AN AUTHENTIC NARRATIVE OF THE LOSS OF THE AMERICAN BRIG COMMERCE; Wrecked on the Western Coast of Africa, in the Month of August, 1813 with an Account of the sufferings of the Surviving Officers and Crew, Who Were Enslaved by the Wandering Arabs, on the African Desert, or Zahahrah.
Printed for the Author by T. & W. Merccin. 1817 New York, 1st edn, viii, 554pp, fold-out map, appendix xvi. Frontis and 8 plates. Bound in full brown leather with black label; binding sound. Previous owner's ink signature, several pages with tears. Medium foxing throughout. This is the hard to find 1st edition with fold-out map and all 9 plates of this book which was reprinted again and again even within the first 3 years of its publication. Item #007769
In 1815, James Riley survived a disastrous shipwreck and was enslaved by Arabs in Morocco. 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.
Price: $750.00