Dean King · 2004 · survival

Dean King's 2004 account of the wreck of the American brig Commerce on the Saharan coast in 1815. The twelve survivors were taken by nomads and sold, marched hundreds of miles through the desert on camel urine and scraps, and reduced to skeletons - and were ransomed at Mogador only because one of their owners gambled on an Englishman's promise.

1. 1
   Cape Bojador

   The Commerce of Connecticut runs onto the Saharan shore in fog in August 1815, and the crew get ashore into the emptiest coast on earth - where they are found within days by people to whom they are simply property.

2. 2
   The Sahara

   Sold and resold between nomad families, the survivors are driven inland across open desert with no shade and almost no water - drinking what the camels give them, their skin burning off, several of them dying on the march.

3. 3
   Wednoon

   Captain Riley persuades a trader named Sidi Hamet to buy him and four others on the strength of a promise: that an English consul on the coast will pay for them, sight unseen, on a letter from a man he has never met.

4. 4
   Mogador

   At Mogador the consul honours a letter from a starving stranger and pays, and five men under ninety pounds apiece walk out of the desert - and Riley's narrative was later named by Lincoln among the books that formed him.