FORCES OF NATURE · 1347 · MESSINA
The galleys never dock
In October 1347, twelve Genoese galleys carry the Black Death west toward the harbor of Messina, the first door by which the plague enters Europe. This is the timeline where an autumn storm takes the ships before they can dock.
You are reading the timeline that almost was · notes marked THE RECORD are real history
OCTOBER 1347 · MESSINA
In the first days of October 1347, twelve Genoese galleys beat west toward Sicily, fleeing the East. For a year they had been besieged at Caffa on the Black Sea. There the Mongol khan Janibeg's army sickened with a strange fever, and the fever sailed home in the ships. Below deck, among the silk and grain, rode the plague. Ahead lay Messina and its long stone mole. In our timeline the galleys reached it and let the Black Death step ashore into Europe.
In the timeline recorded here, an autumn gale rises out of the north before the galleys can round the mole. The wind carries them back into the dark.
The atlas keeps other pages near this one
