Unlucky (Part 1)
ANNETTE TELLS TALES Meet Englishman Bill Moraley, Who Failed to Find the American Dream
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Readers Ask: What’s an Indentured Servant When It’s At Home? Okay, the Brits ask that. Most Americans have some idea.
Today, we meet William Moraley, an Englishman who lived in America for nearly four years, but who failed to achieve the American Dream.
Moraley came to America in 1729 as an indentured servant. That means he got his transatlantic voyage for free, when he signed a contract (indenture). The downside? He had to commit be sold at the dockside in America to some random stranger, and work for him for (typically) four to seven years. As well as his ticket to America, an indentured servant was promised room, board, and clothing for the length of his contract. When his time was up, he could expect a bonus as a parting gift: typically free clothes, and/or tools, maybe even land.
Owning land was like winning the lottery for 17th and 18th century Brits. But most had zero interest in going to America. They didn’t want to leave behind everyone and everything they knew for an uncertain future in a dangerous wilderness, which was how they imagined America. Most still do, only differently. Just saying.
Non-rich Brits who went to America weren't drawn by glitz and glamor, or even the prospect of profit. They became indentured servants as a last resort. Most British indentured servants in colonial America faced a stark choice between unfree labor in America, or starvation on the streets. That hardly amounts to a “choice”, unlike picking a favorite color, or deciding between a scone and a slice of cake.
(Heck, I've always hated smug chatter about “choices”, can you tell? I even loaned my strong opinions on this (and so much else) to Professor Harrower in my Snipesville novels.)
English indentured servitude in America started more than a century before William Moraley left London. It began with the early seventeenth century tobacco boom in Virginia. As demand for this addictive drug grew, there was a desperate labor shortage in the tobacco fields. Seeking potential tobacco workers (i.e. warm bodies, it was unskilled work) labor recruiters prowled England’s port cities, especially London.
Like traffickers (called “spirits”) who kidnapped people, legit recruiters knew to approach the most destitute-looking folk on the streets. They offered a hot meal and a place to sleep (on board the ship), plus truly fabulous incentives to sign on for four to seven years of indentured servitude. What they offered sometimes included, as I’ve said, FREE LAND.
First, of course, indentured servants had to spend those four to seven years working off the cost of their transatlantic voyage. Their odds of surviving malaria plus dysentery plus overwork in most of the 17th century, long enough to become free, were not that great. Grim, in fact.
Indentured servants in early Virginia died like flies from malaria, dysentery, starvation, overwork, abuse, and all that sort of thing. Those who survived found themselves, at best, given the crappiest land on the frontier, far from ports and next to Indian neighbors who weren't always happy to see them. So by the late 1600s, word had spread in England that the too-good-to-be-true offer of an Atlantic cruise and a future life of wealth as a tobacco planter was, indeed, too good to be true.
The first unfree Africans had arrived in Virginia in 1619, but only because a ship had come from the West Indies to hold a liquidation sale of its unsold human cargo. These early Africans' legal status was unclear: Many, if not most, were simply considered indentured servants, and eventually freed. But by 1660, the Royal African Company was founded by King Charles’ brother, the Duke of York, no, not that one. It got exclusive rights to import enslaved Africans to English America. When importing slaves was opened to the free market near the end of the 17th century, in 1697, loads of entrepreneurs entered the slave trade, and the supply of slaves to America dramatically increased. American tobacco planters, desperate for labor, began buying up enslaved Africans in huge numbers.
In fact, Africans had not been the tobacco planters’ first choice: They preferred to deal with English people who shared their language, culture, and appearance. But when the supply of Englishmen declined, who cared about different skin color, different cultures, even a foreign language, when valuable tobacco would otherwise rot in the fields?
There were other reasons why English servitude declined, and African slavery increased, in the late 17th century. As death rates fell, and more and more servants became free, they became a big pain in rich people’s butts. They started their own plantations, and competed with rich tobacco planters. They even threatened the Establishment by revolting in Bacon’s Rebellion.
Like English servants, enslaved Africans were also living longer, and Virginia laws now defined them clearly as slaves, with fewer roles and almost no rights. No wonder enslaved people seemed like a better investment, even though they cost tobacco planters more than indentured servants. Africans now could never become free, and their children would also be enslaved.
No surprise: African slavery expanded dramatically in 18th century America. So you may well ask:
What Was William Moraley Doing in America in 1729?
It comes as a bit of a surprise, after all that, that all through the 18th century, Europeans, including some Brits, continued to earn their way across the Atlantic as indentured servants.
They did, though, and among them was William Moraley. Like most other indentured servants in this later period, he didn't go to Virginia, where, increasingly, unfree labor meant enslaved Africans. Instead, he came to the Middle Colonies (New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania), so called because they were between the other British colonies in America: They were south of the New England colonies, like Massachusetts, and north of, um, the South.
As you can imagine, most indentured servants in the 17th and 18th century British American colonies were illiterate, and most never returned home, if only because they couldn’t afford the trip. Documenting their lives, and especially from their perspective, is difficult.
But not, as it happens, impossible.
Today, we meet William Moraley, an English indentured servant to America in the eighteenth century, who not only came home to England, but self-published his autobiography. We get his on-the-ground perspective, and it’s quite a story.
Moraley emigrated to a part of America that was often praised as “the best poor man’s country”. Yet he wasn’t successful. Compare his tale with Ben Franklin’s Autobiography, the most famous memoir of 18th century America, a rags-to-riches tale of American Dream success.
Franklin’s autobiography suggests that anyone (anyone! so long as they were white) in 18th century America could reach the heights of success by taking personal responsibility.
As you might imagine, this message is close to many Americans’ hearts, if not always to the truth. Ben Franklin did not, shall we say, always practice what he preached. Ahem. We’ll get to that at Non-Boring History.
For now, think of William Moraley is sort of an anti-Ben Franklin. While he often blames himself for his failures, Moraley also calls BS on the whole personal responsibility thing. As we should, too, when it comes to Benjamin “You be thrifty and hardworking, while I fart around in pubs and go shopping” Franklin.
Moraley was more typical of his times. Luck, not individual responsibility, was a big theme in the 18th century: If bad stuff happened, it wasn't the work of a malicious God, or the product of your individual failings, but just plain old misfortune.
That's why William Moraley titled his autobiography The Infortunate, or, as I have translated it, Unlucky.
This post is based on my close reading of Dr. Susan E. Klepp and Dr. Billy G. Smith, editors, The Infortunate: The Voyage and Adventures of William Moraley, an Indentured Servant (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992, and second edition 2006) Any screw-ups are my fault, not theirs! Annette
Unlucky: Meet Bill Moraley
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and length, and translated from the 18th century English in which it was recorded.
SETTING: Studio A at Non-Boring House. Small but enthusiastic audience of Gnomes, the entire support staff of Non-Boring History. ON AIR light flashing.
Annette walks onstage. Gnomes madly applaud.
ANNETTE: Thank you! Thank you, all!
{Takes seat on stage}
ANNETTE You know, when we think of ordinary men who wrote autobiographies in 18th century America, we usually think of the rags to riches story of Ben Franklin, who rose from humble printer’s apprentice to Founding Father of the United States. Franklin attributed his successes to his strong sense of personal responsibility and careful living, although, let’s be honest, he may have exaggerated his own good character a fair bit.
Unlike Ben Franklin, our guest tonight is under little illusion that he bore personal responsibility for his fate, and his story does not end so gloriously as Franklin's.
Born into a prosperous family in London, our guest found himself adrift as a young man, for reasons that, as he’ll tell you, were mostly not of his own making.
He emigrated to America, only to return a few years later, when he started work on his autobiography. That book is still in print, nearly three hundred years later. Indeed, it's more of a bestseller than it ever was in his lifetime. It’s called Unlucky. And what a treat to have the author with us, not least because he’s been dead since 1762. Please welcome William Moraley!
[Wild applause from Gnomes. Awkward-looking man in wig and knee breeches enters at top of steps, and waves before tripping slightly on step, to his alarm, and a titter of knowing laughter from the audience, before taking a seat across from Annette.]
ANNETTE: Welcome, Bill, thanks for joining us today.
BILL: Good to be here. Honestly, when you’re dead as long as I've been it’s good to be anywhere. [mild audience laughter].
ANNETTE: So I want to show everyone the cover of your book, Unlucky, which is subtitled The Voyage and Adventures of William Moraley, an Indentured Servant. and then lots more words, in true 18th century style:
Posh But Poor
ANNETTE: So, Bill, you live in Newcastle-upon-Tyne these days . . .
BILL Not anymore.
ANNETTE: Excuse me?
BILL I don’t live in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Annette. I'm dead. I’m buried in Newcastle. [audience laughter]
ANNETTE Oh, haha. Right. Of course. But you’re not from the north of England originally, are you?
BILL No, I’m a native Londoner, born and raised. But my dad’s roots were up North. You know, the Moraleys were a well-connected family. They gained a lot of land in Northumberland, from marriage to the Ridleys. So my connections to the Newcastle area run deep. I think I can say I have a pretty prestigious pedigree.
ANNETTE: Uh huh. And yet, by the time you were thirty, you ended up an indentured servant in America. This isn't what usually happens to people from posh families. What happened?
BILL: I got unlucky. [audience laughter] No, seriously, Annette, obviously it's a bit more complicated than that.
ANNETTE How so?
BILL Let me be honest: My branch of the family weren’t the richest of the Moraleys. You know how inheritance works among the English upper classes, even now in the 21st century, right? The eldest son gets the house and land and all the money, the daughters get married off with generous dowries, and the younger sons are set up in careers in the law, church, the army, or some other gentlemanly profession. My Dad was the third son, and, to make matters much worse, his oldest brother frittered away much of the family fortunes . . .
ANNETTE I’m sorry, Bill, but I have to interrupt you here. Susan Klepp and Billy Smith, the two historians who published this scholarly edition of Unlucky, have not been able to verify your ancestry. You don’t mention your grandfather, your dad’s father, and he’s the missing link between you and the rich Moraleys and the Ridley family. Why is that?
BILL Well, it’s like people say in the 21st century, Annette. We’re all entitled to our own truths. [Gnomes applaud sympathetically]*
*The footnote referring to Moraley's vague genealogy is missing from Klepp and Smith's later 2nd edition of The Infortunate, so he was telling the truth, I guess.
ANNETTE: Uh huh. Right. Sure. So… What happened to your Dad after your uncle blew the family money?
BILL: Obviously, the family was skint, as Brits say. There was no money for my father to train as a lawyer, or anything like that. So Dad moved down to London to look for opportunities, and there, he married my mum, Martha, who was one of the Masons, a very important and wealthy London family.
ANNETTE Your mum was the daughter of John Mason, the well-known City businessman, right?
BILL Absolutely. So, after they married . .
ANNETTE Is that how your dad made his money? Marrying your mum? I ask, because Klepp and Smith discovered something in the archives that you don’t tell us.
BILL [anxiously] Oh? And what’s that?
ANNETTE Your Dad was a humble clockmaker.
BILL Yes, actually, he was. I’m not ashamed of that. He trained as a clockmaker’s apprentice for eight years.
ANNETTE You don’t mention it in the book, though. So your dad trained with well-known clockmaker Tom Tompion, I believe. And when his apprenticeship ended, he stayed with Tompion as a journeyman clockmaker, meaning a wage-earner employed by another clockmaker, not a businessman or master in charge of his own shop.
BILL [shortly]What’s your point?
ANNETTE You never mention that your Dad was an employee at the time you were born, and that the likely source of your family’s money was your grandad, your mum’s dad. Fair enough?
BILL: [Nods curtly] Yah. Fair.
ANNETTE: So, Bill, tell us about your childhood. I see you don’t claim you attended Eton, or anything like that.
BILL No, I didn't go to posh school, but in those days, very few boys did. I just stayed home and got spoiled. [Audience laughter, which he acknowledges with a grin.] No, seriously, my parents completely indulged me. But I honestly think my parents’ spoiling me set the stage for my unluckiness.
ANNETTE Come again?
BILL Look, yes, I did have a pretty good education. I was taught Latin, basic maths, music, dancing, all that gentlemanly stuff. I also took several science classes at the Royal Society in London, which I could have used to get ahead in life. But because my parents spoiled me, I couldn’t be arsed. I piddled around, partied, and basically lived in the moment. I completely squandered the advantages of my education. And that's because my parents didn't bring me up properly.
ANNETTE Blaming your family for your own failings is very modern of you, Bill.
BILL Is that right? Cool.
Law School Drop Out
ANNETTE But your parents did make one early opportunity possible for you, right?
BILL Oh, sure. When I was fifteen years old, my dad paid for me to train as a lawyer.
ANNETTE I assume he paid with your Grandad Mason’s money. Today, in the 21st century, you would have gone to law school. But it didn’t work like that in 1714, did it?
BILL A school for law? No. My dad set me up as a clerk to a lawyer in London. That means I was supposed to be an apprentice, and learn the law from him while doing chores, sweeping floors and filing files, that sort of thing.
ANNETTE But it didn’t work out, did it?
BILL [Laughs] No, I spent two years hanging around the streets, and partying. Those were my real interests, not law.
ANNETTE Historians Klepp and Smith suggest you might have also felt discouraged as a middle-class lad surrounded by upper-class lawyers and clerks, and that you gave up because you lacked confidence. Until recently, you know, it wasn’t uncommon for posh law students to bully law students from humbler backgrounds.
BILL [fascinated] Really? Wow.
ANNETTE So did your dad figure out you weren't taking your law studies seriously?
BILL Oh, eventually. He told me that if I didn’t get my act together, I would lose my so-called friends, and wind up with everyone thinking I was useless.
ANNETTE Did that affect you?
BILL Of course. I dumped my partying buddies, and started growing up.
ANNETTE Yet your dad took you out of law school anyway, and you became his apprentice, in May 1718.
BILL I did. It was all for the best. My dad would have given up his dream of a law career for me anyway, because he’d decided by then that lawyers are a shifty, slimy lot.
ANNETTE He suddenly figured that out, did he?
BILL He did. Now you mention it, he did change his mind about me having a career in law rather suddenly . . .
Financial Disaster
ANNETTE Hmm. Around this time, didn’t your father lose a ton of money in the South Sea Bubble?
BILL He did, but I don’t see what that has to do with . . .
ANNETTE (interrupting) For my audience who might not be familiar with the South Sea Bubble, it was a get-rich-quick investment scheme. The South Sea Company, a government approved outfit, had exclusive rights to trade with Spanish and Portuguese colonies in America, including selling enslaved Africans. Middle class people, raised to believe in hard work and living within their means, were nonetheless lured into investing. But it turned out to be the first Ponzi scheme, the original crypto. And your dad was among the investors.
BILL He was. He lost £800, which I don’t need to tell you was a lot of money in those days. Oh. Wow, I hadn’t connected that with me leaving law school before. That’s quite an insight.
ANNETTE Not my insight, though. Klepp and Smith suggest it, and they’re baffled why you didn’t put two and two together, and realize that economic events are a big reason for your misfortune.
BILL So am I, honestly. It seems a bit obvious when you put it like that. Huh. Anyway . . . After my dad lost all that money, he started trying to persuade my mum to move back to Northumberland, where his social support structure was, or, as he put it in the complicated language we used at that time, he had friends. It took a few years, because my mother was a Londoner, and you know how they are, they think civilization ends at Watford [US: A town just north of London]. But she gave in, in the end, and we all moved to Newcastle.
ANNETTE What did you do there?
BILL Clockmaking, watchmaking. I was my dad’s apprentice, remember. That lasted for about two years . . .
ANNETTE And then tragedy struck.
BILL It did, indeed, Annette. My dad popped down to London to sort out my uncle’s will, but he died on the ship home to Newcastle. That was 1725, and it’s after that that the real story of Unlucky begins.
ANNETTE You expected something in your dad’s will, I suppose?
BILL I mean, who wouldn’t? But he left me hardly anything. He left most of his worldly goods to my mum, and only left me some work tools. My mum and I got into a huge fight over it. She wouldn’t give me part of her share, and then, to make matters worse, she remarried, so the new husband was now in charge. That was the last straw. I decided to leave Newcastle, and go back to London, and asked my mother for help. All she gave me was 12 shillings, which, as you know, wouldn’t last long in the Big City. I asked for more, but she said no can do, because, like I said, her new husband now held the purse strings.
ANNETTE Wait, it wasn’t her money?
BILL Of course not. She was a woman, and whatever she had became her new husband’s, back in those days.
ANNETTE Oh, right. Yeah. Long before the Married Women's Property Act.
BILL So the few shillings she gave me were soon gone, I was unemployed, and I was desperate. That's when I hired a lawyer. He wrote a letter to my mum. First, he told her how poor I was, but she didn’t care: She told him she couldn’t spare me any more money. So he wrote again, and told her to cough up a third of my dad’s estate, or he would take her to court. She told him that “if he or I gave her trouble”, the exact words, she wouldn’t leave me anything in her will.
ANNETTE So that was that.
BILL Not quite, Annette. My lawyer sent her another threatening letter. She didn’t reply. But by that point, I had given up all hope. I had no inheritance. I hadn’t finished my apprenticeship with my dad, and I couldn’t afford the tuition for another. I was pretty depressed. I decided to do something really drastic.
ANNETTE In your own words, in Unlucky, you write, “It entered into my head to leave England, and sell myself for a term of years into the American plantations.” In other words, you decided to sell yourself as an indentured servant, in exchange for your transatlantic ticket, and free gifts once your term of service ended. That's drastic.
BILL I was pretty depressed. You can imagine.
ANNETTE Bill, can you walk us through how that worked, how you got to America as an indentured servant? I'm a bit vague on the process myself.
BILL Oh, sure. So I went to the Royal Exchange . . .
ANNETTE That was the trade center in London.
BILL Right. Anyway, they have all these posters on the walls round the front of the Royal Exchange, advertising ships going to America. I was having a browse, as you do, when this chap wanders up, and says “I’ve been watching you, and I reckon you’ve fallen on hard times, am I right? If you’ll let me, I’d like to figure out how to help you. Look, you probably think I’m a crook, but I assure you I’m no such thing. Let me buy you a beer, and I’ll explain what I have in mind.”
He seemed honest enough, so off we went to the nearest pub.
ANNETTE Boy, he saw you coming, didn’t he? I mean, that’s what I bet my audience is thinking. Weren’t you a bit too trusting?
BILL Nah, turns out, he was on the up and up. I mean, let's be honest here, I didn’t look worth robbing. I looked a sight in my dirty old cheap coat, and my wig I hadn’t combed in two weeks. My stockings were full of holes, and my shirt hadn’t been washed in over a month, and I had a scraggly beard. Who would rob me?
ANNETTE Good point. So what did he want?
BILL He was a recruiter for ships headed to America. Not for a crew, though. No, his job was to round up indentured servants. For every servant he persuaded to sign on the dotted line, a ship’s captain paid him an agent's commission of three half crowns, which is seven shillings, a fair rate. Then, when we got to America, the captain would sell us for a hefty profit.
So this agent tried to make me look presentable. He even shaved me. Then he told me that a ship was docked at Limehouse, on the north side of the river, less than an hour’s walk away, and that it was leaving for Pennsylvania in three or four days. When you’re as unlucky as I am, I told him, you don’t give a damn where it goes. It’s all the same to me, I said, so why not? Might have a chance of doing better there than here, although I didn’t deserve being in this position, having to leave my own country to make a living. Unlucky, that’s me. And the title of my book! [audience laughter].
Look, I had no friends left in London. Nobody I knew was going to give me money, not when they thought I would just fritter it away. In Pennsylvania, though, nobody would know me, so my bad reputation wouldn’t follow me. It would be a fresh start.
So this recruiter says to me, look, I’m going to recommend you to this captain who’s headed to Philadelphia. That’s in the colony of Pennsylvania, which is a great place where you can easily make a living. When your term of service is up, though, you’ll be free to live in any American colony you want.
Now, he said, do you have any job qualifications? Yes, I said. I’m a watchmaker. Ah, he said, not a lot of demand for those in the colonies, to be honest. What they need is bricklayers, shoemakers, barbers, carpenters, weavers, bakers, and people with experience in farming, all that sort of practical thing, he said. Now, normally, the term of service is four years, but since I didn’t have useful skills, I would have to commit to five years. So he says, is that okay with you? He got paid his commission either way, and I was desperate, so I agreed this was okay by me.
We had a couple of pints each, and he paid the bill, of course. Then we went to the Lord Mayor’s office, where I swore under oath before the Lord Mayor's clerk that I was neither a runaway apprentice, nor a runaway husband. Once again, the recruiter paid the bill, which was one shilling, payable to the clerk, because that’s a perk of his job. Then we went to London Bridge, to a stationery store, where they sell official forms, and that's where I signed my indenture of servitude. And that was it. I was committed.
ANNETTE Sorry to interrupt, but just for my audience, an “indenture” just means contract. I once found an antiques dealer in rural Virginia trying to pass off a land sale agreement as an indentured servant’s contract, because it used the word “indenture”. She didn’t appreciate me telling her that.
BILL I’ll bet!
ANNETTE Oh, and historians Klepp and Smith found an indenture for a William Morley, filed in London by a recuiter called Neal MacNeal on October 13, 1729, so they think it’s you. They can’t be sure, because last names weren’t standardized the way they are now. Your mother spelled it Moralee in her marriage to your stepfather, Charles Isaacson. What do you think?
BILL I think it’s all very interesting, them digging up all that about me!
On His Unlucky Way Around England’s Coast
BILL So after I signed my contract, the recruiter and I took a water taxi from Billingsgate to the ship, which was moored at Limehouse. This would have been about eleven in the morning. The ship’s name was the Bonetta, and there were already about twenty indentured servants on board, all guys, all headed to Philadelphia like me. The recruiter wished me bon voyage, and a good wife.
ANNETTE A good wife? Didn’t he mean a good life?
BILL No, he knew what he meant, trust me. [audience laughter]
ANNETTE So how was the mood on board ship in the London docks?
BILL Not great, to be honest. The other indentured servants looked miserable. I think there were a lot of second thoughts. Well, there would be, wouldn’t there? I was feeling better though. I hadn’t eaten proper meat in four days, and our dinner that day was stewed fresh lamb chops, so that was all right, plus four pints of beer.
ANNETTE Four pints? You must have been in a good mood.
BILL Well, it was what we call small beer. Pretty weak. We had limitless small beer at all times, in a barrel on the deck.
ANNETTE Like free sodas on a cruise.
BILL But I was still hungry. So, in the afternoon, when the master, that’s the captain, and the mate, his deputy, were both safely on shore, I popped into the cabin, had a look in a chest, and saw a huge pile of raisins.
ANNETTE You didn’t. . .
BILL I did. Took two pounds for snacks on the voyage. I reckoned nobody would miss them, and I was right.
ANNETTE Are you sure you didn’t mean to call your book Dishonest?
BILL Well, I’m being honest about pinching the raisins, aren’t I? (audience laughter)
Ooh, one other thing. Before we left, I wrote to Mr. Stafford, my lawyer, and let him know I was giving up fighting my mother over the will, and was emigrating to America. The mate’s wife delivered my letter when she went ashore. Mr. Stafford read it while she waited for a reply. He just told her to tell me that I deserved every misfortune, by buggering off to America while he was working to bring my mother to court. So that was the end of that.
Three days later, when we were already sailing down the River Thames, and I was asleep below decks, a boat came from London bringing orders from the Lord Mayor of London for my return on some matter. But the captain covered for me, and said that I had left, with his permission. He, of course, was thinking of the money he would lose if he couldn’t sell me at the docks in Philadelphia. When I found out about this investigation, I thought, here we go again. Unlucky.
ANNETTE Well, I don’t know if I would call it luck, exactly.
BILL [ignores her] When we moored at Gravesend, a customs officer came on board, and asked each and every indentured servant, one by one, if we were on board of our own free will, or if we were being trafficked.
ANNETTE That’s impressive.
BILL Isn’t it, though? I was pleased. And after that, the captain gave us all clothes for the voyage, absolutely free of charge. A sea jacket, two checked shirts, a bit rough, but you expect that, a wool waistcoat [US vest], two rough hankies, a pair of stockings, a woolly hat, and a pair of cheap and nasty shoes. And so, on September 7, 1729, things were already looking up as we started the voyage properly.
Mind you, this wasn’t the last we saw of England. The next day, we moored in front of Deal Castle, and the captain took a boat to Calais, to buy some nice French brandy. I was allowed to go along, just for the fun of it.
ANNETTE There was an English fort at Calais, right, in France? Is that where you went?
BILL Yes. We bought so much brandy off the soldiers, they served us a nice big bowl of punch as a thank you gift for our business. So we had a very pleasant couple of hours before we started the three-hour boat trip back to the ship. The next day, the ship stopped again on the English coast, this time at Dover, where we sent a boat to get more groceries. The boat came back with three posh men. One, by the name of Sonds, was someone I already knew.
ANNETTE You know his story of family misfortune, don’t you? You repeat it in your book, and it goes well with your theme of bad luck. Was this story true?
BILL Who cares? It sells copies doesn’t it? Readers love a good bit of entertainment. They don’t care if it’s true or not.
ANNETTE Um, yeah, these days they kind of do care. Although I have heard of people just making stuff up in their autobiographies, although Klepp and Smith did say this was a well-known true story . . .
BILL Eh, we’re talking the 18th century, Annette. Don’t worry about it. We don’t mind a spot of tall tale telling, or a bit of plagiarism.
ANNETTE True enough. That’s the 18th century all right. I don’t suppose now is a good time to tell people that Olaudah Equiano was probably from South Carolina, not West Africa, like he claimed in his memoir, though . . .
BILL Nah, probably not a good idea to bring that up. Oh, by the way, I met him in the afterlife, you know. Equiano. Good old Gus, as we know him. Great man.
Crossing the Unlucky Atlantic Ocean
ANNETTE So talk some more about life aboard ship as an indentured servant.
BILL Well, one bloke didn’t stick around long enough to find out. In Plymouth, he jumped overboard, and swam to shore. Talk about second thoughts, eh?
Once we left the coast of England, of course, there was no more fresh food, so that wasn’t great. We ate in groups called messes, with five of us to each mess. Each man got a daily allowance of three ship’s biscuits.
ANNETTE Not like scones? Or digestives?
BILL You must be joking. No. Hardtack. Made from flour and water, so you had to moisten each one to make it edible. We also got a daily allowance of salt beef, and very salty it was, about the size of a pack of cards. Some days, we got dried salt cod, which was very hard, so we had to tenderize it by whacking it with a mallet. We served that with rancid butter, which was all we had as a sauce.
ANNETTE Sounds lovely. One historian thinks that most ship’s captains fed indentured servants well so they would be healthy when he sold them, but I don’t buy that.
BILL Neither do I. And you know what’s worse? Only twice a day, the captain served us about a thimbleful of cheap brandy.
ANNETTE The same stuff you got at Calais?
BILL Probably, but it wasn’t the good stuff, that’s for sure. We also had to get fresh air on deck, every four hours, whether we wanted it or not.
ANNETTE That doesn’t sound too bad, though, does it?
BILL I would rather have been relaxing below, playing cards, or telling stories. But, still that wasn’t our biggest challenge. That came when the weather got hot. People forget that, on the open seas, it’s like being surrounded by death. We only got a strict three quarts of water per mess per day . . .
ANNETTE So five of you sharing three quarts of water? For my British audience, that’s about three litres.
BILL Eh? What Briton doesn’t know what a quart is?
ANNETTE Long story. Anyway, carry on.
BILL So, obviously, that wasn’t enough. We even tried salt water, but that was far too salty to drink. Once in a great while, the skies would open, and we would pop our upturned hats on deck, under the sails, to catch the rainwater coming off the sails, you see. But it tasted like tar from the ropes, so that wasn’t ideal.
ANNETTE Did you fish?
BILL Not me, but the crew used a sort of fishing spear, like a fork, attached to a rope, and they shot at dolphins.
ANNETTE Dolphins aren’t fish. They’re mammals.
BILL Whatever. They taste even better than cod. You know what else tastes good? Flying fish. Those are amazing. They were chased by the dolphins . . .
ANNETTE The dolphins you lot didn’t eat, presumably {audience laughter}
BILL . . . and these flying fish could fly quite long distances. Some of them fell on our deck, so we would cook them for supper. The dolphins tasted good too, though. About a foot long, all different colors, slimmer than salmon . . .
ANNETTE Hang on, are you sure those were dolphins?
BILL [shrugs] Anyway, we eventually came up the Delaware River, past the other Newcastle, and gorged on fresh river water. Unfortunately, that made us all puke. So that’s how we arrived in America.
ANNETTE You threw up on it.
BILL Pretty much. Also, as a result, I got a bit of a diabates . . .
ANNETTE You mean diabetes?
BILL Do I? I couldn’t stop peeing.
ANNETTE So maybe you do mean diabetes. So what happened?
BILL I couldn’t stop peeing. I was so weak, you see, I had no choice but to drink lots of rum . . .
ANNETTE I’ll bet.
BILL . . . and the rum dried up the waterworks, so I was back to normal in three months.
ANNETTE Okay, so not diabetes. Thanks, Bill. [Turns to audience] We’re going to take a quick break. When we come back, we’ll hear more about Unlucky, Bill Moraley’s life in America in 1729. Stay tuned!
[Enthusiastic Gnome applause]
Continued at Unlucky, Part 2 (and don’t miss the news below, either!)
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I LOVED this one, Annette, what a wonderful format! You make a great talk show host!😉
It's so revealing to get the down-and-dirty on what the unfortunates of the times had to live through. Thank you for revealing the true picture.