were in mortal danger. Running aground on a reef, striking a rock, or slam-
ming into a coast caused many a ship to be “cast away.” That is how
Columbus lost the Santa Maríaand was forced to establish the first
Spanish colony in the New World.
Even if the passengers, mercifully, knew little of these dangers, hunger,
thirst and sickness were inescapable realities. For much of a voyage, passen-
gers were jammed into the area known as ’tween-decks, that is, the space
between the hold and the deck. Below them, they could hear bilgewater
sloshing back and forth and timbers groaning as the ship rocked or
plunged; above, where the ship’s gear and boats were stored, the rigging
was fixed, and the crew worked, the wind and sea spray drowned out all
other sound. ’Tween-decks could be ventilated only in fair weather; in
heavy seas the hatch was battened down to prevent seawater from flooding
in as each wave hit. On many of the boats in the seventeenth century, partic-
ularly the common fluyt,’tween-decks was lower than the height of a man,
sometimes only 4 feet high, so passengers spent days or even weeks
hunched over, squatting, or lying down—and always hanging on for dear
life as the ship reeled and tossed.
As they got their sea legs, the passengers would begin to try to eat.
During storms there was no way to do more than gnaw on biscuits, because
the only kitchen was what was called a caboose. On the larger boats, the
caboose was a small hut on the upper deck where a brick fireplace was set
up. On the smaller and more common boats, the caboose was simply a bar-
rel, sawed in half and filled with sand on which a fire could more or less
safely be made under a pot to boil mush or stew or to roast salted meat.
On even the larger ships, there were virtually no means available for
sanitation. Fresh water was far too precious to be used for bathing or wash-
ing clothes. Seawater left clothes full of salt, which irritated the skin and
caused boils and lesions. In the frequent periods of fog and rain, clothes
could not be dried and so mildewed; and bedding, such as it was, became
fusty. In this luxuriant environment, lice and other vermin proliferated and
had to be picked off one’s body by hand. As a French traveler remembered,
“Each time we left the ’tween-decks we found ourselves covered with ver-
min. I found them even in my shoes.” Combating vermin on themselves
and on one another—what in monkeys is called grooming—was the passen-
The Fearsome Atlantic 35