Germans by the Shipload Slide 4

Date: 13 Sep 1750 to 6 Sep 1752
Location: Halifax, Nova Scotia GERMANS BY THE SHIPLOAD

SLIDE 4

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 slide is a summary of what we've learned so far: that the one factor that was guaranteed to produce the worst outcomes was the length of time it took to cross the North Atlantic. However, this was not directly due to the heaviest passenger loads.

VARIABLES AFFECTING OUTCOMES ON

PALATINE SHIPS TO NOVA SCOTIA¹

Comparison of Data Ranked By Passenger Load (SLIDE 1) (View)

Averages For Top Five Highest Loaded..........	.....June 7th – Sep 6th (91 days).....	.....283.6 passengers (9.24% loss)
Averages For The Five Lowest Loaded...........	.....May 16th – Aug 8th (84 days).....	.....220.8 passengers (9.15% loss)
Difference	-7 days	-0.09% loss

Comparison of Data Ranked By Departure Date (SLIDE 2) (View)

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)
Difference	-7 days	-0.30% loss

Comparison of Data Ranked By Crossing Length (SLIDE 3) (View)

Averages For Top Five Longest Crossings.....	...June 3rd – Sep 11th (101 days)...	.....264.0 passengers (12.8% loss)
Averages For The Five Shortest Crossings....	.....May 20th – Aug 2nd (74 days).....	.....240.4 passengers (5.24% loss)
Difference	-27 days	-7.56% loss

(BACK TO BEGINNING)

SUMMARY OF STUDY RESULTS
We finally have our first significant difference in outcomes in this study: between the ships that took the longest to cross the North Atlantic, and those that made the crossing in the shortest times.

The Effect of Passenger Load on Outcome
There is very little difference between these two groups of data. Although the ships began—and finished—their crossings of the North Atlantic at different points, the two crossings were of quite similar lengths: 91 versus 84 days, so only 7 days difference between the two crossing lengths. The two loss percentages are similar as well: 9.24 versus 9.15 percent, so within 0.09 percent of each other—that's zero point oh nine percent, a negligible difference.

The Effect of Passenger Load on Outcome
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 Effect of Crossing Length on Outcome
We finally have our first significant difference in outcomes in this study: between the ships that took the longest to cross the North Atlantic, and those that made the crossing in the shortest times. This time, we have a difference of 27 days between the longest and shortest crossing averages of the two groups. And those extra 27 days directly affected the outcomes, pushing up the average losses by 7.56 percentage points.

But what accounted for the difference in the lengths of some of the crossings, while not affecting others? We've already examined the number of passengers, and we see that the number of passengers by itself was not enough to account for worsened outcomes. For example, the Ann, which had the largest passenger load of all of the ten ships, had one of the shortest crossing times: just 74 days! In fact, the Ann was beat by only one other ship—the Gale, on its first crossing in 1751, which took only four fewer days.

A vessel's "light weight" (which means its weight completely empty—or the weight of the ship itself) plus all of the "deadweight" (absolutely everything it is carrying) equal the displacement of a certain amount of water equal to the sum of the two: ship + deadweight = total weight = displacement. The greater the total weight, the greater the displacement, and the lower the vessel rides in the water, which increases the friction between the exterior hull and the water, and slows down the vessel. The cleanliness of the outside of the hull further impacts the speed as the ship rides lower in the water.

The exact displacement of each of these ten ships will always be an unknown, but we might guess that the order in the tables above roughly mirrors the order of greatest to least displacement.

MR. JOHN DICK MAKES A KILLING (LITERALLY)
Mr. John Dick, Agent for the British Government in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, was in it for the money. From complaints of the German passengers he transported, we know that he persuaded them to sell all their belongings, including their bedding, in order to make room for more passengers in the hold. This led not only to discomfort, which was considerable, but also to passengers lying right up against one another.

The latter ended up being lethal to the passengers, because Mr. Dick also skimped on the food and fresh water rations, providing spoiled food and putrid water. The water, especially, caused bacterial illness in the passengers, in turn causing diarrhea and vomiting. Then, the passengers' proximity to one another meant that they were lying in one another's filth, which hastened the spread of the bacteria.

Poor Mr. Dick, having to spend some of the hard-earned money he made from those paltry passenger fares on their food and water. <sniff sniff> ... Well, except that, as it turns out, the English Board of Trade and Plantations was paying him a Guinea a head to deliver "Germans" to Nova Scotia. A "Guinea" was a gold coin, named after the African country from which the gold was obtained, and worth £1, 1s (one pound sterling plus one shilling).

The following table shows the big pile of gold that Mr. John Dick collected, after delivering his loads of half-dead passengers to Nova Scotia (many had to be nursed back to health, at public expense; some later died, leaving orphaned children): 2,290 Guineas. At one pound and one shilling each, that pile of gold was worth just £2,404, 10s (two thousand four hundred and four pounds and ten shillings). Raise your hand if you think Mr. Dick profited from the misery of others.

The Money Made By Mr. John Dick

	Passenger Counts			Arrival	Agent Fee @
Names of Ships	Start	End	Deaths	(Calendar)	1 Guinea Per Head
(1) ANN	322	305	17	9/13/1750	£320, 5s
(2) SPEEDWELL1	229	212	17	7/21/1751	£222, 12s
(3) GALE1	214	205	9	8/8/1751	£215, 5s
(4) PEARL1	264	232	32	9/24/1751	£243, 12s
(5) MURDOCK	298	269	29	10/1/17512	£282, 9s
(6) SPEEDWELL2	276	263	13	7/14/1752	£276, 3s
(7) BETTY	161	154	7	7/14/1752	£161, 14s
(8) PEARL2	251	212	39	8/21/1752	£222, 12s
(9) SALLY	258	218	40	9/6/1752	£228, 18s
(10) GALE2	249	220	29	9/6/1752	£231, 0s
Total Guineas	=	2,290		=	£2,404 and 18s

Surely, Mr. Dick's shady career neither began nor ended with the ships he sent to Nova Scotia. There were surely other ventures from which he substantially profited from human misery.

There was one thing that piqued immense curiosity in this researcher: what kind of profits did Mr. Dick make over his lifetime? The answer to this question would tell us whether he reimbursed the Germans—and others like them over his lifetime—or pocketed the money. So, a deep dive into the life of John Dick.

THE LIFE OF MR. JOHN DICK
As it turned out, a few years after Mr. Dick exited the human trafficking commercial shipping business, he spent a large amount of money reviving an ancient, dead title of nobility, essentially buying his way into high society. One wondered: "Where did this money come from? Was he born to titled parents?" For the answer to that, we turn to John Dick's genealogy.

John Dick was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1721—nobody really knows when—and baptized on February 2, 1721, in the Parish of All Saints, noted as the son of Andrew and Janet (Durham) Dick, who had been married in the parish on the same date just five years before. Mr. Andrew Dick (1676 - c1744) was apprenticed on November 18, 1700 to John Blackett and eight years later was admitted a member of the Company of Hostmen, a powerful group that controlled the monopoly of the coal trade in Newcastle upon Tyne. A friend of the family provided John Dick with an education and got him started in the shipping trade, presumably because his father couldn't afford it.

So there we have the answer to the question: Mr. John Dick was not "to the manor born." The large amount of money he spent pursuing the acquisition of his title did not come from inheritance, but from the money he made in the merchant trade. He became the "Baronet of Braid."

After his entitlement, he got himself an appointment, in 1754, as the Consul to Livorno, Tuscany, Italy. And during the time of this appointment, he was involved in a scandal, where he had a hand in the kidnapping of Princess Yelizaveta Alekseyevna Tarakanova (born c. 1745—died Dec. 4 [Dec. 15, New Style], 1775, St. Petersburg, Russia), a supposed "pretender to the Russian Empire." Said princess had claimed to be the daughter of Count Aleksey G. Razumovsky and the at-the-time unmarried Empress Elizabeth (reigned 1741–62), who had been reared in Saint Petersburg. Despite her statements that the princess was a pretender, Empress Catherine the Second of Russia for some reason found her threatening (was there some truth to her claims?), and wanted her returned to Russia. Sir John Dick assisted in an evil plot by a man named Alexei Grigoryevich Orlov, who had been sent by Empress Catherine II to snatch her and return her to Russia. With Dick's help, she was invited aboard a Russian ship, where she was taken prisoner, and spirited away to Russia in February 1775, where she was locked up in the Peter and Paul Fortress, and died there of TB the following December.

Surely Dick did this to ingratiate himself to Empress Catherine II, who awarded him the Knight of the Imperial Russia Order of St Anne of the first class (the equivalent of being knighted by the King or Queen of Great Britain), and wrote him a letter of commendation to King George III, the reigning monarch in Great Britain.

Dick then spent the next twenty-some years acquiring art and antiquities, after which he returned to England and bought a beautiful mansion—Mount Clare (Roehampton) in Surrey—on which he then spent even more money remodeling in the Italian style, with the help of an expensive architect.

At the time of his death—at his mansion, on December 2nd, 1804—Sir John Dick's estate was valued at £160,000.

Just curious, here... How much this would be worth in inflation-adjusted 2024 American dollars? More research. First, a website was found equating the dollar in 1804 as worth £0.2197. So we begin by converting 1804 pounds to 1804 dollars: £160,000 * 0.2197 = $35,152. Now we need to inflate $35,152 to its inflation-adjusted value in 2024 dollars.

There is an Inflation Calculator for this. Entering $35,152, along with starting year 1804 and ending year 2024, gives us an inflation-adjusted value in 2024 dollars of $935,606.23.

So, Dick's estate was worth very nearly $1 million when converted to U.S. dollars and inflation adjusted for 2024 dollars. Where did all that money come from? He arrived in Livorno flush with cash, and immediately began purchasing objets d'art. He left Livorno with those treasures, plus enough cash to purchase—and remodel into an Italian style villa—a large mansion, and still had so much left over that he reportedly had "large sums of cash" at the time of his death.

There is a description of John Dick's tomb by Count Giuseppe Gorani, a man who knew him well. Quoting from a document by Giunti Matteo titled "Sir John Dick and his mysterious mausoleum"—part of "Diplomats buried at the Old English Cemetery of Livorno – Part 1":

"...Sir John Dick himself, or more precisely his grave, is also protagonist of another strange mystery created by the pen of Count Giuseppe Gorani in 1793.

"Gorani published his Mémoires secrets et critiques des cours, des gouvernemens, et des moeurs des principaux états de l’Italie in Paris in 1793. At page 152 of the third volume he gives a very interesting description of the different cemeteries of Livorno and, in particular, of 'celui qui passe pour le plus beau' [Translation: 'the one which is considered the most beautiful'], the English burial ground. After a brief description of the area and the enclosure, Gorani focuses on the monuments, and some of the mausoleums which attracted his attention. The second one, by Gorani’s words,

"est celui érigé à la mémoire du Consul Dick et de son épouse. L’architecture est superbe. Le piédestal est d’ordre corinthien, avec une colonne cannelée et tronquée. Cette colonne est surmontée d’une coupe dans laquelle est posé un vase étrusque, d’où s’élève une flamme délicatement travaillée.

Translation:

is the one erected in memory of Consul Dick and his wife. The architecture is superb. The pedestal is of the Corinthian order, with a fluted and truncated column. This column is surmounted by a cup in which is placed an Etruscan vase, from which a delicately worked flame rises.

"After this admirative and precise description of Sir John Dick's tomb, he finally reveals to the reader that he knew very well the one whose ashes were buried under that monument, and he could not avoid having a 'foule de réflexions que justifiera l’article suivant.' The description then becomes an excuse for Gorani to trace consul Dick’s character as one 'burin imposteur,' to introduce the next chapter where he finally reveals the reason of such a relentless judgment on him. The abduction of the ‘Princess’ Tarakanova through the evil plot by Aleksey Orlov and Consul John Dick was that reason (see a brief summary of this event on the wikipedia page about Princess Tarakanova)."

The elaborate monument described above is in the [Old English Cemetery of Livorno, Tuscany, Italy, which has recently undergone a rescue operation. It has been neglected—from the looks of it—for probably a century, with whole trees having grown up, and toppled over onto the monuments, knocking the tops off many of them. No photographs of John Dick's tomb have been discovered amongst the photopraphs of the recently-renovated English Cemetery in Livorno, so it cannot be determined whether the tomb is still extant, or whether it has been toppled and broken into numerous unidentifiable shards.

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.

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 were visited on various dates in Feb 2023. This book is available from various booksellers.

• Northumberland Archives. "Sir John Dick (1721-1804): Merchant, Diplomat and Art Dealer." Article about the birth and parentage of John Dick. Dated 24 Jul 2023. Visited 15 June 2024.

• "Yelizaveta Alekseyevna Tarakanova: Russian adventuress." Encyclopaedia Britannica. From this article, Princess Tarakanova's full name and dates of birth and death were extracted. Last updated 10 Apr 2024. Visited 22 Jun 2024.

• "Princess Tarakanova." Wikipedia. Last edited 1 May 2024. Visited 15 June 2024.

• Mausoleum of Sir John Dick Giunti, Matteo. "Diplomats buried at the Old English Cemetery of Livorno – Part 1: Sir John Dick and his mysterious mausoleum." Dated 3 Feb 2012. Visited 15 June 2024.

• MeasuringWorth.com Exchange rates between the U.S. dollar and 41 currencies in any particular year. This site was used to convert pounds to American dollars, both in 1804 values. Created in December 2019. Visited 15 June 2024.

• "$35,152 in 1804 → 2024 | Inflation Calculator." Official Inflation Data, Alioth Finance. This site was used to grow the 1804 value of $35,152 to its inflation-adjusted 2024 value. Visited 22 Jun 2024.

Raw data for these calculations comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index (CPI), established in 1913. Price index data from 1774 to 1912 is sourced from a historical study conducted by political science professor Robert Sahr at Oregon State University and from the American Antiquarian Society. Price index data from 1634 to 1773 is from the American Antiquarian Society, using British pound equivalents.