Dream or Past Life?

Below is the dream I've had. It was so real..you could touch/taste/feel everything that was going on. I always wonder if these dreams are memories of previous lives.

I found myself the hull of a ship of old with perhaps one hundred other people...it was a steam ship...we had been captured the whole lot of us. We were heading for cold waters. All of the men were pressed into servitude until we reached the cold waters. The men were going to be dumped into the cold waters like a shovelful of leftover waste.

Whoever the captors were, they weren't even going to bother killing the men but rather let the icy waters do the chore. The women, we were spared. We were to 'move upstairs' and be 'gifts' to the captain and his men for as long as they didn't tire of us.

I was being told by the man I was with to use all my talents to survive in order to eventually escape. This man I was with was my husband. He was tall, slender, sandy hair and very muscular. He had kind eyes. We both clung to each other knowing this was our last times together. He was trying to be cheerful and him telling me to have a full life. He had accepted his fate. He held me and touched me and in his eyes, he cherished me. His love was an abiding love. We had had a good fulfilling life together but at the same time, this time we had had together was being cut short. We talked of trivial things interspersed between the important things he wanted me to remember. I tried to listen but all I could think of was trying to remember his voice, his eyes, his touch, his smell, the texture of his skin. We both put on a brave face. I was determined that the last memory of me was going to be that of a strong loving woman. I looked around and there were so many other couples having their 'last rites' with each other. There was a group of men who were in a bunch, watching all of the couples. You could see in the men's faces...all of the men's faces the acceptance. I looked around at everyone and we were a different lot. We had clothing from the days of old, perhaps late 1700's or 1800s. We were dirty and unkempt but instantly I knew that the traveling conditions we were in left us no choice.

And that's the dream. It changed after this part into other things and other people...it always does. It could have been an hour long dream or a 10 second dream. I don't know. Sometimes I have dreams in detail like this where it's a complete memory in the first second of the dream...an all knowing kind of thing.