Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/651

 possibility of being attacked by the piratical craft which hovered off the coast of Africa. In 1636, a vessel with many servants on board, who were in the course of transportation from England to the Colony, was intercepted by Moors near the southern shores of the former country and carried to Salle. In 1683, the ship in which Daniel Tyler of York was returning to Virginia was captured by the Turks. and towards the close of the century, Mathew Page, who had been seized by the Algerians under similar circumstances, was compelled to pay one hundred and four pounds sterling for his release. Shipwrecks, in which all the passengers were drowned or were exposed to unexampled trials resulting in death, were not uncommon.

It is probable that in every instance the voyage was attended by the gravest discomforts for the class of passengers to which servants belonged, and in many cases these discomforts became the most extreme hardships. As the far greater number of vessels sailed from England at but one season of the year, they were generally crowded, and the lack of any sanitary precautions of importance led frequently to pestilence. The owners and masters of the ships were principally bent upon reducing the cost of the voyage, and under the influence of this motive, victualled them so meanly and meagrely that many of the servants, in the course of their conveyance to Virginia, perished from the diseases incident to an unwholesome or insufficient diet. The epidemic that swept over the enfeebled Colony after the Indian massacre of 1622 was said to have