16世紀イングランドの大航海時代と船員の語り : W. ブラウンの船上遺言書を手がかりとして

Mortality was high within the early English commerce with equatorial West Africa. In Guinea voyages(1553-1564), it is said that 1,000～1,500 seamen participated in these voyages and approximately 300～500 of them died on the voyages or within a few days of the return to an English port. The causes of their death were the diseases like scurvy rather than war and accidents. When they realized their life drew to an end, they often made their wills on shipboard.
Recently their wills are often viewed as their narrative which told their life and community on shipboard. In this article, I attempt to analyse W.Brown’s will which was made on shipboard in 1554. The points I clarify are as follows;
(1) Wills reveal evidence on the deceased, and their relationships with survivors.
(2) There were active economic activities based on the credit system on shipboard.
(3) these shipboard communities were quite clearly, recognizable communities and were accepted as such by most of those who participated in the voyages. Distance, death and duration helped produce a new phenomenon, the shipboard community of the deep-sea merchant marine.