The Indian Ocean - Michael Pearson [145]
On the European ships officials had to take account of the likelihood of high mortality en route. Over the sixteenth century about 10 per cent of those on board Portuguese ships were lost to disease and shipwreck (see page 138). Gama's pioneering voyage suffered very high attrition: he lost 63 per cent of personnel, and 65 per cent of tonnage during the round-trip.60 The VOC did much better: they lost only a little over 2 per cent of tonnage on the outward voyages, and 4 per cent on the homeward. The worst area was the south African coast.61
Mortality, and also speed, improved greatly for the Europeans as they became more accustomed to the wind patterns and best routes. Gama's fastest ship took 733 days for the return voyage, but on the next expedition, led by Cabral, the return voyage for six ships varied between 471 and 505 days. These times include time in port: the actual sailing times of Cabral's ships was 179 out, and between 178 and 191 return. This became more or less the norm for the Portuguese: 180 days out, 200 return, and a total time of 500 days for the round trip. The fastest voyage out was 106 days, and return 130.62 In the seventeenth century the usual time for an outward voyage from Europe was 6–8 months, and the return 7–9 months. A very fast return trip was 11 months, but the usual return time was 16–19 months.
The speeds achieved varied with the monsoons and the skill of the crew. In the Mediterranean the best, and very exceptional, speed achieved was about 200 km a day.63 Ships racing before the monsoon did this regularly. Vasco da Gama sped from Malindi to Malabar in 1498 in 26 days, at an average speed of just under 200 km a day. In the next century the Dutch ships, which had begun to use the roaring 40s very early on, covered about 150 km a day.64
Life on board these ships ranged over great extremes, from boredom to savagery to danger. The accounts we have quoted, and many others, stress danger, drama, shipwrecks and so on, but the main aspects were tedium and the danger of disease. One traveller wrote that 'Certainly no one, to whom a house was offered, even if it was regally appointed, to live enclosed in it for six months, could remain so long detained and locked in it; much less in a ship, filled with so many and so varied inconveniences.'65 As to disease, it seems that there was a dim awareness that limes and lemons had some role in preventing scurvy, but even so this was a feared and loathsome disease which sometimes took a very heavy toll indeed. Victims died in excruciating pain, screaming in delirium. It affected the gums, so teeth fell out, or the legs, which swelled up with putrefying sores.66
It seems that social divisions were made much more visible, and even were exacerbated, during the months or weeks on board ship. Common sailors on the northern European ships were subject to extremely brutal discipline. Nickolaus de Graaff, who did five voyages as a surgeon on VOC ships in the seventeenth century, wrote that
if the sailors are punished, they are flogged with a thick rope's end for so long before the mast, that they fall on their knees and beg for mercy; or they are ducked from the yardarm into the sea, or keel-hauled three times under the ship, and then flogged before the mast. Or they get a chain and ball on their leg, and must endure hard labour with the black slaves on the Company's public works. Or they are deported to the west coast of Sumatra, or to the Banda Islands, or to Mauritius, or else banished to Robben Island off the Cape of Good Hope. So that there are many ways of taming them; because they are not