Accounts of the Wreck of the Commerce. Two Narratives of Shipwreck, Capture and Slavery by Arabs of American Seamen, 1815 12+

📓 An Authentic Narrative of the Loss of the American Brig "Commerce"by James RileyA Journal, Comprising an Account of the Loss of the Brig "Commerce", of Hartford, (Con.) James Riley, Masterby Archibald RobbinsA great American naval adventure of the early nineteenth centuryThe year 1815 was a momentous one. On the muddy slopes of Waterloo in Belgium Napoleon, who had set Europe ablaze for two decades, was brought to ruin. Across the Atlantic the United States of America had concluded its war with Britain having ended the conflict with a famous victory at New Orleans. Meanwhile in the eastern Atlantic an American merchant vessel and its crew underwent a drama which, although it was not significant to the world at large, would mean catastrophe, slavery and death for some of them. The brig Commerce out of Connecticut was sailing between Gibraltar and the Cape Verde Islands on a trading voyage when she ran aground on Cape Bojador off the coast of the Western Sahara desert. The ship and crew were attacked by local tribesmen of the Sahrawi. One man was killed and the rest of the crew, after terrible ordeals, were captured by Bedouin tribesmen. They suffered constant brutality at the hands of their captors as they were force marched through the desolate landscape and suffered dehydration and starvation before their eventual liberation. This Leonaur edition contains two accounts by crew members including one by the ship's master, James Riley. Abraham Lincoln, Presid...