Ships and Sailors and the Plague

[BriarRose Kildare]

I have been reading a book called Return of Black Death, the worlds greatest serial killer. It is a very good book and I have become quite interested in the aspect that the plague usually entered by ports of trade. So my question is: Are there any first hand accounts of sailors or ships that were plague infested and what became of them?

The book that I am reading gives a grand scale account from 1347 to the 1600's during which the plague struck. I am hoping to cross reference some of the material concerning the trade routes.

[Mission]

The term "plague" is a very broad-ranging term as used during period and I personally don't generally trust it as a descriptor of diseases from period on general principles. (The same thing goes for the term "fever.") As Guy Williams explains in his book The Age of Agony:

“In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the word ‘plague’ was applied loosely to any epidemic fever that caused large numbers of those affected to die.” (Williams, p. 68)

The great plague of London in 1665 is often said to be the bubonic plague, which is different than the Black Plague. My understanding is that a form of this bubonic plague spread slowly and can be followed through Europe over the course of years. If seamen were carrying it, I would have thought it would have been much faster in transmission throughout Europe. However, there are probably as many theories as there are theorists, so who knows?

John Keevil suggests that seamen were actually largely free from the 1665 London plague because they were on the sea in his book Medicine and the Navy 1200-1900: Volume II – 1640-1714:

“...there was also an epidemic of smallpox, especially in London; it was plague, however, that in 1665 caused the greatest mortality, and the fleet’s relative freedom from this infection can be credited to the effective measures of quarantine adopted by the navy, together with the fact that it was at sea during the height of the summer epidemic, and that many of the great ships were paid off in the autumn or winter. In addition, it was favoured by that barrier of water which has so often preserved it from infections that overtake armies and the civil population.” (Keevil, p. 87)

I have only read one account that I can recall referencing the plague at sea which is from Woodes Rogers voyage. John Keevil gives a good account of what happened:

"Some weeks prior to the attack on Guaiaquil there had been a serious epidemic of what [voyage Physician Thomas] Dover clearly identifies as bubonic plague, and the same infection now appeared in the Duke and Duchess [Roger's two ships]. In his opinion the contagion had resulted from sleeping in churches where the recently buried dead lay too near the surface. Dover wrote that ‘in a very few Days after we got on Board’ the infection was reported among the ships’ companies ‘to my great Surprise’, and ‘in less than forty eight Hours we had in our several Ships one hundred and eighty Men in this miserable Condition’. Rogers gives more detailed figures: by May 11 in the Duke some twenty men were sick, and fifty in the Duchess; on May 14 the numbers were fifty and seventy; next day they reached siexty and eighty, and among the dead was Samuel Hopkins, of whom Rogers wrote that ‘he read Prayers once a Day’ to the men, and ‘was a very good temper’d sober Man, and very well beloved by the whole Ship’s Company.’

Rogers describes no symptoms of what he calls ‘a malignant fever’, and although Dover does so and gives those of bubonic plague, the course of the infection casts doubt on his truthfulness: only men who had landed were affected by the illness, and it lasted among them long enough for deaths to be occurring as late as June 10. The ten deaths mentioned in passing by Rogers in his journal refute Dover’s claim that he ‘lost no more than seven or eight’ patients because of the success of the treatment he ordered. This consisted of bleeding and the administration of dilute sulphuric acid.

On June 15 there were still seventy men sick besides officers, but no more patients were dying, and on June 29 at the island of Gorgona, off Central America, they were all placed in a tent ashore to complete their recovery; Rogers ‘put the Doctors ashore with them’." (Keevil, p. 229-30)

In his book, Dr. Quicksilver, 1660-1742; The Life and Times of Thomas Dover, M.D., L.A.G. Strong notes:

“Dover, in his own account, characteristically took full credit for the men’s recovery. Woodes Rogers attributed the fact that the plague did not spread throughout the crews to his own preventative measure, ie. large quantities of punch; but he permitted himself to wonder, in his journal, that the doctors should be short of medical supplies when the ordering of them had been left in their hands. Where the whole expedition was at fault, of course, was in not having a medical man with experience of the conditions, which they were likely to meet. No landsman, unprompted, would anticipate two hundred cases of the same disease." (Strong, p. 118)

So the short answer is: I have not read any accounts of plague outbreaks prior to landing. Evidence I have read suggests the plague was not as prevalent shipboard during this period as it was on land.