their beam. They rode lower in the water and were subject to less motion than were the merchantmen whose towering castles only exacerbated their rolling. In contrast to the galleys, the merchantmen, with shorter keels and broader beams, quaked and trembled, pitched and rolled in the peak and trough of every wave. Seemingly, the misery experienced by the passengers would not end—it could not end—until their ships were swamped or came apart. In the end, the passengers of the fleet were convinced their ships would kill them.
During the initial weeks of the voyage, the passengers huddled on deck as though in a stupor, captives of an unfriendly sea. They were crushed by the wretched conditions of their vessel and had the appearance of individuals who had been damned. Slowly, some began to recover only to be brought to nausea again by the next storm. Day after seemingly unending day, they sat or lay on the deck probably looking for an English or perhaps a French privateer to come and end their misery. None came, however, and their hell seemed to have become eternal.
* * *
For purposes of safety from attack, the ships attempted to maintain a spacing of a half-culverin shot of 300 yards between vessels. During the day, they were able to maintain this spacing without great effort, but at night, and often running before a storm, the fleet was scattered and at dawn had to be rejoined. Primarily, the members of the fleet were on the alert for three sea bandits, and it was possible that at least two of them would appear together.
The first of these bandits was the French Huguenot pirate, Jacques Soury. He had, in 1570, attacked a ship bound for Brazil. The captured passengers and crew of this ship had been dealt with most cruelly. Their heads had been split open. They had been bound and stabbed to death and then thrown into the sea. No less deadly were the English ‘sea dogs,’ Francis Drake, and his cousin, John Hawkins.1 The pirates were out there somewhere, of this the members of the transatlantic fleet were sure, and, although the Spaniards could not see them, absence of evidence was not evidence of absence. Francis Drake, for one, was famous for his ability to find the exact spot in an endless sea where he could seize a particularly desirable prize. Undoubtedly, he was at this moment lurking on the high seas searching for more treasure and slaves and perhaps for the members of the transatlantic fleet.
* * *
In addition to enduring the wretched condition of the seas which daily plagued them, the passengers of the fleet also suffered miserably from fouled water and spoiled food. Many of the casks and butts were leaking and what water remained in them was green with slime and foul-smelling. Having no means of replenishing their supply from onshore resources, they consequently set to wringing rainwater from hanging sheets to replace their spoiled stores.2
Their having no control over what was happening to them and their inability to escape their ordeal intensified the misery of the passengers. However, a small group did what they could to bring order to the chaos. They sectioned off a small corner of the cabin for use as a latrine and organized the collection of the night’s slops. They also helped to bring fresh water to those who were unable to rise from their beds. Although they could do nothing about their cramped and putrid quarters—the stench of which worsened daily—they urged that fouled bedding be cleaned and aired or even that it be thrown overboard. Eventually, however, the stench was so unbearable that a container in which incense was burned was put up—a botafumeiro de Sant’ Iago it was called—to dull the odor and fumigate the air.
* * *
Each morning, at first light, Lucia’s father would carry her to the open deck where she slipped in and out of consciousness. There he would cradle her racked body in his lap, and with his large cool hands attempt to soothe her distended stomach. Then, leaving her with Diego, who had become her guardian and nurse, he would return to their stall to retrieve his wife. This, unfortunately, became a daily routine, for Lucia was deathly ill. Whether the reason for this was seasickness, the unsanitary squalor, or simply an especially dangerous form of ‘ship’s fever,’ (typhus) which was then virtually worldwide, Pedro’s attempts to comfort Lucia seemed useless. He feared that if somehow their conditions did not improve, they would lose her.
While resting on deck, and with the ocean’s spray washing over them, Robledo told stories to his family as a way of relieving their wretched condition. He told them the story of the shepherd and of his flock of 300 whom the shepherd was trying to have ferried across a stream. This was a counting story with infinite repetitions and it soon outlived its usefulness.
However, an additional story, and one he told more often, was the legend of the generous and noble Ulysses and the tale of his wanderings. This timeless story of man’s struggle against great odds seemed to fit the occasion. Recited from memory, for the book was in the hold and unavailable to him, the beginning and end of the narrative remained the same. However, there was great variation in his narration of the remainder. In Pedro’s version, Ulysses visited the land of the one-eyed giant, the Cyclops, the Lotus-Eaters, and the Kingdom of the Dead. He encountered Scylla and the Sirens and participated in the contest with the great bow. The differences in his telling were that Pedro focused on Ithaca, and, when alone with Diego, on the much-beloved Telemachus, to whom Ulysses had left his scepter and his kingdom. “And you, Diego,” he would say in his great, sonorous voice, “are my Telemachus. We follow knowledge like a star sinking below the horizon. Remember Diego,” he would add, his light blue eyes alive with excitement, “what we seek is a newer world, perhaps that of the fabled Sobradisa or Micomicon, and when we find it, it will be peaceful and grand! It’s out there somewhere, Diego, beyond the horizon. We may not find it this year, in the next ten years, or perhaps in my lifetime. But it will be found. And when it is, Diego, you must hold on to it for you and for your children. Remember,” he stated emphatically, “that the quest is as important as the discovery. To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield is our motto. If, in our quest, we don’t find it, you must keep looking, for when I’m gone, Diego, your work will be mine.”
* * *
The nights, Pedro wrote, were the most difficult. There was never a time when everyone in the cabin shared the same period of sleep. In his quarters in the family’s minuscule living space, he would lie holding his wife spoon-like around her waist. There, amid the sounds of children crying, and of people coughing, moaning, and retching in new despair, Pedro awaited a new tomorrow. During these periods from sunset to dawn, although surrounded by a horde of humanity, he experienced profound bouts of loneliness. As he lay in the near-dark watching the cabin’s lone candle-lamp swing in the creaking night, he thought of his beloved Carmena, his children, Ana and Luis, and how Ana, especially, the quickest of the four children, would have been full of questions.
More often, though, when the weather allowed, he returned to the main deck after his family fell asleep. Here, from the high poop or from the taffrail of the embattled ship, he would watch the lanterns of the other vessels, the stars, and the cold, black waves like watered camlet as they flowed around his ship in the wake of its passage. Sometimes he thought he could see light coming from deep beneath the ocean’s waves and wondered what this could be. More often, as the ship plowed through the peak and trough of every wave, he observed the bioluminescence of the tiny sea animals displaced by its wake. Perhaps the motion of the vessel as it plowed through the sea provided these sea creatures with the energy required to make this light, he thought to himself. He connected this with the round flash of St. Erasmus’s light3 that is seen around the masts of ships in a thunderstorm, although he did not know what caused either of these phenomena. Leaning on the taffrail at the stern of the ship, he often stood with his arms extended before him in the form of a cross. In this manner, he could gauge the hour by the position of the horn of Ursa Minor in relation to his arms as time passed before him. These considerations provided him with diversions until sleep came.
* * *
And so it went as, day after day, Spain’s Atlantic fleet beat toward the West Indies. Coming together by day and dispersing at night, the individuals
