But there were no canned goods
and fresh vegetables were never seen on the bill of fare as
soon as the coast had been left behind. Water was carried in
small barrels. It soon became stale and then tasted of rotten
wood and iron rust and was full of slimy growing things. As
the people of the Middle Ages knew nothing about microbes
(Roger Bacon, the learned monk of the thirteenth century
seems to have suspected their existence, but he wisely kept
his discovery to himself) they often drank unclean water and
sometimes the whole crew died of typhoid fever. Indeed the
mortality on board the ships of the earliest navigators was
terrible. Of the two hundred sailors who in the year 1519 left
Seville to accompany Magellan on his famous voyage around
the world, only eighteen returned. As late as the seventeenth
century when there was a brisk trade between western Europe
and the Indies, a mortality of 40 percent was nothing unusual
for a trip from Amsterdam to Batavia and back. The greater
part of these victims died of scurvy, a disease which is caused
by lack of fresh vegetables and which affects the gums and
poisons the blood until the patient dies of sheer exhaustion.
Under those circumstances you will understand that the sea
did not attract the best elements of the population. Famous
discoverers like Magellan and Columbus and Vasco da Gama
travelled at the head of crews that were almost entirely composed
of ex-jailbirds, future murderers and pickpockets out
of a Job.
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