Soldier, adventurer and colonial pioneer, Gorges came from an old Somerset family connected with the Queen by marriage through the Howards. His father, who died when Gorges was still a child, asked in his will that Sir George Norton and Nicholas Gorges, a relative at court, would be ‘friends and aiders to my little children’. He left Ferdinando a gold chain, £100 and the manor of Bircum, Somerset. By 1591 Gorges was a follower of the 2nd Earl of Essex, who knighted him in the Normandy campaign, and who returned him for Cardigan Boroughs in 1593. He was appointed to a Commons committee on the poor law, 12 Mar. In August 1596 he reported to Burghley from Plymouth on the spoils brought in from Cadiz, but his application for the post of vice-admiral of Devon was unsuccessful, possibly because of his close connexion with Essex. When, restless in Plymouth, Gorges wished to accompany Essex to Ireland, this too was vetoed. Following the Essex revolt of 1601 Gorges was imprisoned in the Gatehouse. He gave evidence against his patron, and was finally released. Gorges played a part in the early colonisation of New England.
His declining years were spent at Ashton Phillips, the home of his fourth wife. He died in 1647.