Germans by the Shipload Slide 2

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: Halifax, Nova Scotia GERMANS BY THE SHIPLOAD

SLIDE 2

This is a study of several different variables from ten ships of Palatine German emigrants that arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1750, the purpose of which was to see which of the variables was most closely linked with the high death rate.

This page examines whether the crossing dates would have a causal relationship with the worst outcomes—that is, whether crossing too late in the year would result in a higher death rate than starting earlier. To do this comparison, each ship's departure and arrival date was converted from a calendar date to a day number, with January 1st being day 1, February 1st being day 32 and December 31st being either day 365 (non-leap year) or 366 (leap year).

Palatine Ships to Nova Scotia¹—Ordered by Departure Date—Top Five (Latest)

	Passenger Counts				Departure	Departure	Arrival	Arrival
Names of Ships	Start	End	Deaths	Loss%	(Calendar)	(Ordinal)	(Calendar)	(Ordinal)	Crossing Days
(1) ANN	322	305	17	5.3%	7/1/1750	(183)	9/13/1750	(256)	74
(2) PEARL1	264	232	32	12.1%	6/30/1751	(181)	9/24/1751	(267)	86
(3) MURDOCK	298	269	29	9.7%	6/25/1751	(176)	10/1/17512	(274)	98
(4) GALE1	214	205	9	4.2%	5/30/1751	(150)	8/8/1751	(220)	70
(5) PEARL2	251	212	39	15.5%	5/23/1752	(144-L)3	8/21/1752	(234-L)	90
Averages	269.8	244.6	25.2	9.34%	June 15th	(166)	Sep 7th	(250)	84

Palatine Ships to Nova Scotia¹—Ordered by Departure Date—Bottom Five (Earliest)

	Passenger Counts				Departure	Departure	Arrival	Arrival
Names of Ships	Start	End	Deaths	Loss%	(Calendar)	(Ordinal)	(Calendar)	(Ordinal)	Crossing Days
(6) GALE2	249	220	29	11.6%	5/19/1752	(140-L)	9/6/1752	(250-L)	110
(7) SALLY	258	218	40	15.5%	5/9/1752	(130-L)	9/6/1752	(250-L)	120
(8) SPEEDWELL1	229	212	17	7.4%	5/6/1751	(126)	7/21/1751	(202)	76
(9) SPEEDWELL2	276	263	13	4.7%	4/30/1752	(121-L)	7/14/1752	(196-L)	75
(9) BETTY	161	154	7	4.3%	4/30/1752	(121-L)	7/14/1752	(196-L)	75
Averages	234.6	213.4	21.2	9.04%	May 8th	(128)	Aug 7th	(219)	91

Comparison of Data Ranked By Departure Date

Averages For Top Five Latest Departures....................	June 15th – Sep 7th (84 days)	269.8 passengers (9.34% loss)
Averages For The Five Earliest Departures..................	May 8th – Aug 7th (91 days)	234.6 passengers (9.04% loss)

Analysis of Results
Once again, we have two sets of data that are not all that different. Although the average Departure Date was over a month earlier in the second group, the two sets of crossings again differed by only only 7 days. Although not as close as the last pair we examined, the loss percentages of the two sets are still within 0.30 percent of each other—or less that half a percentage point.

It seems that—despite what Mr. John Dick claimed—it didn't matter how early a ship departed. The outcome was about the same as leaving very late. Therefore, the poor outcomes suffered by some of the ships' passengers appear to have had nothing to do with weather conditions. Nowadays, we normally associate hurricane season as starting in September, in late summer, after the Atlantic Ocean has been heating up for an entire season.

The Next Variable
So, the number of passengers didn't have a direct effect on the outcome, and neither did the departure date. So, what did? There was one last variable that seemed worth comparing, and that was the number of days that it took to cross the North Atlantic—independent of the passenger count.

To do the study by crossing length, we need to reorder the above list by number of crossing days—from longest passage to shortest.

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Footnotes
(1) For this study, two ships (Alderney and Nancy) were eliminated due to lack of passenger counts which makes it impossible to do comparisons.
(2) Arrival date for the Murdock was incorrectly said to be September 31st, which has been changed to October 1st. For day number this makes no difference.
(3) "-L" signifies that it was a leap year.

Sources
The History of Nova Scotia: Landry, Peter. The Lion and the Lily. Part 5: "The Intermission." Chapters 6 ("Immigrants by the Shipload") and 8 ("The Settlement of Lunenburg"). Also the table titled, "Twelve Immigrant Ships: The Arrivals at Halifax, 1750-52," linked from the text in Chapter 6. These materials, along with the list of ships and their data, were freely available online at at a website called BluePete.com, which I visited on various dates in Feb 2023. This book is available from various booksellers.