Scurvy in the East India Company’s Ships: Professional Treatment.
Until the end of the Tudor period, scurvy had been only an occasional incident of English voyages. But as soon as the regular trade to the East begins, we find it a common experience.
The English voyages to the East Indies by the Cape route really began in 1591, when Captain James Lancaster sailed first in command of ships belonging to the Company of Merchant Adventurers; but it was not until 1601 that he sailed again to the East Indies in command of the first ships of the East India Company, which had been formed the year before.
The three ships in 1591, the ‘Penelope,’ ‘Marchant Royal,’ and ‘Edward Bonaventure,’ cleared from Plymouth on April 10[1145]. They crossed the Line on June 6, by which time two men were dead and divers sick. In the tropics so much rain fell that “we could not keep our men dry three hours together, which was an occasion of the infection among them, and their eating of salt victuals, with the lack of clothes to shift them.” On this first voyage, Lancaster began the practice which was generally followed when the East India trade in English ships became established; before attempting to double the Cape of Good Hope, he refreshed his crews, who were weak and sick in all three ships, by a sojourn ashore at the Bay of Saldanha, a few leagues to the north of Table Bay. The voyage had already lasted more than three months from Plymouth, and about six weeks from the Line[1146].
At a muster on August 1, in the Bay of Saldanha, Lancaster found that he had 198 men sound and whole, of whom he assigned 101 to the ‘Penelope,’ and 97 to the ‘Edward Bonaventure,’ sending home 50 more or less unfit men in the ‘Royal Merchant.’ Scurvy, he says, was the disease:
“Our soldiers, which have not been used to the sea, have best held out, but our mariners dropt away, which in my judgment, proceedeth of their evil diet at home.” The voyage was continued to the East Indies, the next that we hear of the state of health being at Penang in the beginning of June 1592, or some fourteen months out. The men were then very sick and many fallen; the sick were landed, and twenty-six died there, but not of scurvy, we may surmise. They had now left but thirty-three men and one boy, “of which not past twenty-two were found for labour and help.”
The two ships sailed for home from Point de Galle on December 8, 1592, and reached St Helena on April 3, 1593; one man was sick of the scurvy, and another had been suffering from the flux for nine months, but on the island both shortly recovered their perfect health. Instead of reaching England, the ships were carried to the West Indies, where, after an attempt to navigate them northwards, they were wrecked, and the small remnants of their crews dispersed.
Lancaster’s first voyage for the East India Company in 1601[1147] was “with foure tall shippes, to wit, the Dragon, the Hector, the Ascension, and Susan, and a victualler called the Guest.” The Company, founded in 1600, began with a capital of £72,000, which was laid out in the purchase and outfit of the ships, and in loading them with merchandise. The crews were as follow:
| Dragon, | 600 | tons, | 202 | men. |
| Hector, | 300 | " | 108 | " |
| Ascension, | 260 | " | 82 | " |
| Susan, | — | " | 88 | " |
| 480 | ||||
| Guest, | 130 | tons. | ||
Further, “in every of the said ships, three merchants to succeed one the other, if any of them should be taken away by death”—a sufficient indication of the risks of foreign trade.
The ships, having loaded in the Thames, sailed from Dartmouth on April 18, 1601, and got clear of Tor Bay on the 22nd. On July 24, two months from the Channel, they crossed the southern tropic. But they had been so long under the Line that “many of our men fell sick.” On August 1, in 30° S., they met the south-west wind, “to the great comfort of all our people. For, by this time very many of our men were fallen sick of the scurvy in all our ships, and, unless it were in the general’s ship only, the others were so weak of men that they could hardly handle the sails.” Headwinds again hindered their course, and “now the few whole men we had began also to fall sick, so that our weakness of men was so great that in some of the ships the merchants took their turn at the helm and went into the top to take in the top sails, as the common mariners did.” Lancaster at length made Saldanha Bay, where he had landed to refresh his crews on his first voyage round the Cape ten years before. The state of three of the ships “was such that they was hardly able to let fall an anchor to save themselves withall;” but “the general went aboard of them and carried good store of men, and hoysed out their boats for them.... And the reason why the general’s men stood better in health than the men of other ships was this: he brought to sea with him certain bottles of the juice of lemons, which he gave to each one as long as it would last, three spoonfuls every morning fasting, not suffering them to eat anything after it till noon. This juice worketh much the better if the partie keepe short diet, and wholly refrain salt meat, which salt meat, and long being at the sea, is the only cause of the breeding of this disease. By this means the general cured many of his men and preserved the rest, so that in this ship (having the double of men that was in the rest of the ships) he had not so many sick, nor lost so many men as they did, which was the mercie of God to us all.”
At Saldanha Bay they bartered with the natives for an abundant supply of fresh meat and other provisions, and in due time doubled the Cape of Good Hope. On Christmas day, eight months out from England, they put in to Antongil Bay, on the east side of Madagascar. On landing they found a writing on the rocks that five Dutch ships had sailed thence two months before, having “lost between 150 and 200 men while they roade in that place.” The English had a similar experience in store for them: on board Lancaster’s ship, the master’s mate, the preacher, the surgeon and some ten others, died; and, in the vice-admiral’s ship, the master with other two. It was mostly the flux that they died of, brought on by the drinking-water, or by the excessive wetness of the season, or by “going open and cold in the stomacke, which our men would often do when they were hot” (Hawkins gives the latter reason for flux at the Cape de Verde islands).
The references to scurvy before reaching the Cape, and to dysentery in Madagascar, are all that is said of sickness in this first venture of the East India Company. But in the accounts of the voyages which regularly followed we hear a great deal of the loss of men at the factories, or in the country trade, or on the voyage home, as well as on the outward voyage[1148]. The Directors in London were naturally well aware how greatly their ventures were imperilled and their profits reduced by the enormous loss of men. Under their own eyes ships would arrive in the mouth of the Channel with crews so weakened that they had to be met at Scilly with help to navigate them through the narrow seas to the Thames. By their correspondence from abroad, they were frequently hearing of artificers dying in their factories, of ships arriving out with so many men dead, and of other ships cast away, partly by stress of weather no doubt, but sometimes from inability of the crews to man them. Accordingly we find that they were alive to the best means of preventing “flux, scurvy, and fever.” Lancaster, as we have seen, carried lime-juice on his first voyage for the Company in 1601. In the Court minutes of August 13, 1607, the following were ordered to be provided with expedition: “Lemon water, ‘alligant’ from Alicante, a wine very fit for beverage and good against the flux, and old corn, etc.” At the Court of Directors on December 10, 1614, there was considered an “offer of Dr Burgis to present the Company with an antidote against poison, scurvy, and other diseases to which people are subject these long voyages: Sir Thomas Roe and Captain Keeling to confer with him and report their opinions.” Trial was also to be made of baking fresh bread at sea, with the grinding of corn, “an exercise fit to preserve men in health.” The offer of Dr Burgis was accepted; and on January 26, 1615, the minutes of the Court mention “instructions in writing, and boxes of such things as are to be used, for prevention of the flux, scurvy, and fever, prepared by Dr Burgis, to be delivered to each ship; the cost, about £23, to be paid.” In the minutes of the Court, November 22, 1619, there is reference to another preventive of scurvy: “The fleet to be supplied with 15 tons of white wine, to be drunk at the Line, and the Cape, which is used by the Dutch to preserve men from scurvy, and will refresh the men and scour their maws, and open and cool as well as lemon water”—the latter having been in all probability disliked or refused by the men. In 1624, “the death of mariners” is a topic at the Court of Directors; again, on October 15, 1626, the Court considers of the great mortality from scurvy in the ‘Charles’ and ‘Hart,’ homeward bound, and how to prevent it. Some were of opinion that lemon water was very good, but Mr Styles related that tamarind was the excellentest thing. However, there had been plenty of tamarinds aboard the ships; and on Lieutenant Hill being called in, he testified that the crews had all got tamarind, but they were all debauched people.
John Woodall, surgeon to St Bartholomew’s Hospital, was at this time surgeon-general to the East India Company, having medical charge of their dockyard at Blackwall; his name appears in the Court minutes as early as 1614. In 1617 he published his ‘Surgion’s Mate,’ “chiefly for the benefit of young sea-surgions imployed in the East India companies affairs,” and dedicated it to Sir Thomas Smith, himself a navigator, and then chairman of the Court of Directors. This practical manual is largely occupied with the management of fractures, dislocations, amputations, and the like, a part of his subject wherein Woodall was thoroughly competent; but there appears also in the title, “the cure of the scurvie, the fluxes of the belly, of the collica and iliaca passio, tenasmus and exitus ani, the callenture.” The section on scurvy, twenty-six pages long, is the one that here concerns us. This was what Sir Richard Hawkins had desired: “And I wish that some learned men would write of it, for it is the plague of the sea and the spoil of mariners.” Woodall begins by disclaiming learning: “A learned treatise befits not my pen.” But, at all events, his was the voice of the faculty, and he plunges boldly into pathology in the very first lines: “Scurvy is a disease of the spleen, whereby it is sometimes wholly stopped” etc. Being a man of much good sense, Woodall quickly leaves that line of remark, for a time at least. He repeats all the familiar experience of Hawkins, Lancaster, and the numerous captains of East Indiamen, with whom he must have conversed many times (it does not appear that he had himself sailed). He mentions the great benefit to the crews from landing at the Cape, with the fresh air and food, scurvy being thereby cured “without much other help.” He enforces the need of changes of clothing, and other things in the regimen on board, just as Hawkins and others were wont to do in practice. He is as clear on the virtues of lime-juice as Lancaster, and copies somewhat closely the practice of the latter in 1601: “each morning two or three spoonfuls, and fast after it two hours”; his originality appearing in the rider, grateful to seamen: “and if you add one spoonful of aqua vitae thereto, to a cold stomach it is the better.” He mentions that a “good quantity of juice of lemons is sent in each ship out of England, by the great care of the merchants, and intended only for the relief of every poor man in his need.” The ship’s surgeon is advised to lay in a store of fresh lemons and oranges where they were to be had on the voyage, and of tamarinds at Bantam.
So far, Woodall merely sets down what every shipmaster knew as to the things that bring on scurvy, the best regimen to keep it off, and the extraordinarily rapid curative effect of lime-juice and of change to land air and fresh food. But there was a certain professional doctrine of scurvy, and a treatment of it secundum artem, namely the wisdom of learned men which Hawkins had called for; and we have now to see what that was, according to Woodall. His pathology is that of “obstructions,” a curious fancy of the learned[1149].
The spleen, said Woodall in his opening lines, is the chief seat of obstruction; but on resuming the pathology, he proceeds to obstructions also of the liver and brain:
“But it is plain that this grief is a lazy foul disease with obstructions of the liver, or spleen, or both; as also it appeareth that the head is much diseased, and that there is great obstructions in the brain, for that the eyes not only look evil coloured, but also the gums putrefy, and the teeth grow loose, and all the sinewy parts of the body bear their part in the disease, for the shrinking and withering of the sinews, with the great pains the party hath, declareth no less” (p. 180).
This theoretical pathology Woodall supports by an appeal to morbid anatomy:
“Also it is manifest that divers of those which have been opened after death have had their livers utterly rotted”-others having their livers much swollen, and the spleen swollen, others full of water, others their lungs putrefied and stunk while they have lived, (which last may have been an incorrect inference from the foul state of the mouth).
Such being the pathology of the disease, he comes next to the indications of cure; and these he takes from “a famous writer, Johannes Echthius.” They are:
1. The opening of obstructions.
2. The evacuating of offending humours.
3. The altering the property of the humours.
4. The comforting and corroborating the parts late diseased.
The order of treatment, lege artis, is accordingly as follows: the administration of a clyster or clysters; the opening of a vein, if strong (“but beware of taking too much blood away at once”); next day after the bleeding, “if he can bear it,” give him pills of euphorbium or gamboge; and lastly, “if you see cause,” certain days after you have given of any of your former laxatives, you may give a sweat to the patient in his bed. Thus the indications from the pathology would be fulfilled—opening of obstructions, evacuating of ill humours, and altering the property of the humours. It should be said for Woodall that his practice was better than his theory. Thus, he cautions the young dogmatists who sailed as surgeons in East Indiamen, not to carry their principles too far; he has heard that they are somewhat fond of the lancet, and he cautions them not to take too much blood at sea, as excessive depletion “makes the disease worse;” he cautions them also as to the use of gamboge.
We may now proceed with a few more illustrations of what the Company’s ships were actually experiencing during the period that those questions were before the Court of Directors[1150].
In the sixth voyage for the Company, under the command of Sir H. Middleton, the captain of the ‘Darling’ and three of his merchants died at Tecoa, and most of the men were ill. In the eighth voyage, when homeward bound between the Cape and St Helena in the month of June, many of the men fell ill with scurvy, and the ship had to come in to Waterford instead of the Thames. A similar experience befell Captain Thomas Best in the ‘Dragon’ and ‘Hosiander,’ carrying together 380 persons. Having left Gravesend on February 1, 1612, he completed his trading in the Indies, and arrived in the Thames on June 15, 1614, six months from Bantam. The scurvy in this voyage comes in towards the end. On March 4, 1614, “I did set sail in the roade of Saldanha; yet notwithstanding our short passage, having been from Santa Helena but two monethes and nine days, the one half or more of our company are laid up [on June 4] of the scurvie and two dead of it. Yet we had plentie of victuals, as beef, bread, wine, rice, oil, vinegar, sugar; and all these without allowance. Note that all our men that are sick have taken their sickness since we fell with Flores and Corvo. For since that time we have had it very cold, especially in two great storms.... From the Cape of Good Hope to the islands of Flores and Corvo I had not one man sick.” While in the Malay Archipelago they had buried twenty-five men at one place.
On November 3, 1618, the Directors have letters from two of their captains at the Cape, of July 6 and 7, with news of their arrival there on June 26, and the loss or sickness of many men, partly through the stinking beer, the tainted beef, the lack of fresh provisions at the Cape, and the want of warm clothes. A letter of February 25, 1619, announces the arrival of the ‘Peppercorn’ in Bantam roads: A great many men had died in the ten-months’ voyage between England and Bantam; putrefied beef and pork, “not man’s meat,” the chief cause of sickness. When they arrived at Bantam, not six men able to work; the whole fleet in the like distress. Twenty-five men in all dead or drowned. A letter from Batavia, January 11, 1622, says the master of the ‘Anne’ and 14 men of the fleet were dead: “so many men are deceased that they have not enough to man all the ships now in the roads.” The ‘Diamond’ sailed from England on October 8, 1621, and after a “long and tedious voyage” arrived at Jacatra previous to November 24, 1622: enclosed are the accounts of those men who have died, and nine wills. Another letter from Batavia, sometime in 1623, covers an “abstract of the men deceased in the ships.”
On March 28, 1624, the ‘Royal James,’ with five others, sailed from the Downs; she called at Saldanha Bay, and arrived on or before November 15, at Swally bar, Batavia; the bread had been very bad, the water too little, the beef not fit for men; have enclosed the names of those deceased. The ‘Jonas,’ also arrived out at Batavia on November 15, appears to have been one of the five others; she called at Saldanha Bay on July 19; “the wholesomeness of the air and the herb baths caused the most part of their sick men to recover in ten days from the scurbeck.” In June, 1625, the ‘Anne’ had been at Mocha for eight months in great distress, with most part of her men dead and the ship ready to founder.
Writing on October 13, 1625, from Batavia to the East India Company in London, Governor Hawley says that the ‘London’ had arrived out on August 23, with loss of 36 men, and 80 sick. She reported the ‘Discovery’ to have left the Cape for St Helena, having lost 21 men; two other ships, the ‘Moon’ and ‘Ruby’ had their crews “in remarkable health.” On September 14, the ‘Swallow’ arrived out, having lost only 3 men. Of 46 men shipped in the ‘Abigail’ out of England, all were dead but 5, in her coasting voyages upon Sumatra. Most of the workmen and soldiers sent in the ‘London’ had arrived; “but since, by disorders, are dead, as are those in the ‘Swallow.’ The smiths are all dead; of the armourers, only John Speed and a boy alive. Most other workmen dead or incapable. This is not remissness of government, but the newcomers, dreaming of nothing but sack and sugar-plums in India, are with much difficulty brought to obedience.” A Dutch ship, the ‘Leyden’ arrived out in 1626, with loss of 22 men, having been twelve months on the passage.
In the end of October, 1628, the ‘Morris’ reached the mouth of the Channel from Bantam, “which was most happily met with near Scilly by Captain Bickly, who was sent out to relieve any ship from the Indies, she being in a very weak state by reason of an infectious disease.” She reached the Downs safely with two other East Indiamen; but having been driven from her anchors in a great storm, was wrecked on the coast of Holland previous to November 19. Next year, about October 28, 1629, the ‘Mary’ of the East India Company was reported to have put into Scilly having lost most of her men by sickness. Therefore, Sir H. Mervyn, of H.M.S. ‘Lyon,’ in the Downs, having got early word of the ‘Mary’s’ distress, writes to E. Nicholas, to say that if the Company desire a convoy for the ‘Mary’ from their lordships of the Admiralty, “she being rich,” he (Mervyn) hopes that Nicholas will remember him.
But, although it was not unusual for ships to come home with crews weakened by scurvy, it was not invariable. The ‘William’ returned to England in 1628, as rich a ship as the Company ever had from the East Indies, with not a sick man in her, nor any dead on the way; her lading was computed to be worth £170,000[1151].
In a despatch of February 6, 1626, Hawley gives an account of a truly disastrous sickness in the factory and among the Company’s ships at Batavia during the previous year, which illustrates another risk than that of scurvy or flux, and an experience in the East Indies not altogether exceptional[1152].
“On March 12, I dispeeded the ‘Diamond’ for Japan to fetch boards, planks, etc. [to repair the ‘Bull’ with]; but hardly had fourteen days passed when the ‘Bull’s’ men fell sick and died daily; then the ‘Reformation’s’ men died by five, six or more in a day; in a short time the ‘Bull’s’ men all died but the master and one more, who were dangerously sick, and in the ‘Reformation’ the master and all the men lay at God’s mercy. We were forced to relieve them by blacks, and hale the ships to the open bay [they would seem to have been careened] where they rode like wrecks without other help than some few to comfort their sick, for more from the other ships might not be spared. The contagion was so pestilent that their blood, being licked by dog or cat, caused them to swell, burst and die. It was more moderate on shore, and was least on the ships in the open bay, though they also were daily visited.... The ‘Diamond’ returned on April 11, with planks etc.; also slaves and 44 Chinamen, which were with no small charge procured, and who all fell sick, and 10 or 12 died.... Thinking the mortality was occasioned, not by pestiferous air or soil, nor by any noxious tree, but by surfeit and the wet monsoon, I enacted orders for government building, and cleansing the trees to get more air. Wanted no provisions of fresh victual; could at pleasure command neighbours to fish and fetch anything needed, and the island itself furnished deer. On April 12, took general view of all people, as follows:
| English in health | English sick | Portuguese sick | |||||
| On shore | 40 | 58 | 5 | ||||
| In the | ‘Charles’ | 32 | 10 | ||||
| " | ‘Roebuck’ | 16 | 2 | ||||
| " | ‘Bull’ | 2 | 8 | ||||
| " | ‘Reformation’ | 23 | 14 | 12 | |||
| " | ‘Abigail’ | 8 | 3 | ||||
| " | ‘Rose’ | 7 | 2 | 5 | |||
| 128 | 97 | 22 | |||||
—leaving, of course, an immense proportion dead.
These are instances from the records of the East India Company during the first thirty years of its existence. It would be tedious, even if it were practicable, to follow the history continuously. But meanwhile to show that its experiences, good and bad, remained much the same until long after, let us take two voyages in the year 1682. Governor William Hedges, passenger on board one of the Company’s ships, enters in his diary the 25th of May, 1682, being then off the Cape of Good Hope: “Not lost a man (except Mr Richards) either by sickness or any other accident, since we left England, which wants but three days of four months, and is just two months since we passed the Equinoctial Line,” nothing being said of sickness in the rest of the voyage. But another of the Company’s ships the same year fared worse: “December 9, 1682, ship ‘Society’ arrived at Balasore. She left the Downs on May 30, and, not touching at any place by the way, lost seventeen men of the scurvy[1153].”