John Casor in The Hood by Mayumi Takadanobaba Chapters 21 to 25 02172020

Описание: Chapter 21: Prisoners Pack Virginia and the New World Order Slugs the Blackman into Bad Bondage

Joseph Winterbottom landed in Virginia on June 21, 1720 aboard a prison ship Honour leaving Newgate Prison, London, England.
Joe Cool is how the locals referred to Winterbottom.

He came on summer solstice and quickly fell to the slave trade. It was not moments from leaving the prison ship that he had a job at the port. Almost like it was arranged, but for Joe it was just timing.

The Winterbottom’s would play an interesting role in the slave trade over the next two centuries. We will meet the great Dr. Thomas Winterbottom in about 100 years as we meet the American’s that make color distinctions absurd.

Joe was a big man that was in jail for robbing a pub after one too many pints. Like many on the Honour going to America was indeed a fresh start. But, crime is not bred out of these folks on this short 4-month journey to Virginia. In fact, the time is spent in conspiracy to quickly be slavers.

The money potential was written on every sailors’ face. The pamphlets propagandized about the riches to be made in taming the heathens.
London just dumped its prisons into America starting in the 1700’s. The first lot of people left to start new. The second lot were folks would could not find work in London.

Then Tobacco filled the coffers in London and the population stayed. Employment rose, and no one wanted to leave for America anymore.
So, at the demand of the slave traders, prisoners were shipped en masse to America. Ship after ship filled with 20-year-old hoodlums.
In the 1600’s we saw literacy, elegance and hard work.

The 1700s were a cesspool of greed, sex, booze and the foundation of America’s revolution.
 
At some point we simply had to stop London from dumping its prisoners on our shores. Ship after ship of hooligans arrived in the early 1700s.

They came into a different port than slave ships. Rarely did one die on these robber ships.

The slave ships changed drastically after John Casor was declared a slave. It was like the ship builders heard the news and built massive floating coffins to cram as many Africans as they can per voyage. I won’t even draw it. My pen really does not need that much blood and puke on it.

Joe Cool did not know this yet. Still the words of the posters around the ship captured his imagination.

Four months at sea without grog is torture, but having gone from prison to this ship it was not a bother. So real brains were used to conjure up their image of America.

You got to know everyone on your ship and they became your alumni. A protection force in the new world in place.

The comraderies were lost on the first few days at port. Yes, Joe got a job instantly, but others were not so lucky. Joe noticed but did not get involved. The sailors at sea told Joe it was kill or be killed in America. Watch your back.

No longer were these voyages set with conversations about freedom in our spiritual sense. It was about making money in the slave trade and pissing off the
 
old white guys in London. The buggers that put Joe in prison in the first place. Humans are a complicated lot.

Joe knew every female on the ship. 24 gals for four months. It was simple math for Joe, allocate one month per six gals.

He did. Mary was the most common name on the ship. Also, the meanest and the prettiest girls. Shoot. We had Mary North that always made Joe stand at attention. Mary Selby might as well have been a witch in Joe’s mind.

Mary was the most common name among all the prisoner ships of the 1700s. I’ll ponder this while I think about who was that popular in the 1680s or so to make English go Mary. And, how do so many Marys go bad?

Joe did not care. He circled Mary North and gave up his chase of all others. It was ying and yang across the ship with these two. Mary was in for shiving a customer. Joe knew her beauty belies strength.

Mary loved black and was the blond. Joe traded his way to more colorful clothes along the journey. Each day moving up as his antics did entertain on this long journey.

James Holliday and Joe Cool became brothers on this journey. James knew Joe from inside, but just barely. Soon, though, Jim and Joe would be thick as thieves. Jim with an equal penchant for fine things got them by cards.
 
The parties of the 1600s were no more when a ship landed in Virginia.

That practice went away when the slaver ships changed and arrived at port with 20% dead in the cargo hold. The port of Jamestown was rancid by the 1720 Honour Voyage that brought Joe Cool to Virginia.

The Honour landed at York, Virginia instead. Still a respectable port, but more and more down town as boatloads of criminals arrive.

The goal of all at this time was to live and work in Williamsburg. The history of Jamestown burned with its courthouse in 1698 and was abandoned by management.