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        The real voyage of discovery consists not of seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
    — MARCEL PROUST
    THE ROUTE THAT my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather’s ship would almost certainly have taken to the Caribbean was the one that Columbus had pioneered a century and a half before: working south past Portugal, Madeira and the Canaries, picking up the trade winds and heading west across the Atlantic. Despite the proximity to England at the start of the voyage, it was still an anxious time, since the Channel was menaced by men-of-war from hostile nations. The captain’s first task therefore was usually the appointment of men to watches, then assessing the number of men who were fit to fight and assigning them their place on deck in the event of a struggle.
    In the first days of the passage, George Ashby had a lot to get used to. Most migrants were astonished and intimidated by the scale of the ship on which they were now confined. It was an epic sight: huge masts towered high overhead against the sky, yards and yards of undulating sails and shrouds whipped into the wind, the shifting deck was be-snaked with tangles of ropes used to train and check the sails. Passengers had to creep over these lines warily as they rose and sank and jerked across the wood. Indeed, the entire network of cloth, mast and rope that made up the sailing apparatus was a hazard: a giant spider’s web in which the passenger was in perpetual danger of being ensnared.
    The accommodation too was daunting. It was divided roughly into three categories. The best cabins were reserved for the “gentlemen” (there were few or no ladies) who could “finish” them as they pleased: with their own bedding, linen, wax lights, even their own beds. The worst were assigned to the servants for whom the cost of the passagewas exchanged for their commitment to labour on arrival. These people endured terrible conditions. As the transportee John Coad recounted, they were taken aboard ship and immediately confined below deck “in a very small room where we could not lay ourselves down without lying upon one another.” The crew gave them no water, provided no heat, and placed only one receptacle in the middle of the room for the use of them all. They were only allowed on deck after the halfway mark of the journey was passed. The captain, eager to save money, kept them on short rations during the entire trip. Inevitably disease broke out: smallpox, calentures, plagues and ailments accompanied by “Frightful Blotches.” Others, according to Coad, “were devoured with lice till they were almost at death’s door.” One-fifth of these pitiable souls died on the crossing.
    Situated between the hold and the top deck were the berths for what today we would call steerage passengers. They were not as abject as those allocated to the servants but they were still wretched. The first thing to assail those who descended “ ’tween decks” would have been the smell: a horrible commingling of old food, sweaty bodies and salt. Then there was the curious quality of light: because of its position on the ship, life here was carried on in a perpetual twilight. The only source of direct light and fresh air was a hatch that was opened and closed at the whim of the sailors.
    In this dank, airless space, as many as one hundred passengers—mainly young men like George—lived cheek by jowl. They tried to claim their own bit of territory by looping blankets over ropes or piling trunks and boxes atop one another to create makeshift cabins. They arranged their meagre possessions—casks of food, bedding, cooking pans and chamber pots—in as homely a manner as they could. Since steerage passengers were only allowed on deck at the captain’s discretion, these men spent most of their time here, preparing food to supplement the ship’s limited rations, talking to their fellow passengers, trying to sleep, counting down the hours until