The Sea Vogage.
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ordinary; twenty per cent. was not unheard of; and there were cases of 400 out of 1,200 passengers being buried before the ships left port. Other facts of the same kind are on record. Thus, of the 3,000 Palatines forwarded in 1710 by the English Government to New York, 470 died on the voyage, and 250 immediately after their arrival, of ship-fever.
John George Jungmann (1702-1802), a Moravian missionary Narrative of Jungmann, a Moravian missionaryamong the Indians, and, like all Moravians, entitled to implicit confidence, in 1731 came to America via Rotterdam, with his father, who emigrated from Hockenheim in the Palatinate. He was first obliged to wait three weeks at the port for the departure of the vessel, and finally sailed, the ship having 156 passengers on board, and provisions for twelve weeks. She was bound for Philadelphia via Falmouth. At the latter port she again stopped three weeks. When she had been eight weeks at sea, the passengers were put on short allowances, and during the last four weeks of their voyage they were never able to obtain bread. Jungmann could procure no food whatever from the captain either for himself, father, or sister, and the only drink allowed them was one pint of water daily. The passengers had to live on rats and mice, which were considered dainties. The price on board for a rat was eighteen pence, and for a mouse an English sixpence. The captain was under the impression that the passengers had considerable money and valuables with them, and, believing that he might profit by it, he endeavored to reduce them to a state of starvation. He succeeded too well, for out of the 156 passengers only 48 reached America; and not a single human creature would have been landed off the vessel, if the passengers had not revolted, arrested the captain, and put in at Rhode Island port, after a voyage of twenty-five weeks. Jungmann adds that he himself, his father, and one sister were about starved to death, that they were unable to walk erect, and obliged to creep on the ground; while his mother, and three brothers and sisters, had died on the voyage. He concluded by saying: "It was a shocking and heart-rending scene to see all these poor people, without the ability to succor them, to find them in the morning stiff and cold on their beds, partly eaten up by rats, and then, to see them thrown into the ocean, an occurrence which took