Among many other experiences of the kind, that25 of John Chamberlain, the letter-writer, may be chosen. Setting out from Rotterdam, after twenty-four hours' sailing, he had been within sight of Ostend and was back again at Rotterdam. There he stayed a fortnight, putting to sea at intervals and coming back. Then the wind came fair for Calais, but veered round rather too soon and the first haven they could reach was that of Yarmouth, after two days' running before the storm. It was low tide; they went aground while entering, and for some time it looked like being lost with all hands, but getting off again, the waves took the ship against the piles at the head of the breakwater. Some thought it worth while trying to jump ashore, three of whom the others saw drowned and one crushed to death against the piles. But in the end the rest landed safely in boats, and buried the dead; and Chamberlain himself, after a winter evening spent wandering about Newmarket heath in the rain and wind through the guide losing his way, arrived in town at 11 P. M. on the twentieth day after first leaving Rotterdam.
On this route the ownership of the vessel might be guessed by the amount of swearing that went on. Dutch ships had no prayers said, rarely carried a chaplain even on the longest voyages, but swearers were fined, even if it was no more than naming the devil. Psalm-singing would go on on any vessel manned by Protestants on account of the popularity of the music written for the Reformers, but if a vessel had a garland of flowers hanging from its mainmast that again would show it a Dutchman; it meant that the captain was engaged to be married.
The passage-boats were about sixty feet long, which then meant a tonnage of about the same figure, and had a single deck, beneath which the passengers might find shelter if the merchandise left them room. The complement of passengers may be taken as seventy. The highest total of passengers I have found mentioned for one ship is two thousand, of whom Della Valle was one, but that was when he sailed from Constantinople to Cairo, the vessels employed on official business between those two places exclusively being the largest in the world at that date. Apart from these, the maximum tonnage was about twelve hundred, and a 500-ton ship was reckoned a large one; an average Venetian merchantman measured about 90 feet × 20 × 16, a tonnage, that is, of about 166, according to English sixteenth-century reckoning.26 The French traveller Villamont says the ship in which he left Venice in 1589 and which he was told cost fifty thousand crowns (say eighty-five thousand pounds of our money) to build and equip, had for its greatest length 188 feet and greatest breadth 59 feet.
As for accommodation in the larger boats, neither Dallam nor Moryson changed their clothes or slept in a bed while at sea, and there is no reason to suppose that any one else did who travelled under ordinary conditions. Cabins were to be had in the high-built sterns; even in Villamont's moderate-sized ship there were eight decks astern, the fourth from the keel, the captain's dining-room, accommodating thirty-nine persons at meal-times, all of whom, it is clear enough, slept in cabins above or below. Moryson, however, refused a cabin, preferring to sleep in a place where there was cover overhead but none at the sides.
The chief exception to ordinary conditions was the pilgrim-ship for Jerusalem in the days, which ceased during this period, when special galleys ran from Venice to Jaffa and back, in the summer. Here alone could the passenger have the upper hand, since these galleys alone were passenger-boats primarily. The captain would be willing, if asked, to bind himself in writing before the authorities at Venice, to take the pilgrim to Jaffa, wait there and bring him back, call at certain places to take in fresh water, meat, and bread, carry live hens, a barber-surgeon, and a physician, avoid unhealthy ports such as Famagosta, stay nowhere longer than three days without the consent of the pilgrim, receive no merchandise which might inconvenience or delay him, provide two hot meals a day and good wine, and guarantee the safety of any belongings he might leave in the galley during his absence at Jerusalem. No agreements, however, seem to have insured the pilgrim against starvation diet, and therefore it was prudent to store a chest with victuals, especially delicacies, and lay in wine; for, Venice once left behind, wine might be dearer or even unobtainable. Taking victuals implied buying a frying-pan, dishes, big and little, of earthenware or wood, a stew-pot, and a twig-basket to carry when he landed and went shopping. Likewise a lantern and candles and bedding, which might be purchased near St. Mark's; a feather-bed, mattress, two pillows, two pairs of sheets, a small quilt, for three ducats; and all of these will be bought back at the end of the voyage at half price. Medicines he must on no account forget. Care had to be taken, too, in choosing a position, not below deck, which is "smouldering hot and stinking," but above, where both shelter, light, and air were to be had; this, of course, for the benefit of such as were unable to secure a place in the stern-cabins.
If the passenger did not find himself in a position to get these counsels of perfection carried out, this is what he would experience: "In the galley all sorts of discomfort are met with: to each of us was allotted a space three spans broad, and so we lay one upon another, suffering greatly from the heat in summer and much troubled by vermin. Huge rats came running over our faces at nights, and a sharp eye had to be kept on the torches, for some people go about carelessly and there's no putting them out in case of fire, being, as they are, all pitch. And when it is time to go to sleep and one has great desire thereto, others near him talk or sing or yell and generally please themselves, so that one's rest is broken. Those near us who fell ill mostly died. God have mercy on them! In day-time too when we were all in our places busy eating and the galley bore down on the side to which the sail shifted, all the sailors called out 'pando,' that is, 'to the other side,' and over we must go; and if the sea was rough and the galley lurched, our heads turned all giddy and some toppled over and the rest on top of them, falling about like so many drunken yokels. The meals the captain gave us were not exactly inviting; the meat had been hanging in the sun, the bread hard as a stone with many weevils in it, the water at times stank, the wine warm, or hot enough for the steam to rise, with a beastly taste to it; and at times, too, we had to do our eating under a blazing sun…27 Bugs, etc., crept about over everything."28 Another, after many similar complaints, of cold food and warm drink, and of sailors who walked about on top of him when he wanted to sleep, and so on, adds a fresh one, quite unmentionable, and then goes on that he passes over the more disgusting features so as not to discourage intending pilgrims.
The disappearance of the pilgrim galley was more gain than loss, but it had the advantage of more variety in the company and the voyage, and probably, of a bigger ship; Moryson's ship was 900-tons and Della Valle's Gran Delfino was a great war galleon, with forty-five cannon and five hundred passengers, – too many, it proved; in the end twenty or thirty fell ill every day and some died. And the mixture that there was! Men and women, soldiers, traders, Greeks, Armenians, Turks, Persians, Jews, Italians from almost every state, French, Spanish, Portuguese, English, Germans, Flemings. In Moryson's boat there were Indian sun-worshippers as well. In another, Moors and Muscovites. Every day in the Gran Delfino a bell was rung for prayer, when each man prayed in his own way; prayer over, the sailors, all Greeks, turned bareheaded to the East and cried three times, "Buon' Viaggio!!!" and the captain preached a non-sectarian sermon. With the Gran Delfino, moreover, the start was an impressive function; the vessel, belonging as it did to the State, being towed beyond the lagoons by thirty-three eight-oared boats, directed by a venerable signor deputed by the authorities. Once outside, however, and left to itself, it was less impressive, at the mercy of a wind so uncertain that it crossed the Adriatic from shore to shore twenty-five times.
In reckoning the length of voyages it would not be sufficient to multiply the delay by bad weather that took place in the Channel crossings by the extra mileage of a given distance; there was the additional delay due to the difficulty of obtaining a ship at all, even in the best of weathers, a difficulty proportionate to the length of the voyage. The first-mentioned difficulty must not be minimised; it was reasonable caricature for Sir John Harington, Queen Elizabeth's godson, to represent his Rabelaisian hero as returning from "Japana near China" in a "24-hours sail with some two or three odd years beside." And by way of illustration it may be added that one and the same voyage – from Messina to Smyrna – took one man thirteen weeks and another thirty-five days; and that whereas the usual length of the pilgrim voyage from Jaffa to Venice was under five weeks,