Transporting Horses

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Knowing that horses arrived on the same ships that carried the early colonists raised the question of how horses were handled as cargo on a vessel that pitched and rolled in response to any but the calmest weather. Both visual images – painting and drawings from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – and ships’ logs help to answer this question.


As this ship model shows, stalls constructed below decks and equipped with slings kept horses from suffering life-threatening injuries in the event of severe weather, although they did not prevent minor problems as the logs reveal.


An 18th c. Spanish illustration showing a similar form of stall and the sling.

The log of the brigantine Flora records the weather conditions that could complicate life for both crew and cargo during a crossing of the Atlantic. The Flora sailed from Whitby on the east coast of Yorkshire with a cargo of six horses, two bound for Madeira and the remainder destined for Charleston. The ship left Whitby on 16 September 1767 for a passage of nearly three months over more than four thousand nautical miles. Heavy autumn and winter gales accompanied her across the Atlantic.

By the 28th of September, meeting a “Great swell from ye East,” the “Ship labours hard. The Horses are hard matcht to keep upon their Legs. . . . Ruswarp had Like to been down upon us[,] had Entirely Dropt his hinder Legs and hung by the slings.” On 23 October the log reported “Our Horses in Good Health and fine order.” Men and horses alike “are eaten up with flies.” On the 31st, as the ship moved westward from Madeira, all the horses were bled, “it being very Requisite against the Change of Climate. They are in better order now than when they came on board the ship.” Fresh gales on the 2nd of November brought “A Great sea from the West. Ship Labours very hard yet the Horses able to Stand fast in ye hold," although the master, William Manson, noted that he “Tumbled down several times upon ye deck,” not having the benefit of a sling to keep him upright.

Weather was not the only source of difficulties. On November 6th, “Danby kicked Lofthouse very hard on his left hind Leg which is very much swelled to which we applyd a medicine for it.” Furthermore, “Lofthouse was taken badly with a Cough and Short Wind.” Three days later, “Blooded the Horse Lofthouse in the Thigh Vein and annoynted his Leg Which seems to be much swelled.” Lofthouse’s leg continued to be troublesome for several weeks and “Sulphur and Lofthouse have both Rubbed off some hair of their Buttocks on the Side Rails with the Quick motion and Rowling of the ship.” The entry for 30 November noted that “Sulphur’s legs still continue to be very Scabbed,” but “Lofthouse mends fast & ye new hairs grow . . . [and] The Stallion and Bay horse” were in “Good health and Good order.” Strong gales on 4 December made the horses “hard matcht to keep upon their Legs,” but arrival in the Charleston harbor on the 9th brought their shipboard life to an end.

Horses carried in stalls below decks had, of course, to be gotten on and off the ship by some means.


This ship model shows the below-deck stalls for the horses but in addition includes both staging platforms on the side of the ship where horses are lined up waiting in turn to be lowered into the hold, and a horse amidships being lowered to the level of the stalls by a halyard.


A different image, of an army loading its cavalry horses, shows the same use of a halyard to swing the horses aboard.


Another variation on the same procedure.
The views of naval vessels loading or unloading horses remind us that any military campaign of the period required the movement of large numbers of horses. When William of Orange invaded England in 1588, it was reported that the Dutch fleet carried some seven thousand horses. They served as mounts for thirty-six hundred cavalry officers, the Prince and his entourage, and the officer and gentlemen volunteers who accompanied him, and also as draft animals to pull carts carrying provisions and ammunition and the army’s artillery. Saddlemakers in Amsterdam supplied three thousand saddles as well as boots, bridles, reins, etc. A mobile smithy accompanied the expedition to shoe horses as well as repair weapons. When transporting horses in this quantity, unloading by means of a halyard required too much time – particularly for an army preparing for battle. In 1688, local fishermen directed the fleet to a landing place where the beach fell away sharply enough that the horses needed to swim only a short distance to reach shore.


Here, horses swim ashore from a ship off the coast of Cuba during the Spanish-American War. Despite the obvious differences in the vessels used, the method of offloading remains essentially the same.

Transporting cavalry horses was not a consideration in the Chesapeake ordinarily, but was a practical issue during the French and Indian War for British troops sent to fight in the colonies. A recent review of research related to the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary War trail dealt with the logistics of getting the troops that fought at Yorktown to Virginia by ship. There they awaited the arrival on foot of the oxen needed to pull the cannon that were carried on board the ships along with the soldiers. No mention was made of transporting horses, but at least a few traveled down the bay by sail and tide for paintings of the British surrender show Washington, Lafayette, and other officers on horseback.



Complicated as the loading and unloading of horses might have been, it was probably nothing compared to the challenge of getting an elephant on and off a ship!

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