Skeletons on the Zahara

Skeletons on the Zahara (2004) is a non-fiction book by American author and historian Dean King based on two separate accounts of an ill-fated seafaring journey in 1815, during which a merchant ship captained by James Riley crashed on the coast of Africa. Riley and his crew faced a number of horrific hardships, including being captured by Arab tribesmen and forced into slavery. The author sought to recreate parts of Riley's journey by traveling more than a hundred miles of desert terrain in what is now the territory of Western Sahara.

Riley's journey began as an ordinary merchant sailing voyage. Setting sail from Connecticut, the Commerce, piloted by Captain Riley, docked at Gibraltar on the Southern tip of Spain before embarking on to the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Western Africa. However, the ship never made it to Cape Verde. Caught in heavy fog, it crashed on the coast of Morocco in the contested territory of Western Sahara. With few provisions left, the ship was in a vulnerable position, shipwrecked on the coast. After running out of food and water, Riley and his crew asked for help from a group of passersby belonging to the Berber tribe, a people of Arab descent indigenous to North Africa. Unfortunately, the Berbers seized the weakened crew of the Commerce, enslaving them and marching them deeper into the unforgiving desert.

After a period of terrible abuse and mistreatment, the crew was on the brink of death. Nevertheless, the promise of a potential ransom payout in return for Riley's life enticed Arab trader Sidi Hamet, who bought the crewmen from the tribesmen. First, however, the trader would have to march the crew, along with his own fellow tribesmen, slaves, and camels, hundreds of miles across the Western Sahara desert to the port town of Mogador, in what is now modern Essaouira in Morocco. Riley assured Hamet that he had a friend there who would pay the ransom. In truth, however, knowing that it was a bustling port city, Riley could only hope that he would see a friendly face there from the merchant class willing to pay money to free his crew.



The two-month journey was perilous beyond even the worst of Riley's expectations. In addition to the predations and mistreatment visited upon the crew at the hands of the slavers, the caravan suffered severe environmental hardships, including devastating windstorms.

The shared ordeal actually forged bonds between master and slave, both of whom were on the verge of dying due to the unbearable conditions on the journey. Eventually, the caravan reached Mogador and Hamet went into town looking for Riley's "friend." He brought with him a note Riley wrote to this imaginary individual, begging hundreds of dollars in order to save his life and the lives of his crew. By extraordinary good fortune, Hamet found an assistant working for British merchant William Wilshire who was impressed with Riley's heartfelt note. The assistant relayed the situation to Wilshire who paid the ransom, securing the crew's freedom.

In addition to reproducing much of the caravan's journey himself, the author takes great pains to substantiate, to the best of his ability, the horrific claims made by Riley in his 1817 memoir on the subject, Sufferings in Africa. To do so, King looked to another first-hand account of the shipwreck and subsequent desert journey written by Archibald Robbins, one of Riley's crewmates. King cross-checked the accounts found in Riley's book against Robbins's A Journal: Comprising an Account of the Loss of the Brig Commerce and found that most of the significant details were the same.



King also goes into detail about the broader impact of Riley's initial account. For example, President Abraham Lincoln read Sufferings in Africa as a child, and it had such a profound impact on him that he cited the book often on the campaign trail—along with The Bible and Pilgrim's Progress—as one of the most important books in shaping his political worldview.

In the end, Skeletons on the Zahara is a meticulously researched substantiation of Riley's shocking but largely factual adventure, which, thanks to the author's participation in a similar journey, effectively captures the sensations of being lost in an unforgiving desert landscape for weeks.