by Dean King
In 1825, Horace Savage became master of the Hartford schooner Spartan and the following year of the Albion. He eventually moved to Mexico, where he lived and traded for some years. Despite his urging, his wife, Lavinia, refused to move there from Wethersfield, where she remained with their daughter, Jane. Horace later returned to Wethersfield, where in 1882 he died, the last known survivor of the Commerce, at the age of eighty-two.
His book sales notwithstanding, Riley’s Sahara ordeal left him broke and battling chronic arthritis. In 1818, he went west on horseback, hoping to improve his health and find new opportunities. He worked as a government surveyor in northwest Ohio, a low-paying job in wilderness so fierce that in one swamp the ravenous flies killed his horse. Yet Riley saw promise in these wilds. He bought 360 acres on the St. Mary’s River, settled his family there in a log cabin, and established a town, which he named Willshire. “My object,” he wrote with his defining zest in a letter to his friend John F. Watson in New York, “was to Establish mills, to build up a town, which would be likely to perpetuate the Name of my benefactor, to Establish my children in a new Country, where with proper industry and energy and good conduct they might rise with the Country.” His hope was that by river and canal, he would be able eventually to establish trade with the East Coast.
But Riley was still pursued by his personal demons, memories of his captivity on the desert and anxiety over the fate of his shipmates left there. “Overcome by this crowd of sensations which torment me almost incessantly,” he wrote in a letter in 1819 to Ohio governor Ethan Allen Brown, “I endeavour to shake them off by sleep, or laborious employment, but all in vain; if sleeping, my agonized soul is harrowed up by phantoms.”
But if Riley was forever troubled by his experiences in Africa, he was also improved by them. He became an outspoken advocate for abolition. “When the subject of slavery is brought forward—every nerve & sinew about my frame is strangely affected . . . my whole body is agitated,” he wrote in the letter to Brown, protesting the admission of Missouri to the Union as a slave state. Having suffered “cruelty & religious intolerance and bigotry,” he now cherished freedom and religious tolerance and could not accept the enslavement of black Africans, “who have been snatched & torn from their native country . . . by professors too of moral & political freedom & christian benevolence.
“Men though covered with a black skin are not brutes,” he concluded. “The hypocritical advocate of slavery shall be detested by all mankind.”
The arduous life of a pioneer suited Riley. He thrived and was elected to the General Assembly of Ohio in 1823. But wolves, mosquitoes, isolation, and recurring illness often made life miserable for his family. In 1826, weakened by fever, Riley suffered an attack of what was then called phrenitis, an inflammation of the brain now known as encephalitis. He suffered from painful swelling of his throat and neck and partial paralysis. Finally, he had to be transported to New York heavily dosed with opium.
Riley’s doctor told him he should return to the sea, where the air would do him good, and during a short passage off the coast he found his health wholly restored. After more than a decade on land, he decided to resume the life of a merchant captain. Three years later, he was joyfully reunited with Horatio Sprague in Gibraltar. Since the time of his captivity, Riley had spoken out on a number of causes, and now he suggested reforms to strengthen America’s international trade.
In a long, lucid, and impassioned letter to U.S. Senator John Forsyth, he argued that the nation’s consular system was outmoded and needed to be revamped. Among its shortcomings was the fact that it employed many foreign nationals whose commercial interests conflicted with those of the U.S. merchants they were supposedly serving and who sometimes did not even reside in the port where they were consul. At the same time, Riley made an appeal for Sprague, a “feeling, liberal, talented, honorable and independent” American citizen, to be named consul at Gibraltar.
Because of his widely read book and his outspokenness, Riley was well known in Washington. Although he remained an outsider there and something of a gadfly, several times failing to receive promised political appointments, his letters to top government officials were often heeded. On April 30, 1832, much to Riley’s satisfaction, the senate approved President Andrew Jackson’s appointment of Sprague as American consul at Gibraltar.
The following June, Riley returned to Swearah. He was too late to see Rais bel Cossim, who, having remained close to Willshire—conducting other missions for him and often inquiring about Riley—had died suddenly in 1825. Willshire had written to inform Riley of the news, saying, “By the Boston and other newspapers, you will most probably hear of the death of your liberator, Rais bel Cossim,” indicating, by the suggestion that the press would report the Moor’s death, the extent to which Riley’s story had become known.
Willshire, now a married man with young children and graying hair, welcomed Riley to the place the captain associated with liberty and rebirth. The Englishman captured their relationship in a letter to his namesake, William Willshire Riley:
A long series of years has made no abatement in the gratitude your good father has always expressed towards me, and made known to the world by the publication of the narrative of his shipwreck and sufferings: And I assure you, that the mention of my name in such honorable terms, has proved a passport to me wherever I have traveled; and has given me a stimulus to emulate and deserve the character given me—far as I fall short of the description, I have studied to deserve it.
Riley returned to the United States with a cargo of goatskins, gum, wool, and almonds. He and Willshire had become business partners and remained so until Riley’s death.
In 1836, nearly three decades after the seizure of his ship the Two Marys with all its cargo, Riley and his associates received partial war reparations. While no amount of money could have compensated Riley for the misfortune that had turned the momentum of his career and caused his family so much distress, it was at least a moral victory.
In March 1840, on a voyage from New York to St. Thomas, Riley fell ill and died at sea on board the brig William Tell. He was committed to the deep. Later that year, the William Tell sank off Gibraltar with all hands but one.
Four years later, William Willshire lost his fortune. When a French squadron bombarded Swearah, destroying its batteries and igniting chaos, Berber fighters there to protect the town looted it instead, brutalizing and robbing Jewish and foreign merchants. Two of Willshire’s houses were pillaged in the process, and Mrs. Willshire even had the stays of her corset searched for hidden gold. Leaving everything he owned in Africa, Willshire fled with his family back to England, thus bringing to an unceremonious conclusion his remarkable thirty years’ service to his nation and to sailors of all nations in Morocco.
Appendix
The Publishing of Riley’s Narrative
After putting the finishing touches on his manuscript, begun in Morocco, Riley took it to the printer William A. Mercein on Gold Street in Manhattan. There he was greeted by a young Thurlow Weed, who would go on to prominence as a political journalist and backroom manipulator. Weed, an apprentice, read the first chapter. “I ventured to suggest that it was carelessly written and needed revising,” Weed wrote in his memoirs, noting that Riley seemed annoyed at first but, nonetheless, took it away and “availed himself of the services of a school-teacher, who improved the whole narrative in its style and grammar.” Riley acknowledged two men who assisted him. New York City lawyer and man of letters Anthony Bleecker revised the manuscript and suggested explanations. In one instance he recommended deleting a section sharply critical of the Jewish merchants of Swearah. Josiah Shippey, Jr., also a New Yorker—presumably the schoolteacher—whom Riley described as a close friend, suggested improvements “both in point of diction and grammar.” Shippey’s wordsmithing is evident throughout the manuscript.
Now in the collection of the New-York Historical Society, Riley’s bound manuscript of irregular-size sheaves of paper is largely writte
n in one rather polished hand. Only a small number of pages, including the last three with a description of and speculation on African geography as well as the news of Porter’s ransom, match up with the handwriting in Riley’s letters before and after the shipwreck. A comparison of the handwriting in Bleecker’s letters to that in the manuscript shows that he was not the person who took down Riley’s story. I was unable to locate any samples of Shippey’s handwriting, but he would have been the most likely amanuensis, though the possibility remains that Riley dictated the book to his wife, Phoebe.
Bleecker was an early supporter of the New-York Historical Society. Riley joined the society and presented its head, John Pintard, with his manuscript on February 20, 1817.
The second edition of Riley’s narrative, published in Hartford by the author in 1817, has a map showing a modified route of Riley’s Sahara crossing. It also contains a postscript, from New York on June 25, 1817, in which Riley gives news of Porter and Robbins, both of whom had recently returned from Africa, and of Clark’s flagging health.
In a note to an 1818 third edition published in New York by Collins & Co., Riley states that “care has been taken to correct some errors which had crept into the former [editions].” Some versions of the third edition also include Judah Paddock’s account of his own shipwreck and captivity on the Sahara, which had not been published before. In a letter printed in the book, Paddock called Riley “a man of veracity and strict integrity.”
A British edition, titled Loss of the American Brig Commerce, appeared in London in 1817 and a French edition, Naufrage du Brigantin Américain Le Commerce Perdou Sur la Côte Occidentale d’Afrique, au mois d’août 1815, came out in Paris the following year. Both carried a testimonial letter from James Renshaw, the former British consul-general to Mogadore, saying that Riley “has given a very accurate description of what he has seen. Judging, therefore, from that part of his travels which accords with my own personal observations, it is I think fair in me to conclude that the remainder is described with equal veracity.” Renshaw noted that Mr. Green, His Majesty’s consul-general at Tangier, considered Riley “a very intelligent and well informed man” and that William Willshire had informed him that not only did Riley possess the “ability” to produce a valuable work on the region but his “very considerable influence with his own government” had already gained for James Simpson, U.S. consul-general in Tangier, “extensive limits to redeem American shipwrecked citizens” in Morocco.
New editions appeared in the United States in 1820 and 1823. Andrus and Judd, of Hartford, Connecticut, published a revised edition of the narrative in 1829, and this stereotyped edition was reprinted many times up through the Civil War. Most recently Riley’s narrative has appeared from Clarkson N. Potter (1965) and the Lyons Press (2000). The slightly abbreviated edition published by these two presses unfortunately contains many often confusing typographical errors.
Glossary of Arabic Terms
baraka
The virtue of a holy man and the healing, miracle-
making, or magic powers associated with him.
bedouin
An Arab of the desert.
besmillah
A frequently used blessing meaning “In the name of Allah.”
bir
A well deeper than forty feet.
chorfa
A religious tribe that traces its ancestry to
Muhammad, often spuriously.
djellaba
A long-sleeved, hooded woolen cloak.
erg
On the Sahara, an area of shifting sand dunes. Erg
covers about a tenth of the Sahara.
foonta
Bad, worthless.
friq
A tribal subgroup of half a dozen or fewer families,
a unit large enough for mutual protection but small
enough for effective grazing of the animals; their camp.
geddack
A wooden bowl used for cooking and eating.
ghazu
A tribal raid for booty.
haik
A long piece of cloth, usually about six yards by
two yards, that Arabs wrap around the head and
body for protection from the sun and sand.
hammada
Plains of wind-stripped rock, similar to reg but
generally higher in elevation.
inshallah
“If it is God’s will.” A frequent invocation of Arabic speakers.
irifi
A hot, dry desert sandstorm created by powerful
winds blowing from the south or southeast. The
irifi kills plants, hones the landscape, and creates sand drifts.
jmel
A male camel.
Kabyles (or Qabila)
A Berber people of North Africa who are largely
agricultural.
kelb en-Nasrani
Christian dog or dogs. A curse.
kul
Eat.
lhasa
Semolina or barley mush.
l’hoot
Fish.
makhzen
The Moroccan government; the ruling class in Morocco.
moulay
A title roughly equivalent to “lord,” originally
used for the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad and later taken
by many sultans and princes.
oued (or wadi)
A riverbed, dry except in the rainy season, often
a rare place of vegetation in the desert.
rais
Captain or chief.
reg
Hard plains covered with boulders and stones,
lower than the hammada, including depressions in
the desert floor caused by wind erosion. Caravans
usually prefer to travel on the reg.
salem
(salaam) alikoom
Peace be with you.
selaï
A large wooden bowl used for watering camels.
sharif
A descendant of the Prophet Muhammad through
Fatima, his daughter.
shesh
A long, thin rectangular cloth wrapped about the
face and head for protection and ending in a coil.
sidi
A term of respect used for an Arab male,
comparable to “Mr.”
zenaga
A lesser tribe that must pay tribute to a master tribe.
zrig
Sour camel milk, often mixed with water.
Notes
The events in this story are taken from the memoirs of Captain James Riley and seaman Archibald Robbins. In order not to interrupt the narrative, I have not cited quotations from their books. These passages are usually easy to find because the chronologies are essentially the same. At times I have created dialogue for conversations implied by Riley or Robbins. I have occasionally elaborated on scenes based on my study of the time period and my travels in the region. For the most part, I have retained Riley’s and Robbins’s renditions of Arabic names and language, though many of them would be transliterated differently today.
Regarding religion, it is almost universally acknowledged that Christians, Jews, and Muslims worship the same God. In other words, the God of the Old and New Testaments and the God of the Quran are one and the same. All three faiths trace their roots to Abraham. Although Muslims call Christians and Jews “infidels,” the Quran nonetheless holds them in higher regard than those they deem to be pagan—giving rise to the traditional term Muslims use for Jews and Christians, “People of the Book.” It was for this reason that in places long under Islamic control by the time of Riley, there were often prominent and thriving Christian and Jewish communities.
Prologue
1. Captain James Riley reported in his Narrative that before heading into the desert, the caravan “cut wood and burned coals for the camels, for the caravans never attempt to cross the desart without this article.” He
was confused in this, however, perhaps through a poor translation of Sidi Hamet’s account or perhaps because the actual substance resembled charcoal, or both. In explaining this mistake, Riley’s French translator cited British Consul-General to Swearah James Renshaw, who had observed the Arabs of the Moroccan Empire using the fruit of the argan in the way described here. The balls of argan pulp resembled charcoal.
Chapter 1: A Good Yankee Crew
1. The original name of the Rileys’ fourth child is unknown. He was renamed Horatio after his father’s 1815 voyage to Africa.
2. The wording of Riley’s petition is found in Sequel to Riley’s Narrative, page 392.
Chapter 2: Omens
1. Under the wrong conditions, this was a treacherous spot for mariners. Riley later wrecked the brig William Tell here in April 1831. His vessel was pulled off the reefs by salvagers, who wanted half the value of the brig and its contents as their return for about six hours’ work, during which they never left their crafts or were endangered in any way. Riley fought these claims in court, where a compromise was struck.
2. Though they did not know it, the Commerce’s Archie Robbins and his cousin Horace Robbins, a drifter whose life made a seaman’s look sane and stable, were possibly in New Orleans at the same time. Having left the Lower Valley as a trader six years earlier, Horace had landed in Mexico and ended up on the wrong side of a battle between the Spanish Republican Army and the Spanish Royalist Army. After surviving a crushing defeat at San Antonio, he fled with four Americans and a Spaniard into the mountains, where they survived for seventeen days on tree bark, rodents, and snails. He lived closely watched among Indians for a year before Indian traders helped him to escape. Making his way to New Orleans, he had joined Andrew Jackson’s army but being away on duty missed the Battle of New Orleans. By the time Horace ventured back to Connecticut from New Orleans five years later, his relatives, having heard a report of his demise, had erected a tombstone in his memory.
