Sufferings in Africa.

About Sufferings in Africa

Sufferings in Africa is an 1817 memoir by James Riley. The memoir relates how Riley and his crew were enslaved in Africa after being shipwrecked in 1815. Riley was the Captain of the American merchant ship Commerce. He led his crew through the Sahara Desert after they were shipwrecked off the coast of Western Sahara in August 1815. The book was published in 1817 and was originally titled Authentic Narrative of the Loss of the American Brig Commerce by the "Late Master and Supercargo" James Riley, modernly republished as Sufferings in Africa, and comes down to us today as a startling gap of the usual master-slave narrative.