of kegs and barrels which encroached upon their living space. Their living ‘quarters,’ such as they were, extended from the forehatch of their vessel to the stern immediately below the main deck. The Robledo journal perhaps best describes it:
Under the maindeck someone had built stalls for the horses of a previous passage. The manger in front is still packed with hay. On the other side of the ship are stalls for more horses, their feed mangers worn down from incessant rubbing. We put our baggage inside one of these and made it our home. I love horses, but I’m glad they’re not here!
Although theoretically cleaned, fumigated, and sweetened, their stall still held the strong scent of rot and mildew, of horse and unwashed bodies, and of the flux with which many of its previous passengers had been afflicted. Also in the hold were the vermin of its former occupants waiting in the dark, eager to move onto new hosts. In these dismal surroundings, the Robledos were placed with 30 other passengers, each adult of whom presented two square yards of skin upon which the vermin could graze, each child only slightly less.
The Vermin
Grazing upon the extensive fields of unwashed passengers, were fungi, viruses, fleas, bedbugs, body and head lice, ticks, bacteria, and itch mites. Some of these organisms carried diseases which could kill: fleas with bubonic plague, body lice with epidemic typhus, and ticks with encephalitis and other tick-borne diseases. And while the itch mites might not kill people, they caused such torture that many wished they had. The scabies mite, tunneling across the back of an afflicted person’s hand like a mole burrowing in a soggy field, used its skin-melting enzymes to help it invade to lay eggs. Their feces and saliva caused terrible itching that worsened when scratched. Itching from secondary lesions, which occurred predominantly upon the male genitals, between the fingers, on the lower buttocks, and about the areola of the breasts in women, was, unaccountably, most intense at night.
Ever-present was a species of rodent called a ‘black rat’ which, like the dreaded gypsies, had originally lived in India. These rats were skilled climbers and found it easy to both ascend and descend sailing ships by their mooring ropes. These creatures were the most hated and also the most feared for they carried plague. You could treat head lice with a shampoo of olive oil, but there was no defense against the plague.
The Passage
The habitable area of the Robledo family’s room was totally dark and had no ventilation. They had been told that their cargo in crates and casks would be placed in the hold and would not under any circumstances be available to them during their passage. Therefore, whatever they needed for the next three months had to be in this ‘room.’ It was suggested that they cleat their trunks to the floor to prevent their movement in heavy seas, but when the room was packed, no floor was visible. There was no place to sit and little to stand. There was only one solid layer of baggage, one piece upon the other. Pedro likened this to Dante’s hell, a horrible pit, shaped like a stall, deep in the bowels of their vessel. By placing bedding on top of their personal luggage, they attempted to establish a niche for themselves. Head to head, toe to toe, their hell seemed to have all nine circles.
* * *
By all accounts, the ocean passage of 12 weeks was a nightmare. It was a voyage that Pedro Robledo was to describe as “a seeming lifetime of tedium and vomitus.” The assault was immediate, with the wind blowing hard off the sea at their exit from the Guadalquivir. It went on blowing furiously as they beat toward the Canaries, one gale after another, more like December than May. Then, two days out of port, they encountered a violent storm and considered turning back. It was a day of disaster, Robledo wrote.
From sunset last night the wind grew quickly. It blew with severity, and the sea took on an ominous appearance. Soon we were pitching heavily and taking water over the rail. Crates and barrels began to rip loose from their lashings. The men and boys were required to work below deck, re-lashing them as well as we were able under desperate and dangerous conditions. The women and children were sent to the deck where the waters crashed over them. They had to hold on to whatever was available to keep from being swept into the sea. I told Catalina to stand with Lucia at the top of the ladder and not to enter the deck, but the crew would not allow them to remain there and required them also to go above.
Throughout the night the wind blew furiously. A severe wind and an uncertain sea. Awoke to much motion, swaying, continually to the plunging of the ship as it pitched and rolled in the heavy seas. If one could have seen us through a hole in the deck, one would have seen a mass of miserable humanity rising up on one side together, while those on the other side swung down. Lucia is suffering badly from seasickness. Last night she drank a little—threw up—then drank a little more.
It was as though the sea harbored monsters that sought to devour them. Mountainous waves surged like wild beasts while the winds crawled like living creatures through the sails. Decks trembled and quaked relentlessly testing the soundness of their craft. Some of the passengers gathered on deck, but their position there was unenviable. The water repeatedly broke over the railing, hurling sheets of soaring spray on to everyone who huddled there. They sat with their backs to this breaking water filled with cold and despair.
The night wore on, and the sea appeared higher than ever. It came over the rail in a solid sheet of green, curling water. Although their vessel was not taking much water through open seams, a great quantity of the deluge cascading across the overlying deck was finding its way below so that the floors were soon gushing in rivulets. Below decks, the water rushed over the ribs of the ship in a frightening manner. The men and boys worked a bucket brigade carrying full pails to the deck only to have the water blown back in their faces as they attempted to throw it into the wind.
“Thank God,” Robledo says in his journal some hours later, “the storm is waning. The waters are still monstrously high, but our vessel is not straining as badly as she was.” The initial storm was followed by an evening’s calm and a red-skied dawn that only warned that additional storms awaited them.
The first storm caused incredible damage, straining the seams of a number of the vessels and eventually sinking one. The doomed merchantman, whose seams had been opened, was leaking like a sieve, its well filling with water. Her captain had passed cables beneath her keel to support and strengthen her in a futile attempt to keep his ship from falling apart. Then, under the escort of an armed galleon, the waterlogged vessel made for the rock of Lisbon where it later sank in the harbor. The remainder of the badly strained vessels, some with fresh spars, caulking, cordage, and canvas, made repairs under rudder and continued.
Battered by contrary gales in an ocean pregnant with storms, the Morning Star, a three-masted vessel, seemed to be in imminent peril from ill winds and heavy seas. To add to the misery of the passengers (and some of the sailors, though most of them were able deep-water seamen), everyone was sick. Their symptoms of dizziness and cold sweats were followed by cyclic bouts of nausea and vomiting with incessant retching long after there was anything to lose. They felt better above deck, whatever the weather, and experienced the wind and rain there as blessings.
The passengers were required to remain on deck during most of the day while the ship was cleaned and rummaged and readied for the next bout of sickness that all knew would come. Unaccountably, the nausea seemed to subside with darkness, and sleep, too, brought blessed relief.
For the first few days they ate little—mostly biscuits and water—since they could not retain it. After a week of this sickness, during which many of the passengers spoke of killing themselves, they were able to eat slightly more. Lucia, though, could not ingest or retain the salted fish, carrots, potatoes, or any of the other solids available to her. Her world was made up of water, broth (which they made over the coals of a portable brazier such as that used in soldering), and dried fruit until this was exhausted.
Although more
