Why did sailors put up with it all? Why did the ordinary seamen and trained officers abandon hearth and home to live amid these grim circumstances for years on end? Why did they endure starvation rations, the indignity and agony of the lash and the stocks, torment by vermin, thirst, sunstroke, and the lack of women? They went to sea for a variety of reasons, for glory and greed, for escape, out of habit, out of desperation, and through pure chance.
