Its story began with a “very greate storme or hurricane,” as recorded by Sir George Somers, the admiral of a fleet of nine vessels dispatched from England in 1609 to relieve the famished colonists of Jamestown. The storm separated the ships. Most of them sailed on to Virginia, but the flagship Sea Venture took on nine feet of water before its crew discovered any leaks. Hope nearly vanished before Sir George spied land on July 28. Sir George lodged his sinking ship between two large rocks about a quarter of a mile off the East End. All 150 persons aboard survived. “Bermooda is the most plentiful place that I ever came to, for ffishe, Hogges and ffowle,” Sir George gratefully reported. It was also a place “never inhabited by any christian or Heathen people,” another sailor remarked. It thus became a colony without the subjugation of any aboriginals, any “Other.” Bermuda had no native mammals—the “Hogges” were left by earlier castaways—and only a single endemic species of bird, the easily caught and thereby unfortunate cahow, so named in imitation of its eerie nighttime call.

The first European known to have reached Bermuda was the Spanish sea captain Juan de Bermúdez in 1505, after whom the islands are named. He claimed the islands for the Spanish Empire. Bermuda had no indigenous population at the time of its discovery and Bermúdez never landed on the islands, but made two visits to the archipelago, of which he created a recognizable map. Shipwrecked Portuguese mariners are now thought to have been responsible for the 1543 inscription on Portuguese Rock (previously called Spanish Rock). Subsequent Spanish or other European parties are believed to have released pigs there, which had become feral and abundant on the island by the time European settlement began.

Both Spanish and Portuguese ships used the islands as a replenishment spot to take on fresh meat and water. Legends arose of spirits and devils, now thought to have stemmed from the calls of raucous birds (most likely the Bermuda petrel, or cahow) and the loud noise heard at night from wild hogs. Combined with the frequent storm-wracked conditions and the dangerous reefs, the archipelago became known as the Isle of Devils. Neither Spain nor Portugal attempted to settle it.

William Shakespeare's play The Tempest, in which the character Ariel refers to the "still-vex'd Bermoothes" (I.ii.229), is thought to have been inspired by William Strachey's account of the Sea Venture shipwreck. They stayed ten months, starting a new settlement and building two small ships to sail to Jamestown. The group of islands were claimed for the English Crown, and the charter of the Virginia Company was later extended to include them.

In 1610, all but three of the survivors of Sea Venture sailed on to Jamestown. Among them was John Rolfe, whose wife and child died and were buried in Bermuda. Later in Jamestown he married Pocahontas.