Liebe Sina Haug,
Vorbemerkung:
Mein Gebiet ist Schiffsbau, insbesondere Kriegsschiffsbau, nicht zivile Schifffahrt.
Trotzdem ein Verweis auf eine Quelle, die den Transport von Deutschen nach Amerika beschreibt. Leuten, die in die USA wollten, um dort zu leben, wird es nicht besser ergangen sein.
Vor und erst recht ab 1774 bis 1810 fanden von England aus nur Truppenversorgungen/ -transporte in die “abtrünnigen” Kolonien (also die USA) statt. Passagiertransporte im uns bekannten Stil gab es nicht. Wer in die USA wollte, musste sich direkt an einen Schiffbesitzer/-betreiber wenden und den Transport vereinbaren.
Die Fahrten waren in der Tat von Ihrer Dauer her nicht genau zu bestimmen, weil nicht nur das Wetter und Meeresströmungen als Unbekannte ins Kalkül gingen, sondern weil außerdem feindliche Nationen und Seeräuber die Routen unsicher machten.
In den folgenden Werken wird der Transport von Soldaten aus dem Bereich des heutigen Deutschlands in die USA geschildert.
Die Abhandlungen sind im engl. Teil von Wikipedia zu finden. Einen kleinen Ausschnitt habe ich als Kopie beigefügt.
Viele liebe Grüße,
Jörk Lichte
THE HESSIANS
and the other
GERMAN AUXILIARIES OF GREAT BRITAIN IN THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR
by
Edward J. Lowell
Harper and Brothers Publishers
New York1884
http://www.americanrevolution.org/hessians/hessindex…
AMERICANREVOLUTION.ORG
THE HESSIANS
CHAPTER V
FROM GERMANY TO AMERICA
six hundred and twenty-five men were thus shipped on April 22, 1778, at Stade. Making a quick passage, they arrived before Quebec towards the last of May
Seume, the captive poet, has left a graphic description of his experiences on shipboard. The men were packed like herring. A tall man could not stand upright between decks, nor sit up straight in his berth. To every such berth six men were allotted, but as there was room for only four, the last two had to squeeze in as best they might. „This was not cool in warm weather,“ says Seume. Thus the men lay in what boys call „spoon fashion,“ and when they were tired on one side, the man on the right would call „about face,“ and the whole file would turn over at once; then, when they were tired again, the man on the left would give the same order, and they would turn back on to the first side. The food was on a par with the lodging. Pork and pease were the chief of their diet. The pork seemed to be four or five years old. It was streaked with black towards the outside, and was yellow farther in, with a little white in the middle. The salt beef was in much the same condition. The ship biscuit was often full of maggots. „We had to eat them for a relish,“ says Seume, „not to reduce our slender rations too much.“ This biscuit was so hard that they sometimes broke it up with a cannon-ball, and the story ran that it had been taken from the French in the Seven Years’ War, and lain in Portsmouth ever since. The English had kept it twenty years or so, and „were now feeding the Germans with it, that these might, if it were God’s will, destroy Rochambeau and Lafayette. It does not seem to have been God’s will, exactly.“ Sometimes they had groats and barley, or, by way of a treat, a pudding made of flour mixed half with salt water and half with fresh water, and with old, old mutton fat. The water was all spoiled. When a cask was opened „it stank between decks like Styx, Phlegethon, and Cocytus all together.“ It was thick with filaments as long as your finger, and they had to filter it through a cloth before they could drink it. They held their noses strong while they drank, and yet it was so scarce that they fought to get it. Rum, and sometimes a little beer, completed their fare.
Thus crowded together, with close air, bad food, and foul water, many of them insufficiently clothed, these boys and old men, students, shopkeepers, and peasants tossed for months on the Atlantic. Much of the suffering of the voyage was doubtless inevitable, and many of the recruits were already inured to hardship. But much of what they underwent was the result of wanton carelessness or grasping avarice. What shall we say of the British Quartermaster’s Department, which sent these men to sea without proper food or drink? What of the Duke of Brunswick, who despatched his subjects to Canada without shoes and stockings that would hold together, and without overcoats? Men have often borne such hardships cheerfully for a cause that they understood and loved. But these poor fellows suffered in a quarrel that was not their own, and simply to provide means to pay the debts, or minister to the pleasures of their masters. It is well for us to know something of their sufferings; to know what despotism means.
, aber vieleicht findet sich ja ein Experte auf genau diesem Gebiet.