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.