West, third lord De la Warr, captain-general; and Captain Christopher Newport [q. v.] The expedition sailed from Plymouth on 2 June, Somers embarking with Gates and Newport in the Sea Venture. After some eight weeks a hurricane scattered the little fleet, and the Sea Venture was wrecked, on 25 July, off the rocky coast of some islands in mid-Atlantic. Though the identification has occasionally been disputed by Spanish writers, there seems no doubt that these islands were those that had been sighted for the first time in 1515 by a Spanish seaman named Juan Bermudes, whence they obtained the name of Bermudas. They were not known to have been inhabited by man, and Somers took possession of them in the name of the king of England. They have remained British possessions ever since. At first they were known as Virginiola, but afterwards they were called indifferently by their original name of Bermudas or by that of Somers' or the Summer Islands. The latter designation at once commemorated their second discoverer and their mild climate.
Somers and such of his companions as survived the shipwreck remained nearly ten months on the islands. They were troubled by hogs, which overran the islands, and by mysterious noises which they could only explain as the cries of spirits and devils. After contriving to build two small barks, Somers and his companions set out in them
