One day Sebastian the snail was on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea playing snail ball with his friends Samuel and Sammy. They were passing the ball around when a net dropped from a ship above. It was a Phoenician trade ship. Sebastian had been told to stay away from these ships but he was having so much fun he forgot to look out for them. 

The net caught Sebastian and his friends and took them up to the ship. Sebastian was a murex snail and murex snails were used for making dye. The Phoenicians would go out into the Mediterranean to capture murex snails. The Phoenicians were a colony of people who set up cities along the sea.  Their location was important because they could get resources from the land and the sea.

The net dropped the snails into a basket in the middle of the ship. The snails saw people working everywhere. They were crushing snails, making them into dye and dyeing clothing. Sebastian thought, “This is like a floating workshop!” 

The snails were transferred into the lower compartment of the ship where they saw a man pulverizing tons of snails! Sebastian knew they had to get out of there. The man was squeezing the snails so that a purple liquid came out. It emanated a horrendous smell. Then he would toss the shell of the creature into a bin.