While many Bermudians know how Sea Venture survivors built a pinnace called Deliverance to deliver them from Bermuda after wrecking off the Island in 1609, their second, smaller pinnace, Patience, is often forgotten.In fact, not much is known about the building of the Patience today, other than its dimensions. It was this mystery that first caught Derek Tully's imagination when he was Commanding Officer of St George's Sea Cadets, 25 years ago.“The boys' dinghies were the exact size of those carried on sailing ships hundreds of years ago,” said Dr Tully, who is deputy principal of Clearwater Middle School. “The sea cadets would often explore areas of St George's and St David's which Admiral Sir George Somers knew well during the nine months he was here. We used to talk about what it would look like and where it was built. Everyone knew where Deliverance was built, but this was a mystery ship. There were no records of it left. We had to imagine what it would look like.”Dr Tully is now retired from the Sea Cadets, but as a result of his interest in the Patience, he has just written a book called ‘A Man of Patience' about this time in Bermuda's history. It is designed for middle schoolers and presents factual information about Sea Venture, and some speculation about the details of the building of Patience.“To learn more about Patience, we had to put ourselves in the position of Admiral Sir George Somers,” said Dr Tully. “He had the mast and the sails from Sea Venture, all he needed was a hull.”He said shortly after the wreck, bonfires were lit at St David's to attract the attention of any passing ships, and a group of men set sail in a longboat, tasked with finding civilisation. They were never seen again.“The longboat was the same size as the dinghy the boys in the Sea Cadets sail,” said Dr Tully. “I think they got lost and tried to come back and couldn't find Bermuda and died of exposure. By that time Sir George Somers had been circumnavigating the Island.”Dr Tully believed the bonfires quickly would have been extinguished when the settlers found hogs on the Island. Since pigs don't naturally swim, they had to have been landed there by someone.“Sir George would have had the bonfires extinguished, because if the Spanish sailed by they were defenceless,” said Dr Tully. “All they had were a few muskets, pistols and damp gunpowder.”It was the end of July when Sea Venture was caught up in a storm and dumped on Bermuda's reefs.Survivors started to build Deliverance in what is now Builder's Bay, which they thought was sheltered.Dr Tully explained that in the winter the winds change direction and the bay is buffeted by wind and waves. In his book, Dr Tully said it was lucky that the half-built Deliverance wasn't washed away altogether at that time. For this reason, Patience was built somewhere else. Unfortunately, where exactly has been lost to history.“I believe it was built right at the site of the present Black Horse Tavern in St David's,” said Dr Tully. “It makes sense. The camp would be there, on that flat area; the abattoir [for killing hogs] as well. The men would go up to St David's Head to do their guard duty, keep a fire burning throughout the night, and come down to the main camp for meals, sleep and so forth. One of the ship's dinghies from Sea Venture would be anchored off the Black Horse for regular transport across to St George's to the main encampment.”Dr Tully believed that after they were completed, the two pinnaces were taken out of St George's Harbour through what the passengers called Somers Creke. In those days, this would have been a delicate operation.“I suspect Somers Creke is Town Cut,” said Dr Tully. “When Somers finally got the pinnaces out, Gates shouted back ‘Somers Creke, that's your creek, you've got us out'. At that time it was a shallow little creek with a deep part in it which meandered through. It has been dredged many times over the years, so it is much deeper now. It was an ideal way to get out of St George's Harbour if the wind was at your back on a square rigged ship. Once they got out of there they were free.”After the journey to Jamestown, Sir George returned to Bermuda, had a heart attack and died. His body was returned to England for burial.“He could not have come back here for food [as is sometimes suggested],” said Dr Tully. “The Chesapeake Bay region near Jamestown is the most prolific source of food in the eastern seaboard on the United States. I suspect he wanted to come back here to claim this place for England. But he had a heart attack and died. He died in Bermuda and they took his body back to England and he was buried where he was born. So that story ends. The rest of it is part of the history of the Chesapeake Bay and I found out the names of the ships that were in the fleet. I found out what happened to Thomas Gates and Lord De LaWarre that gave the state, Delaware, its name. The speculation came about Patience.”He and another teacher, Neil Phillips, researched through books and manuscripts, but they also took a less conventional approach. They put some of the students at Clearwater Middle School to work building a 5ft model of Patience. Former St George Mayor Henry Hayward donated a 200-year-old piece of cedar to lend antiquity to the whole project. “As the boys were building Patience down below in the technology room, I was writing at nights watching the boys build,” said Dr Tully. “It gave me ideas about how it was built and what it looked like. What we have in the heritage museum in St George's is an accurate depiction of what Patience looked like based on our research.”During the construction, the project attracted the attention of National Geographic Magazine.“Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania were down here in one of the classrooms to interview the St David's islanders about the Pequot Indians,” said Dr Tully. “The interviewer said, ‘why are you in school at the weekends?' and I told her. She passed the information on to National Geographic's Kids News and an article was published about it in the August 2010 issue.”Girls were not allowed to work on the Patience model-building project. Dr Tully felt the boys needed a project of their own to work on. Instead, the girls were set to work researching what the settlers would have eaten. “It is an excellent school story about how boys learn, and enjoy themselves when they are doing a project,” said Dr Tully. “That is why I dedicated the book to boys and their learning styles.”He said many sailors on board the Sea Venture would not have been much older than the Clearwater Middle School boys working on the project.“The plague was rampant at the beginning of the 17th century,” said Dr Tully. “A lot of the men on the ships were boys at about 12 or 13 years old. They became men at 17 or 18 years old. Their life expectancy was only about 45 years. A lot of them were orphans. They went to sea and the ocean was their home. That is why they bonded together as seamen. They must have hated the Jamestown settlement. I have been there in the summer in August. It is humid with little breeze with lots of bugs and mosquitoes. Bermuda must have seemed like paradise compared to that, with the fish they caught and the berries they ate. There were hostile Indians up there in Jamestown who did not want their land encroached upon, quite rightly. The area had to be defended.”‘A Man of Patience' is Dr Tully's first book, although he has co-authored educational books and articles on children's learning styles. ‘A Man of Patience' should be in local stores shortly.