LIFE ON BOARD AND OFF 203 



family of six. They came on board the Draco at St. Helena 

 on February 25, 1847. On March 3rd appears the following 

 entry: "At 8 A. M. Departed this life Mr. Charles Robinson, 

 missionary from Siam & passenger from St. Helena, after a long 

 Ilness, of the Inflamation on the Lungs, Leaving A wife & four 

 Children on board, at 4 P. M. Committed his remains to a 

 watry Grave where we are all fast hastening. So Ends." 

 Below it some one has crudely pencilled the outline of a coffin. 



Not long since, news came to New Bedford that Dr. Benjamin 

 T. Wilson had died, at the age of eighty-two years, on the island 

 of Onjonan of the Comoro Group on the east coast of Africa. 

 In 1865, Doctor Wilson embarked in a New Bedford whaler 

 on a voyage for his health. At Onjonan, then called Johanna, 

 he left the vessel and treated the blind King Abdullah of the 

 island and restored His Majesty's sight. The grateful monarch 

 gave his whaler physician a thousand acres of land, and Doctor 

 Wilson settled permanently on the island, where, some years 

 later, a number of natives wished to make him king. 



The Arabs attacked him because he was not a Mohammedan, 

 but he literally raised an army to defend himself. And when, 

 in 1886, France seized the island and declared Doctor Wilson's 

 deeds invalid, he appealed to the Government of the United 

 States, which sent a warship to protect his interests. For a 

 while the good doctor's affairs were of international importance, 

 for France seized his land and cattle and the American Govern- 

 ment took up the matter in his behalf. France offered him half 

 of what he demanded, and he refused. France raised its offer 

 to $400,000, but he still demanded more, and for want of in- 

 formation to the contrary, it is to be inferred that he got it. 



When news of his death came to America no one here knew 

 the exact state of his fortunes, but the strange story of his career, 

 beginning with that whaling voyage nearly sixty years ago, takes 

 its place in the romantic annals of whaling. 



Some whalemen, like the mutineers of the Globe, sought island 

 kingdoms ; some had kingdoms all but thrust upon them. I have, 

 among my sea books, an old government report which bears 

 on its flyleaf the autograph of a famous old whaling captain. 



