Wind Rises in North America 1625

Chapter 37: Sailing, a Game for the Brave
"Sailing is truly a game for the brave!" Luo Zhenhui leaned back on the bed, looking at Li Xianqing with a wry smile. "This time, we almost lost our lives on this trip to Mexico. If there weren't modern cholera medications on board, at least one-third of the crew, including me, would have died."

"Yes, sailing on the sea has always been fraught with danger. If you're not careful, you could face death." Li Xianqing looked at the other person with relief and said with a smile, "I don't know how those people in Europe managed to survive during the Age of Exploration."

In fact, during the Age of Discovery, sailors were the most dangerous and worst paid profession.

Without a doubt, once you get on the boat, it's like having one foot halfway into the grave of death. Moreover, you will have to endure endless suffering, endless fatigue, and all kinds of unimaginable dangers.

During this period, the daily lives of European sailors living and working at sea, whether on merchant ships or warships, were very monotonous, requiring them to constantly repeat many heavy tasks and work very long hours.

The "996" work schedule that modern people scoff at is a real "blessing" for these sailors.

In order to cope with the ever-changing weather and wind direction of the sea, extremely severe sea conditions, and the consumption of sailors' excess energy, the captain will require the sailors to keep working at all times.

In order to ensure this state, the ship generally adopts a shift work system. The sailors will be divided into various working groups, and then led by the boatswain or senior sailors to work and rest in shifts.

Usually, sailors can only sleep for less than four hours at a time. After that, they have to get up to replace other sailors to rest, and then wait for others to replace them, repeating this day and night.

Therefore, most sailors on ships are relatively tired, and only senior sailors can enjoy relatively easy working conditions.

Sometimes when there is a shortage of manpower, the captain will drive the sailors who have just fallen asleep to work again.

If a sailboat wants to sail normally on the sea and maintain the corresponding speed, the sailors must constantly adjust the wind angle of the sail so that it can correctly receive the wind and face the wind. Only in this way can the ship sail in a straight line or "Z" shape as they wish.

Ocean-going ships were mostly two-masted and three-masted sailing ships, and these ships had many different types of sails.

These sails are operated by countless ropes, spars, pulleys and masts. They are extremely complicated and tedious, and hundreds of "sailor's knots" (rope knots) are used. Sailors must operate these "tools" in a timely and correct manner to make the sails work properly.

If you make an error in operation, you need to correct it immediately, otherwise the sail is likely to tear or fall off due to uneven force.

Manipulating sails is extremely dangerous, as sailors need to climb to the top of masts, which can be tens or even dozens of meters high, to perform routine sailing operations. During this process, sailors working on the masts have no safety nets, not even a safety rope. They rely entirely on their own experience and agility to secure themselves against accidental falls from the mast or rope ladder.

Once they fall, the sailor's life is basically over, because falling from a mast fifty or sixty meters high, no matter whether the sailor falls on the deck or falls into the sea, he will at least lose his ability to move for a period of time.

If a sailor was seriously injured, it would be better for him to fall to his death. Because the medical conditions and medical skills at that time made it difficult to save a seriously injured patient, and the only thing they could do was to make the patient suffer for a few more days in the world.

If it is dangerous for sailors to climb up a mast dozens of meters high to carry out daily work in a "calm" environment (the sea is calm but the waves are three feet high), then it can only be described as extremely crazy for sailors to operate the sails in strong winds or stormy weather.

Because under the "destruction" of strong winds and storms, the mast is the part of the ship that shakes the most violently. Sailors can easily be "thrown off" by strong winds or shaking masts. However, in order to ensure the safety of the ship, sailors cannot refuse to work on the mast.

At most, sailors would cut down the masts when encountering the worst sea conditions, but in the process of cutting down the masts, the sailors were also likely to be killed, injured, or swept away by the waves by the broken masts.

Oh, by the way, let me interrupt. When sailors are sailing at sea, they need to drink a lot of alcoholic beverages every day to quench their thirst. This, to a certain extent, causes sailors to be in a state of "drunk driving" most of the time, and their poor physical coordination further increases the occurrence of dangerous accidents.

Look, these daily operations alone have a high probability of costing a sailor's life.

Worse still, the sailors' accommodations were generally poor and completely devoid of comfort. Most of them could only sleep in large bunk beds, with dozens or even hundreds of people crammed into a single cabin. Private space was minimal, often less than one square meter, and ventilation was poor, rife with the stench of life.

Moreover, due to the backward shipbuilding technology, seawater would penetrate into the cabin from the bottom of the ship, soaking wood, garbage, food, cargo and other things and making them stink. The mixture of moisture, body odor, mold and other unpleasant odors made it difficult for ordinary people to bear.

So much so that sailors at the time described the cabin as a place full of stench, resentment, fear, vomiting, various sea diseases, fever, dysentery, headaches, heat, tuberculosis, skin lumps, scurvy, cancer and mouth ulcers.

On a ship, only the captain, first mate and other senior seafarers can have separate rooms and some private space, without having to endure the foul smell in the large bunk beds.

In addition, there are disgusting foods, as well as various horrific infectious diseases and scurvy.

Scurvy, in particular, would cause the number of sailors on a ship to drop by more than 30% after completing a long journey.

When the "Breakthrough" was heading for Mexico, it carried a large amount of wild fruits and vegetables on board, and also took all the remaining canned fruits. All crew members, including more than 20 Spanish sailors, were required to eat a small amount every day. As a result, no case of scurvy occurred during the entire journey.

On the return voyage, the "Break the Waves" loaded almost all the fruits and vegetables in the town onto the ship, properly packaged them, and carefully stored them for use during the journey.

However, despite all the precautions taken to prevent all crew members from contracting scurvy, a small cholera outbreak occurred unexpectedly.

The source of the cholera must be the more than 30 residents who were forcibly abducted from a small Mexican town!
After looting the town, in order to avoid being intercepted by the Spanish naval forces, the "Break the Waves" did not conduct too many physical examinations on the residents of the town after bringing them on board - of course, in that situation, it was impossible to conduct a thorough health screening for everyone, and even to isolate them in separate cabins - but instead crammed them all into the cabin and hurriedly set sail for the return journey.

You have to know that during this period, Europeans were not very fond of cleanliness. It was very normal for them not to take a bath or change clothes for a month or so.

Louis XIV, who called himself the "Sun King", seemed to have taken only seven baths in his life. His stench was so strong from ten meters away that no amount of perfume could cover it up.

Not to mention ordinary people in European countries. Although they took baths as often as Louis XIV, the frequency must have been very low.

Ordinary people have to work hard every day to make a living. Even if they want to take a shower, they don’t have the conditions to do so, right?

Under such circumstances, cholera, smallpox, the Black Death, and plague took turns raging across Europe, killing millions of people.

Although these plagues were not all caused by people's poor hygiene, they were more or less indirectly related.

When the "Junk" returned, all the crew members, including the time travelers, were immediately placed separately in several wooden houses in the camp and carried out necessary sanitary and epidemic prevention isolation to prevent the spread of germs they might carry to everyone.

After seven days of medical observation, military doctor Dong Xinping checked the physical conditions of each person and confirmed that there were no potential infectious diseases. Only then did they lift the isolation measures in batches.

At this time, it was March 1st, and the temperature began to rise slowly. Spring was about to arrive on Qiming Island (Vancouver Island).

Spring also means the return of vitality and vigor. Animals begin to become active, trees grow green leaves again, and dead grass begins to turn green again. Nature is full of vitality again.

A new force also began to sprout, grow and develop.

(End of this chapter)