Product Description

The western Sahara is a baking hot and desolate place, home only to nomads and their camels, and to locusts, snails and thorny scrub. On 28 August 1815, the US brig Commerce was dashed against Mauritania's Cape Bojador and lost, although through bravery and quick thinking the ship's captain, James Riley, managed to lead all of his crew to safety. What followed was an extraordinary and desperate battle for survival in the face of human hostility, hunger, dehydration and despair, as the crew were captured, robbed and enslaved. They were reduced to drinking urine (their own and the camels'), flayed by the sun, crippled by walking miles across burning stones and sand. And, over time, James Riley and Sidi Hamet, slave and captor, came to recognize in each other men worthy of respect and the ransom not only of Riley himself but also of a handful of his crew suddenly seemed possible. But, Sidi Hamet had enemies of his own, and to reach safety the sailors had to overcome not only the desert but also the greed and anger of those who would keep them in captivity.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #38200 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Review
"'Dean King has brought to life one of the great, true-life adventure stories - a riveting tale of suffering and redemption.' Nathaniel Philbrick"

About the Author
Dean King is the author of a biography of Patrick O'Brian, 'a model of how these things should be' (Telegraph 'Books of the Year').

Customer Reviews

A tale of two gritties
King follows in the desperate footsteps of Captain Riley and his marooned crew -- and in the end almost replicates as their struggle for survive and sanity. King lives out their story in his head while tracing their paths through the cruel sands. Well done. An interesting contrast is Peter Hillary's diabolical attempt to complete Captain Robert Scott's famous fatal journey -- chronicled in the beguiling and very different IN THE GHOST COUNTRY -- and nearly ended up repeating it. What makes Hillary's book both important and effective is its exploration of the inner life, of fear and guilt and loneliness, which thereby makes it a book that anyone with half a brain and a full heart can relate to. A great one.

A gripping tale of humanity - and its failings
This is a really fascinating story in the vein of all the best survival books. What differentiates it from most survival stories is its setting in the Sahara, not an icy waste, and the date it occurred - 1815.
The treatment of the shipwrecked sailors is nothing short of shocking by today's standards. They were treated as a commodity to be traded, and yet this is eerily similar to the treatment doled out to black africans by white slavers. In an uncomfortable table-turning, we come to appreciate some of the injustices doled out by humanity.

The fact that some of the sailors survived is nothing short of miraculous, and fortitude of the ship's captain, Riley is the key to this. There is no doubt that those who escaped were extremely fortunate and this is what keeps this book gripping. The other fascinating element of the book is the attitude of the sailors to their captors. Some captors were better than others, and the blinkered viewpoint of sailors to start with was considerably broadened by their experiences, particularly the strength and commitment to some of the locals to freeing them.
Read this book and enjoy - and be grateful you're not enslaved in the Sahara.

the brig commerce
This book is esentially a rewrite of Captain James Rileys 1817 book entitled "An Authentic Narative of the Loss of the American brig Commerce"
The Commerce set sail from Gibralter for the Cape Verde Islands in August 1815 but because of ill winds and fog it drifted off course and was wrecked on the west African coast. All 11 crew and the 1 passenger got ashore but the passenger waskilled by nomads. The crew sailed a damaged whaler further down the coast but on going ashore were captured and enslaved then suffered several months of cruelty, starvation and neglect.
Eventuallt 5 including the captain were ransomed to the British Consul and 2 others survived later.4crew disappeared and were never heard of again.
This is a gripping story of bravery and endurance.When the book was published in 1817 the captain became an American hero.
A book to be recommended.