That seems a little bit contrived to me, that's all I'm saying. Couldn't he just pose as a regular peasant / stow away / buy a ship himself with his fast fortunes?
Buy a ship? Who will crew it, who will sell such an expensive item to a lowly peasant? How do you expect that the nobility wouldn't be quite annoyed by a peasant trying to rise above his station in such a way? He could try stowing away, but really that is quite difficult to do on old sailing vessels, there wasn't that many places to hide really.
