Every day, Carnival Cruise Line ships navigate the world’s oceans transporting passengers in comfort and luxury. You can expect to pay $1,000 – $2,000 for a 7-day cruise between the USA and Europe. During your journey, you can enjoy buffets, entertainment, spa services, and other amenities. But hold up a minute… what was ocean travel like when Valentine and his family traveled to the British Colonies in 1751? I found a couple of great sources that will provide us with an accurate view of this journey down the Rhine and across the ocean.
From the church records, we know that Valentine lived for most of his life in Oberhöchstadt. At some point in his life, he decided to move his family to America. But, they had to first get to Rotterdam, and traveling the Rhine River was the fastest and most common way.
The first account of the voyage was found in letters written by Peter Recher. Peter immigrated in 1751 on the ship Queen of Denmark arriving at the port of Philadelphia on October 4, 1751. He was therefore onboard the same ship as Valintine and his family. His first letter to his family in Switzerland provides details of this voyage.
Here are excerpts from the first letter:
This letter is to reach Marty Recher in Ziefen, in the area of the Basel-Land in Switzerland. My friendly greeting and the following report to you—much-beloved father, brother, sisters, brother—in—lawand his siblings.
Now I will tell you a little of the journey. Down the Rhine everything went fairly well, up to the town of Amheim in Holland. Here the helmsman drank so much beer and brandy that he could hardly see straight. He steered the ship straight into the “Schiffsbruck” (landing pier?, swimming, i.e. pontoon, bridge?). People standing nearby were sure that the ship would break apart, but through God’s guidance nothing happened to our ship.
On the 23rd of June we arrived in Rotterdam, where we stayed for 6 weeks. From Rotterdam, across the “tollen Hund” (literally translates to ‘mad dog’— probably the English Channel), we went to a town in England called Cowes. We stayed there for 10 days. Then we started our voyage over the big ocean.
For the first 8 days on the ocean we had unfavorable winds, so that we reached an island called Santa Maria. There we waited for 6 days, and once the wind became favorable we continued our voyage and had good winds for the most part.
On the 20th of September we were caught in a storm. The wind broke our middle big mast. Waves battered against our ship so that it sounded like the thundering of several cannons. The ship rolled on to its sides to such a degree that one thought one might drown at any moment. This wind lasted from 4 o’clock in the afternoon until 4 o’clock in the morning. The waves washed high over the ship.
Several times we had excellent wind, so that we traveled 10 to 12 miles in an hour. Our journey across the ocean, from Cowes to Philadelphia, took 9 weeks. The 14th of October we reached land. 350 passengers were on our ship, of which 29 died; 18 of them were children below the age of 4. I was well and healthy the whole time. But during the time on the ocean, I must have regretted being there as many times as there are minutes in a year. My dear friends, I advise no one to come, for the journey is dangerous and troublesome.
While he doesn’t go into much detail about the conditions on board, he tells us about the deaths and how he regretted being there. His description of the ship’s voyage is fantastic. Peter’s presence on board the same ship as Valentine provides us with direct insight into our ancestor’s journey.
A similar voyage was made by Gottlieb Mittelberger a year earlier in 1750, and he detailed the conditions aboard the vessel in great detail. Below are a few select passages from his book Journey to Pennsylvania.
This journey lasts from the beginning of May to the end of October, fully half a year, amid such hardships as no one is able to describe adequately with their misery.
The cause is because the Rhine-boats from Heilbronn to Holland have to pass by 36 custom-houses, at all of which the ships are examined, which is done when it suits the convenience of the custom-house officials. In the meantime the ships with the people are detained long, so that the passengers have to spend much money. The trip down the Rhine alone lasts therefore 4, 5 and even 6 weeks.
When the ships with the people come to Holland, they are detained there likewise 5 or 6 weeks. Because things are very dear there, the poor people have to spend nearly all they have during that time. Not to mention many sad accidents which occur here; having seen with my own eyes how a man, as he was about board the ship near Rotterdam, lost two children at once by drowning.
We can see that it was quite challenging just to get down the Rhine River to Rotterdam. There were several “custom-houses” mentioned, and they had to stop at each one. These were actually castles and fortifications built along the banks of the Rhine. They were often “robber-baron” fortresses built by petty princes and rulers of the time. The rulers of each area along the Rhine would extort money from vessels that wanted to pass. They would examine the vessels and charge a duty for passage. They would often detain ships and passengers to force them to spend money in their shops.
Both in Rotterdam and in Amsterdam the people are packed densely, like herrings so to say, In the large sea-vessels. One person receives a place of scarcely 2 feet width and 6 feet length in the bedstead, while many a ship carries four to six hundred souls ; not to mention the innumerable implements, tools, provisions, water-barrels and other thmgs which likewise occupy much space.
On account of contrary winds it takes the ships sometimes 2, 3 and 4 weeks to make the trip from Holland to Kaupp [Cowes] in England. But when the wind is good, they get there in 8 days or even sooner. Everything is examined there and the custom-duties paid, whence it comes that the ships ride there 8, 10 to 14 days and even longer at anchor, till they have taken in their full cargoes. During that time every one is compelled to spend his last remaining money and to consume his little stock of provisions which had been reserved for the sea ; so that most passengers, finding themselves on the ocean where they would be in greater need of them, must greatly suffer from hunger and want. Many suffer want already on the water between Holland and Old England.
In both accounts, the ship travels from Rotterdam to Cowes before making the voyage to America. This is because all vessels traveling to the American colonies must first obtain permission from the British government.
When the ships have for the last time weighed their anchors near the city of Kaupp [Cowes] in Old England, the real misery begins with the long voyage. For from there the ships, unless they have good wind, must often sail 8, 9, 10 to 12 weeks before they reach Philadelphia. But even with the best wind the voyage lasts 7 weeks.
But during the voyage there is on board these ships terrible misery, stench, fumes, horror, vomiting, many kinds of sea-sickness, fever, dysentery, headache, heat, constipation, boils, scurvy, cancer, mouth-rot, and the like, all of which come from old and sharply salted food and meat, also from very bad and foul water, so that many die miserably.
Add to this want of provisions, hunger, thirst, frost, heat, dampness, anxiety, want, afflictions and lamentations, together with other trouble, as c. V. the lice abound so frightfully, especially on sick people, that they can be scraped off the body. The misery reaches the climax when a gale rages for 2 or 3 nights and days, so that every one believes that the ship will go to the bottom with all human beings on board. In such a visitation the people cry and pray most piteously.
When in such a gale the sea rages and surges, so that the waves rise often like high one above the other, and often tumble over the ship, so that one fears to go down with the ship ; when the ship is constantly tossed from side to side by the storm and waves, so that no one can either walk, or sit, or lie, and the closely packed people in the berths are thereby tumbled over each other, both the sick and the well — it will be readily understood that many of these people, none of whom had been prepared for hardships, suffer so terribly from them that they do not survive it.
No one can have an idea of the sufferings which women in confinement have to bear with their innocent children on board these ships. Few of this class escape with their lives; many a mother is cast into the water with her child as soon as she is dead. One day, just as we had a heavy gale, a woman in our ship, who was to give birth and could not give birth under the circumstances, was pushed through a loop-hole [port-hole] in the ship and dropped into the sea, because she was far in the rear of the ship and could not be brought forward.
Children from 1 to 7 years rarely survive the voyage; and many a time parents are compelled to see their children miserably suffer and die from hunger, thirst and sickness, and then to see them cast into the water. I witnessed such misery in no less than 32 children in our ship, all of whom were thrown into the sea. The parents grieve all the more since their children find no resting-place in the earth, but are devoured by the monsters of the sea. It is a notable fact that children, who have not yet had the measles or small-pocks, generally get them on board the ship, and mostly die of them.
Often a father is separated by death from his wife and children, or mothers from their little children, or even both parents from their children; and sometimes whole families die in quick succession; so that often many dead persons lie in the berths beside the living ones, especially when contagious diseases have broken out on board the ship.
This is absolutely horrible! Can you imagine what this would have been like? I can’t ever remember a period of my life that was this bad.
I read this as I sit in my favorite chair with the news playing in the background. And I think of the amount of sacrifice that had to be paid for me to be here at this moment in time. The pain and suffering and prayers of a family just wanting a peaceful meager existence. To work and raise a family. To have children and grand children and… me.
- Steves, R. (2013, August 15). The Rhine River: Raging with history. Rick Steves. https://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read-listen/read/articles/rhine-river-raging-with-history
- Hein, K. (1992, October). The Peter Recher Letters of 1751 and 1753. Mennonite Family History, XI (Number 4), 162–164.
- Mittelberger, Gottlieb (1898). Journey to Pennsylvania in the Year 1750 and Return to Germany in the Year 1754. Philadelphia: John Joseph McCevy. Retrieved 7 September 2016.
