Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival

by King, Dean
ISBN: 9780316159357
5 (1)
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Used - Trade Paperback - 9780316159357

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Overview

A masterpiece of historical adventure, Skeletons on the Zahara chronicles the true story of twelve American sailors who were shipwrecked off the coast of Africa in 1815, captured by desert nomads, sold into slavery, and subjected to a hellish two-month journey through the perilous heart of the Sahara.
The western Sahara is a baking hot and desolate place, home only to nomads and their camels, and to locusts, snails and thorny scrub--and its barren and ever-changing coastline has baffled sailors for centuries. In August 1815, the US brig Commerce was dashed against Cape Bojador and lost, although through bravery and quick thinking the ship's captain, James Riley, managed to lead all of his crew to safety. What followed was an extraordinary and desperate battle for survival in the face of human hostility, starvation, dehydration, death and despair.
Captured, robbed and enslaved, the sailors were dragged and driven through the desert by their new owners, who neither spoke their language nor cared for their plight. Reduced to drinking urine, flayed by the sun, crippled by walking miles across burning stones and sand and losing over half of their body weights, the sailors struggled to hold onto both their humanity and their sanity. To reach safety, they would have to overcome not only the desert but also the greed and anger of those who would keep them in captivity.
From the cold waters of the Atlantic to the searing Saharan sands, from the heart of the desert to the heart of man, Skeletons on the Zahara is a spectacular odyssey through the extremes and a gripping account of courage, brotherhood, and survival.
  • Format: TradePaperback
  • Author: King, Dean
  • ISBN: 9780316159357
  • Condition: Used
  • Dimensions: 8.28 x 1.11
  • Number Of Pages: 384
  • Publication Year: 2005

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  • True life tale of adventure, hardship, and human tenacity

    Wes N. - 5 years 1 month ago

    Dean King, through scrupulous research into the journals of those involved and various historical documents besides, presents a record of struggle so fantastic in its day it was widely believed to have been fabricated whole cloth if not at least wildly embellished. The story of Captain James Riley and his mostly doomed crew, pulls with undertow strength at the attention of the reader and rips along past parched beaches, ragged cliffs, and hostile native tribesman through the four months of slavery and deprivation, that culled almost all of the crew, before finally seeing Riley and a small handful of those he could protect by wit and cunning, free in Swearah, near Morocco. With all the grand drama and verve of a first class adventure novel, King relates the almost unbelievable extremes of the forbidding North African desert in the early 1800s and presents a powerfully moving narrative with the true recollections of these hard put upon men and his own grasp of the historical landscape surrounding their ill-fated voyage. It is a testament to the strength of human will and a paean to kind hearts in hard lands.

    HPB Staff Review