ies of shipwreck and
stranding on hostile or desert coasts. These disasters were far more
frequent then than now, because navigation was partly guesswork and
ships were very small. Among these tragedies was that of the Commerce,
bound from Boston to Bombay in 1793. The captain lost his bearings and
thought he was off Malabar when the ship piled up on the beach in the
night. The nearest port was Muscat and the crew took to the boats in the
hope of reaching it. Stormy weather drove them ashore where armed Arabs
on camels stripped them of clothes and stores and left them to die among
the sand dunes.

On foot they trudged day after day in the direction of Muscat, and how
they suffered and what they endured was told by one of the survivors,
young Daniel Saunders. Soon they began to drop out and die in their
tracks in the manner of "Benjamin Williams, William Leghorn, and Thomas
Barnard whose bodies were exposed naked to the scorching sun and finding
their strength and spirits quite exhausted they lay down expecting
nothing but death for relief." The next to be left behind was Mr. Robert
Williams, merchant and part owner, "and we therefore with reluctance
abandoned him to the mercy of God, suffering ourselves all the horrors
that fill the mind at the approach of death." Near the beach and a
forlorn little oasis, they stumbled across Charles Lapham, who had
become separated from them. He had been without water for five days "and
after many efforts he got upon his feet and endeavored to walk. Seeing
him in so wretched a condition I could not but sympathize enough with
him in his torments to go back with him" toward water two miles away,
"which both my other companions refused to do. Accordingly they walked
forward while I went back a considerable distance with Lapham until, his
strength failing him, he suddenly fell on the ground, nor was he able
to rise again or even speak to me. Finding it vain to stay with him, I
covered him with sprays and leaves which I tore from an adjacent tree,
it being the last friendly office I could do him."

Eight living skeletons left of eighteen strong seamen tottered into
Muscat and were cared for by the English consul. Daniel Saunders worked
his passage to England, was picked up by a press-gang, escaped, and so
returned to Salem. It was the fate of Juba Hill, the black cook from
Boston, to be detained among the Arabs as a slave. It is worth noting
that a black sea-cook figured in many of these