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