Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival

This is a difficult book to read, due to the unimaginable suffering undergone by the survivors of the wrecked American brig Commerce along the Northern Africa coast, but it is also a compelling and tightly written story that will hold the reader's interest and give tremendous insight into life in the barren desert lands of North Africa and the nomadic tribesmen inhabiting that area during the early 19th century. Briefly, the American ship is wrecked along the coast of the Saharan desert, a place well known for ill treatment of shipwrecked sailors by the nomadic tribes in that region, including robbery, torture, murder, but most often being taken as slaves. The brig's crew, after an aborted early escape attempt by lifeboat, are captured and taken as slaves. They were treated in a miserable manner, forced to travel and serve the nomad tribes without adequate food, clothing, shelter, and little ability to communicate with their captors. Several were sold and traded to other tribes and, with the exception of a few somewhat compassionate tribesmen lived a life best compared to those held in WWII concentration work camps. Their only hope was to find and convince one of their slave owners that they would be worth more if taken to more civilized areas of Northern Africa (i.e. Morocco and proximate cities) where the English and French officials would pay money to ransom them. While having no absolute knowledge that they would be successful in obtaining those ransoms, they nevertheless were able to convince (bluff, as it were) one of their more benevolent owners to take them there. The book gives comprehensive insight into the life of the nomads; their almost complete reliance on Camels (with their magnificent ability to subsist on essentially worthless shrubs, little water, and yet travel great distances) to enable their nomadic existence, Nourishment was essentially camel milk, supplemented by the occasional killing of a camel or goat. The Commerce crew would have suffered significantly even if they had been treated equally with the tribesmen, but they had a worse lot, often walking over hot desert lands with inadequate protection from the sun and heat, and getting what little milk or animal offal left after their captors had their fill. Ship's captain Riley, a robust man of over 200 pounds, weighed 90 pounds when he and what was left of his crew were finally ransomed. Much like other shipwreck novels, it is a story of survival, undergoing hardship, and how even under the most adverse conditions men can, and do, keep their will to live and ultimately survive. I enjoyed the book, and learned a lot in reading it.

Being shipwrecked is almost always bad, but being stranded on the coastal fringe of the Sahara Desert where the "lucky" survivors will be immediately enslaved by the local tribes and the others will be slain out of hand or will evade capture only to die of privation and exposure is quite a deal worse. This is the fate that befell the crew of the American ship "Commerce" soon after the War of 1812, when navigational errors caused the vessel to become grounded off the African course, far from any European settlements but right in the backyard of any number of exceedingly hostile Arab and Berber tribes.Working from primary sources penned by two of those who lived to tell the tale, King relates the story of the beleaguered crew and their struggle against both the brutal environment and the equally brutal treatment meted out by their captors. Obviously, conditions in the Sahara are extremely harsh, but no matter what tribulations Nature brought, Man seemed determined to needlessly add to them. The tribesmen who captured and then in various turns sold and bought the members of the crew mostly seem to have been deliberately and needlessly cruel, the more so since these desert inhabitants were Muslims to whom Christians were infidels deserving of no pity. It is, of course, worth noting that none of the tribesmen were exactly overly blessed with an abundance of resources, so in a good number of cases, the desert families were suffering from hunger and thirst right along with their slaves.The author provides a good deal of background material on the local culture, history, and geography, and also, to the degree that the materials are available, in giving the reader details on the crew and their time and place. King's prose flows smoothly and is not without a few novelistic flairs of colorful description. He does a good job of interweaving the various narrative strands, although due to the nature of the tribal folk and the very setting itself, a good portion of the story is repetitive, boiling down to "they traveled 30 miles that day, dying of thirst, and then the erstwhile Arab partners drew arms on each other and fought".Illustrations and maps are plentiful, as are citations to sources. King's research has been thorough and also taps into the survival tales of other crews stranded in that region in the early 1800s. This is a gripping tale that is very well told and should leave the reader wishing that at least a few of the crew's tormentors had met sundry nasty fates.

Being shipwrecked is never pleasant, but being shipwrecked on Africa's endless Sahara coastline is about as bad as it gets. The misadventures of the poor crew members of the American brig "Commerce", hailing from the lush green hills along the Connecticut river, and having to survive in the bone-dry and hellishly hot Sahara, make for depressing reading. Departing in 1815, just after the end of the War of 1812, The "Commerce" makes a stop in New Orleans, then crosses the Atlantic and intends to sail south along the Canaries. The captain loses his bearings due to an unexpectedly fast ocean current, and the ship runs aground on the rocks near Cape Bojador, with all crew surviving.Suffering from terrible thirst, hunger and sunburn, they are eventually taken captive by the thoroughly nasty tribes inhabiting this forbidding part of our planet. Their new masters - albeit rather pious - treat them worse than slaves, at times preferring to throw away scarce water than feed it to their captives. Even the women in the tribe enthusiastically participate in mistreating the poor castaways. Probably unintentionally, 'Skeletons on the Zahara' is the ideal vacation book for cultural relativists - it might actually make them think.I do not want to give away the story, so suffice it to say that this is a book well worth reading - it is well written, riveting and provides lots of food for thought. It is a good idea to read it in small instalments, otherwise the endless suffering gets a bit too repetitive.

The privations suffered by these ship-wrecked sailors has to be read to be believed. The modern snowflake generation would just curl up and die if faced with a fraction of the troubles met.A great read which emphasises how slaves were (are) viewed by their "owners"... a commodity pure and simple.

Excellent book

Another version of sufferings in Africa by James Riley an excellent read

Very well told true-life story. Gripping and empathetic - read it in two sittings.