Description
When the American cargo ship Commerce ran aground on the northwestern shores of Africa in 1815 along with its crew of 12 Connecticut-based sailors, the misfortunes that befell them came fast and hard, from enslavement to reality-bending bouts of dehydration. The crew’s once-famous historical ordeal reads like historical fiction, with unbelievable stories of the seamen’s endurance of heat stroke, starvation and cruelty by their Saharan slavers.
