o foul with decay that several hundred barrels of beef were
spoiled. To repair the ship was beyond the means of Captain Randall
and Samuel Shaw, and reluctantly they sold her to the Danish East India
Company at a heavy loss. Nothing could have been more unexpected than to
find that, for once, the experienced shipbuilders had been guilty of a
miscalculation.

The crew scattered, and perhaps the prediction of the fortune-teller of
Lynn followed their roving courses, for when Captain Amasa Delano tried
to trace them a few years later, he jotted down such obituaries as these
on the list of names:

"John Harris. A slave in Algiers at last accounts.
Roger Dyer. Died and thrown overboard off Cape Horn.
William Williams. Lost overboard off Japan.
James Crowley. Murdered by the Chinese near Macao.
John Johnson. Died on board an English Indiaman.
Seth Stowell. Was drowned at Whampoa in 1790.
Jeremiah Chace. Died with the small-pox at Whampoa in 1791.
Humphrey Chadburn. Shot and died at Whampoa in 1791.
Samuel Tripe. Drowned off Java Head in 1790.
James Stackpole. Murdered by the Chinese.
Nicholas Nicholson. Died with the leprosy at Macao.
William Murphy. Killed by Chinese pirates.
Larry Conner. Killed at sea."

There were more of these gruesome items--so many of them that it appears
as though no more than a handful of this stalwart crew survived the
Massachusetts by a dozen years. Incredible as it sounds, Captain
Delano's roster accounted for fifty of them as dead while he was still
in the prime of life, and most of them had been snuffed out by violence.
As for his own career, it was overcast by no such unlucky star, and he
passed unscathed through all the hazards and vicissitudes that could
be encountered in that rugged and heroic era of endeavor. Set adrift in
Canton when the Massachusetts was sold, he promptly turned his hand to
repairing a large Danish ship which had been wrecked by storm, and he
virtually rebuilt her to the great satisfaction of the owners.

Thence, with money in his pocket, young Delano went to Macao, where
he fell in with Commodore John McClure of the English Navy, who was
in command of an expedition setting out to explore a part of the South
Seas, including the Pelew Islands, New Guinea, New Holland, and the
Spice Islands. The Englishman liked this resourceful Yankee seaman and
did him the honor to say, recalls Delano, "that he considered I should
be a very useful man to hi