ford in his History of the Plymouth Plantation, gives the instance of a vessel which, in the course of its voyage towards the Virginian coast, lost one hundred and thirty persons in a crew of seamen and roll of passengers numbering one hundred and eighty; packed together like herrings in a barrel, they sank under a flux brought on not only by this pestilential condition, but also by lack of fresh water and wholesome food.[1] The disorder from which the passengers suffered and which they introduced into the Colony was ship, jail or typhus fever.[2] William Capps was undoubtedly correct in saying that the chief cause of the sickness was to be found in gross uncleanliness. “Betwixt decks,” he declared, “there can hardlie a man fetch his breath by reason there arisith such a funke in the night that it causes putrifaction of bloud and breedeth disease much like the plague. The more fall sick, the more they annoy and poysen their fellows.” He recalled the voyage in which he had accompanied Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers to Virginia. “We came,” he said, “in heate of summer, were at sea fifteen weekes and lost not a man. There were appointed swabbers for cleaning of the orlopp, and every part of the shipp below; then every man was forced in faire weather to bring up his bed to ayre in the shrowds. In the meantyme, the Quarter Masters were busied in the swabbing of every cabine belowe with vinegar, as alsoe betweene decks, which cast such a savor of sharpness to the stomach that it bred health.”[3]
- ↑ Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. III, series IV, p. 37.
- ↑ It has been suggested that it may have been yellow fever. Dr. Charles Creighton, in his standard work, A History of Epidemics in Britain, declares that the first appearance of yellow fever, “whether in the West Indies or anywhere else,” was in 1647-48. p. 623.
- ↑ William Capps to Deputy Treasurer Ferrer, 1623. This letter is printed in Neill’s Virginia Vetusta, pp. 128-132. See page 131. A case
