In 1347, ships from the Black Sea arrived in Sicily carrying an unseen killer. Rats and fleas aboard the grain vessels spread the plague that would become the Black Death. Within months, Italian ports fell. By the next year, the plague spread from the Mediterranean to England.
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TRANSCRIPT
The ships transporting Crimean grain to Italian ports carried a stowaway as vicious as it was small.
Plague was already circulating in the area around the Black Sea in the 1340s and on ships leaving Crimean ports, rats and fleas infested with plague set sail for Europe.
And some human passengers were already infected.
In September 1347 they arrived in Messina, in Sicily.
That's the introduction of the Black Death into Europe.
That was the other port of entry into Europe.
One by one, Italian port towns and cities fell to the Black Death.
By late 1347, the disease had been reported in Genoa and Venice and all the way to the Middle East.
By the following year, it had spread north through Europe, to Germany, France, and all the way vto England.
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