Jimmy Fox - Nick Herald 02 - Lineages and Lies by Jimmy Fox

nonconformists, prisoners of war, vagabonds, and just plain old poor folks down on their luck. It was white slavery with a thin veneer of moral justification. You could say America was Britain’s first off-shore hazardous waste site.”
    “Didn’t these people jump at the chance to make a new life?”
    “Not every lawbreaker turned to crime out of desperation. Why leave England, when there were more and richer pockets to pick than in America? Think of the Mafia or the drug cartels of today; there were plenty of professional criminals, more than ever before in the history of England.”
    “Fagin and Bill Sikes from
Oliver Twist
.”
    “Indeed. Another discouragement was the trip itself—so bad that it rivaled the abysmal conditions of the much larger African slave trade. Indentured servant or convict, the transatlantic trip was exceedingly deadly, unless, again, you had sufficient money for bribes; and even then, unscrupulous captains knew many tricks to steal their passengers’ valuables and honor. The crossing was normally five weeks; there were enemy ships, storms, leaky vessels, smallpox, lice, and ‘jail fever,’ which covers about everything else, I suppose. A hundred or two hundred men, women, and children, five weeks chained in the belly of the ship, guns and cannon trained on them to keep down mutinies. The worstcaptains and crews subjected the men to brutal punishments, and the women to unspeakable humiliations. One in seven died on the trip, twice as many men as women.”
    “I think I flew that airline once. Talk about rude stewardesses!”
    Nelson scarcely heard Nick’s remark. He continued.
    “After the Transportation Act of 1718, more than a century since the practice had begun, all ships dealing in freighting convicts had a surgeon on board. Someone realized, finally, that the convicts and indentured servants were precious commodities; the object was to get them to the destination alive, if not exactly healthy. The merchants, ship captains, and planters on the other side all profited handsomely. Trading their convicts for cash, tobacco, rum, and sugar, they would also often get paid by the British government for their services. Many a man in the trade became quite wealthy.”
    “What about the reception on this side?” Nick asked.
    “Well, Ben Franklin called them rattlesnakes. But those powerful men on both sides of the ocean who profited from the cheap labor and good commissions tended to be more sanguine about the whole business. Convicts and indentured servants were less expensive to buy than black slaves, and they were treated almost as horribly: they survived meager rations, wore indifferent clothes, lived like domestic animals, were hunted down when they escaped. The difference was, of course, they would eventually be freed. Some were given land, and became good citizens. But xenophobia and nativism set in. Some of the colonial governments, especially Virginia, foreshadowed theirlater rebellion by defying Parliament and prohibiting some ship captains from unloading their cargo. But Parliament eventually won, and Virginia had no choice. Jamaica and other West Indian colonies, though, were able to stop the flow.”
    Another piece of e-mail arrived in Nelson’s computer.
    “Thanks for the information, Nelson. I’ll check out those English ports. You’re too busy to be chasing my pipe dreams.”
    “It
is
rather far fetched. Tantamount to saying the
Mayflower
story is a lie.” He gave a slight laugh and shook his head, seeming more preoccupied than before. “Some people will do almost anything to get into one of these lineage societies, I suppose. Sad.”
    “Let’s be charitable and say my client’s got things fouled up. The
Allégorie
and the
True Faith
probably had nothing to do with each other, outside of my client’s delusions.” At the door to Nelson’s office, Nick turned and said, “Keep those kids in there building the future.”
    “The future?” said Nelson Plumlaw, his