Overview

By Captain James Riley. The incredible true story of an American ship's crew taken into slavery by the Muslim slave traders of North Western Africa after being wrecked on that continent's west coast, has riveted, fascinated, and horrified readers since its first publication two hundred years ago. Captain Riley's ship, the Commerce, was sailing from Gibraltar to the Cape Verde Islands when it was lost in fog and wrecked on the west Moroccan coast. There, they were seized by passing Berbers, who, after taking their food and pouring out their drinking water, carried the white men off deep into the Sahara desert. The book tells in shocking detail the events before and after their capture by marauding Sahrawi natives, and their mistreatment, which included beatings, heat exposure, and starvation. Eventually, the abused, underfed, and overworked captives were on the point of death when their masters sold them to yet another Arab slave trader. He had however only purchased the white men upon Riley's promise of cash ransom and a gun. Captain Riley's detailed and horrifying descriptions of his experiences at the hands of the slave trading Muslims of North Africa, typified the treatment suffered by more than a million Europeans who were captured by the Barbary pirates. This valuable account bears witness to a part of history that is now largely suppressed or ignored. This account of slavery, torture, and death was so influential that Abraham Lincoln included it in his 1860 campaign biography as the work that had shaped his views on slavery.

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9781389752094

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