Journal ...

Saunderson (=Sanderson) Walker was the son of Henry Walker (1783-ca 1854/63), a Quaker ship-owner in North Shields, near Newcastle. Henry Walker was the manager of the Gateshead and Tyne Shipping Company, and apparently his son Saunderson worked in the office of the company. From early youth he was consumptive, and by the age of 22 he had already embarked on the first of a series of sea-voyages to improve his health. The journal of his first voyage of 1837, to Switzerland and the Mediterranean, is preserved in the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) Library, London (MS Vols S 84, 85). Saunderson’s ‘Turkish Journal’ describes a six-month voyage to the Levant from October 1839 to April 1840. There are extensive and detailed descriptions of Constantinople and Smyrna. From Smyrna he sailed along the eastern Mediterranean to Rhodes, Cyprus, Beirut and Egypt. He then returned to Constantinople and made an excursion through the Black Sea to Odessa. He visited Cyprus at Christmas of 1840; his description of the island is in chapter 7.

There was no improvement to Saunderson’s health, and he made another voyage in the autumn and winter of 1840-1841, to the East Indies. Apparently, he wrote up his account of his voyage to the Levant in about 1842, after his return from the East Indies. His journal of the latter voyage is also preserved in the Friends Library (MS Vol S 76). Saunderson Walker died of tuberculosis in 1845, and the date of his death is recorded in the Annual Monitor for 1846 or Obituary of the Members of the Society of Friends for the year 1845, York, 1845.