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120 of her passengers were captured and transported to Spain, where they were still languishing in prison more than twenty years later. The waters around the Caribbean were also dangerous. The West Indies was “beyond the line”—that is, outside the jurisdiction of existing treaties—and so was effectively lawless. Therefore pirates, largely untroubled by the authorities, combed through the azure waters for bounty, while marauding fleets of all colours battled one another for gold and territory.
    Describing a skirmish which “had well nigh putt an end to this my Journall & to my whole voyage,” Henry Colt illustrated the constant peril of the tropical waters. While en route from Barbados to Dominica in 1631, the crew of his ship, the
Alexander
, noticed they were being pursued by two vessels. Recognizing that the ships were part of a larger Spanish fleet which had hidden itself away on the coast of Dominica, they took flight. (England was then officially at peace with Spain, but the Spaniards regarded the West Indies as their private preserve and therefore would attempt to punish any incursion into their territory.) Laden down by the timber it had taken on board in Barbados, the
Alexander
was handicapped and a fight became inevitable. Fortified by “Hott Water” (alcohol), the
Alexander
’s crew confronted their pursuers and musket shots were exchanged. It was only the realization that the
Alexander
had a large contingent of fighting men on deck that saved it frombeing boarded and sacked. Colt, an ex-soldier, relished the prospect of a fight, concluding that “Death is better to happen once than to fear it always; even those that fear it most must still come unto it.”
    Despite the difficulties and worries, most passengers attempted to maintain some kind of familiar daily routine. Daylight and darkness regulated their behaviour at sea as much as on land; so did the rituals of preparing and partaking of meals. These took a bit more planning and time because of the limited food stocks and lack of equipment and space. They fished to supplement their meagre rations and occasionally butchered the livestock they had brought on board. And there were entertainments. The passengers would get together to sing, play backgammon or cards and gamble in the moonlight.
    Life on board was strictly stratified, replicating the class divisions of life on land. (These hierarchies operated alongside the social world of the sailors, who formed a fraternity of their own, with a different language and code of conduct, largely impenetrable to the other passengers.) Henry Colt, for example, marked out his privileged position by insisting on wearing the uniform of a gentleman at all times: “a long sleeved shirt reaching to the knees, a suit of jerkin and hose (that is, a sleeveless jacket and puffed knee breeches), a handkerchief around the neck, a feathered hat, beads, boot hose, stockings and shoes.” He also wore a stomacher—the seventeenth-century equivalent of a sweater—to guard against the wind. The only concession he made to the rigours of the sea journey was to discard his quilted doublet, because they rotted in the humidity.
    As the journey progressed, George would have become familiar with his fellow passengers, forging the kind of friendships that were only possible on a passage as long and significant as this one. Those berthed between decks had a certain amount in common, since they were largely of the same estate: small and middling men. But beneath the similarities in their backgrounds were any number of individual stories and colourful personalities. Some travellers were bold and ambitious, others merely curious; some were in flight from creditors or angry relatives, others were broken-hearted or bereaved. These men were brought together by a common goal: all dreamt of improving their fortunes. Atthe very least they desired “a competency”—a popular seventeenth-century term that indicated “a sufficiency, although