The commendations "Merchant Forager", "Merchant Shipwright", "Cast Iron Merchant" and "Black Powder Merchant" for the Merchant Alliance are very unbalanced in my opinion. The reason for this, is that they are only obtainable by getting and completing very rare quests that are currently only given from messages in bottles. This means that the commendations are not obtainable by hard work or grind, but rather by pure luck, rng and chance. This seems unbalanced compared to the other commendations, and I think it is unfair towards people who try to get all the commendations for The Merchant Alliance.
My suggestion to fix this issue, is to add a new quest for The Merchant Alliance to the captain's table , that will make you deliver two (short quest) or four (long quest) of the items required for these commendations, those being the fruit crate, wood crate, cannonball crate and gunpowder barrel. This would make the quests accesible, and the players could actually work towards the commendations rather than be totally dependent on sheer luck.