less included many very poor men who left no future
prospects at all behind them.

   In other ways as well, the servants on the Ark resem-
bled those who came later. They evidently were young
and unmarried. No one who left evidence of when he
was born was over twenty-five at departure and two
were only ten. Only one brought a wife over later. They
were mostly illiterate. Only fifteen men left indications
that they could read or write. The majority, further-
more, had already spent time in England as servants or
apprentices. After age fourteen, young men and women
usually left home to learn a craft or a trade or to hire
themselves out as servants until they could marry and
establish their own homes.³⁶

   Why did these young people go on the Ark? Did they
know that they more than likely faced an early death?
Did they know that their conditions of service would be
much harsher than those they had known at home? In
England a servant on a farm promised to work for only
a year at a time and could then leave a master he dis-
liked. The servant going to Maryland sold at least three
years of his labor to pay for his passage. Consequently
he not only served a longer term but his labor could be
bought and sold without his consent.³⁷ Work, food, and
shelter were all to be different from what he was used
to, and all family and kin were going to be thousands of
miles away.

   It is well known that today the young never believe
that they will die, whatever they supposedly know about
the risks of life. Perhaps the same was true 350 years
ago. Besides, many died young in seventeenth-century
England. Nor do the young fear hardship in the face of
adventure, or the enterprising anticipate that bad luck