Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival

by Dean King

  Riley craved any end to his thirst, even death. Remorse was vanishing in the agony of his thirst. He had few reflections on his life, on his children, made no silent farewells to his wife. All thoughts of his family, he later confessed, with the candor of a compulsively truthful man, were “driven almost entirely from my mind”; he would sell his life, he admitted, for a “gill of fresh water.”

  Though he prayed for sleep, even just an hour, it never came. Bitter thoughts tormented him. He begrudged his men their successful stupors. Finally, in his despair, he broke down. Instead of trading his life for a gill of water, he forfeited his honor for a few drops of stale urine. “[I] stole a sip of the cook’s water, which he had made and saved in a bottle,” Riley later confessed. The briny substance only increased his fiery thirst.1

  At daybreak on September 10, Riley awakened the men. They were reduced almost as much as a group of men could be: they had no food or drink to speak of—a few still possessed bottled urine and knots of pork—no shelter, little clothing, no weapons, and they were in a hostile environment, to their eyes devoid of resources. The equation was now simple and the eventual result clear. An outside force was necessary for their salvation, and they knew of only one outside force.

  To prepare the men, Riley dispensed practical information. “If it is ever in your power, you must write Mr. James Simpson, the American consul general at Tangier, and tell him of the fate of our vessel and crew. Or write to any Christian merchant in Mogadore, Gibraltar, or elsewhere,” he said. “Address the consul at Algiers, Tunis, or Tripoli if you hear those places mentioned.

  “Remember,” he added, “Providence has worked in our favor. Submit to your fate like men, and should we be made slaves, be obedient, as policy requires, to your master. We must submit to save our lives. Resistance and stubbornness will only make us more miserable and probably prompt the natives to murder us out of resentment.”

  As they prepared to walk to the campfire they had seen the night before, the men bowed their heads and Aaron Savage led them in prayer: “Heavenly Father, we implore you to protect and support us in whatever situation we might be placed, in whatever scenes we might be called to act, and in whatever sufferings we might be compelled to endure.”

  “Amen,” they said together.

  The men descended to a beach and walked northeast along it in the direction of the campfire. After about two miles, they came to a massive dune. When they climbed it, they saw a valley separated from the sea by a ridge of sand and from the desert by the coastal bluffs. About half a mile from them, camels and Sahrawis thronged around a well.

  The sailors recoiled at the sight of these strange people and their ungainly beasts. It was one thing to pursue a distant flicker of firelight, which, at the end of a desperate day, had seemed a beacon of hope. It was another to beg for mercy from men they viewed as savages. Now the crew’s opinions differed. Some wanted to wait and watch. “They might assist us,” others argued. “This might be a caravan heading north.” Riley was convinced they had no choice. They moved forward.

  An Arab man in a haik and two women in flowing robes, who with some children had wandered off in their direction, spotted them first. As soon as he understood what he was seeing, the man drew his scimitar and made for them with the women and children at his heels. Those around the well soon realized that fate had put them at a disadvantage and set out with the zeal of men wronged.

  Riley advanced with mates Williams and Savage. They bowed to the ground and then slowly rose. Riley continued to try to indicate their submission, but it quickly became apparent that this was not the issue. Possession was.

  The man, whose name they later learned was Mohammed, charged ferociously at Riley with his scimitar poised overhead. Riley believed the man was about to cut him down. He waited, knowing that any sign of resistance would only guarantee it. He bowed down again. The man dropped his weapon and began to pull Riley’s clothes off.

  The two frenzied women did the same to Williams and Savage. Then, with their children, they fearlessly assaulted the rest of the crew, stripping off their clothes. Only Robbins and a few others managed to keep their pants. Mohammed now advanced on the crew, jabbing his scimitar at their chests and swinging the curved blade over their heads until they cowered together beneath him. Clutching Dick Deslisle, he returned to the officers before the charging horde reached them. He tore off his own haik, leaving himself naked, and stuffed all the clothes lying on the ground into it. He put the bundle on Deslisle’s shoulders, indicating to Riley that he and Deslisle belonged to him now and that if they lost the bundle he would kill them.

  Spears, scimitars, war clubs, and muskets glinted in a swirling storm cloud of dust and confusion as ululating tribesmen, dressed in animal skins or flowing white haiks and turbans, bore down on them. Some were on foot, others lofted to absurd heights on their frothing camels. As the beasts lurched to a halt, the riders leaped off and attacked.

  The naked man and the two women unleashed their own fury, screaming with atavistic rage, crouching and defiantly tossing handfuls of sand into the air to ward off the attackers.

  “All seemed anxious to be the first sharers in the plunder,” remarked Robbins, in the calm of hindsight, “when alas, they could find no plunder but our miserable bodies.” Riley was still standing out front with Williams and Savage when the newcomers surrounded them and, disregarding Mohammed’s prior claim, began to fight over them. Half a dozen shouting men vied for control of Riley, grabbing at him and pulling him in different directions. The same happened to Deslisle.

  Like a cyclone in a thunderstorm, Mohammed leaped about, fending off the aggressors with threats and thrusts of his scimitar. He barked at the others to divide the rest of the sailors as they pleased but to stay away from these two. Some heeded his emphatic gestures and left to seize other men, but there were too few sailors to go around. They continued to fight for Riley, their weapons flashing at his sides and inches from his head, until the whir of their metal sounded to him louder than their shouts. He was the helpless fulcrum of a pitched battle, in which he observed them “hacking each other’s arms apparently to the bone, then laying their ribs bare with gashes, while their heads, hands, and thighs received a full share of cuts and wounds.” Blood soaked white garments. It was bedlam, and all that the horrified Americans could do was pray that a blade did not strike them down.

  Over the course of an hour, factions of Arabs took possession of various sailors, separated them from the pack, and headed back to the well, until the melee had dissipated into a number of isolated scuffles. By eight o’clock, the issue was settled, at least temporarily, and all were regathering around the well. Some nomads exulted in their prizes. Others nursed their wounds, brooded, and plotted. Some returned with lesser trophies, having looted the bundle of clothes entrusted to Deslisle and any other items they could wrench from their owners during the confusion. The cook had managed to retain only his new master’s haik, an item no one dared take.

  Capture of Riley and ten of his crew by a tribe of wandering Arabs, near Cape Barbas (from An Authentic Narrative of the Loss of the American Brig Commerce, 1817)

  Urging Riley and Deslisle on toward the well, Mohammed’s sisters, hardy women wearing tunics open at the sides and blue veils, beat them with sticks. As they stumbled along, Riley pointed to his bleeding mouth, abraded by sea salt and coated white by dehydration. He cared for nothing but extinguishing his thirst.

  One by one, the sailors entered the dizzying scene around the well. In whirling dust and animal stench, the Arabs drew water, filled camel-skin troughs, and drove their one-humped beasts back and forth with guttural shouts and hard raps of their goads to the animals’ rumps and necks. The camels, growling and gnashing their stained teeth at one another and their masters, jostled for space around the troughs, which held about twenty gallons each and accommodated half a dozen animals at a time. Once a camel had won a spot, its long neck stiffened downward, its jutting head froze as if in the moment of
rapture, its broad jaws worked rhythmically, slurping down obscenely noisy drafts.

  Exhausted, starved, pumped with adrenaline, scared but no longer morbid, the sailors milled about nervously like corralled beasts themselves. After nearly two weeks of exposure to the elements night and day, they were bearded, bony, and naked. Laughing bronze-colored children, equally naked, taunted them. Bare-breasted women and semiclad men alike shouted at them, calling them the lowest thing they could think of: kelb es-sahrawi, “desert dogs,” or kelb en-Nasrani, “Christian dogs.”

  Finally, Robbins could stand his thirst no longer. He shouldered between two of the camels and plunged his head into a trough. This startled the massive, nine-foot animals, which began to shift and snort, and attracted the attention of the Sahrawis, who drove Robbins away with curses and their goads. Impressed by Robbins’s size, strength, and gumption, the tribesmen began to fight over him again, three or four tugging him in different directions as they had done before.

  A woman carried over a wooden bowl filled with an inky and fetid liquid Riley compared to “stale bilge water.” As she set the bowl on the ground in front of Riley and Deslisle, Mohammed’s sisters shoved the pair to their knees. Riley had previously advised his men that if they should come to a well they must take care not to guzzle. Despite this admonition and the impurity of the water, he and Deslisle drank like animals, draining half a gallon each without rising.2

  More water was brought, and the women added to it a stream of sour milk from a goatskin. Riley declared the concoction, which the Arabs called zrig, “delicious,” and he and his shipmates filled their bellies. Almost immediately, diarrhea rumbled through their intestines and shot down their legs. In the squalid circle around the well, their mess made little difference. The earthy scent of camels combined with the stench of camel dung and urine overpowered everything. The sailors’ beggar’s banquet continued until, racked by violent stomach cramps, they could no longer stand.

  The captors separated their sailors out and took them off to the sides to be guarded. A large, raw-boned tribesman took possession of Robbins and placed him under the sharp eyes of his two sisters. Nearby, Robbins found Savage, Williams, and Barrett drinking zrig and joined them. Their thirst was immense. While the Arabs continued to water the drove, some four hundred head of bellowing camels, the sailors drank copiously. By ten o’clock in the morning, they began to feel like they had at last slaked their thirst. Now, they noticed, their appetites began to rage.

  Modern science affirms this sequence of events. Given plenty of fluids, a person who is seriously dehydrated can rehydrate as much as 80 percent within half an hour, but he cannot do so fully without eating. The sailors’ bodies were telling them that now. They craved food; they begged for it, but the nomads indicated that they had nothing to give them. This was shocking news: even their would-be saviors were empty-handed. With food and more water or zrig, they would have been able to rehydrate nearly completely within twelve hours, provided their dysentery was not too severe. As it was, the Commerces began their captivity on the Sahara with severe deficiencies in both nourishment and fluids.3

  The bald desert sun pierced the human and bestial din now, and sweat rose freely to the sailors’ pores. “Our skins,” Riley observed, “seemed actually to fry like meat before the fire.” The nomads vied to finish their watering. The fastest separated their camels and assembled their captives: Williams and Barrett with one master, in company with Robbins and his master; Porter, Hogan, and Burns each set out with their masters, as Riley, Savage, Clark, Deslisle, and Horace watched helplessly.

  The breakup of the crew created new distress. Although the Commerce had brought them bad luck, they had survived it together. Until now, the brig still existed, at least as an organizing principle; they were still shipmates, sailors and officers, with ranks and responsibilities. In a stroke, this structure was demolished. Suddenly, each man was on his own, without the crew to depend on or to support. They did not know where they were going or whether they would all see one another again.

  “It is wholly impossible to describe the feelings of my bosom at this adieu,” wrote Robbins, who was among the first to bid farewell to his companions and felt palpable despair at this rupture, as if he were suffering his own death. “It left me in a state of horror and anguish which I then thought I could not but for a short time survive.”

  Each master made a camel kneel and directed his captive to mount the beast behind the hump on the sloping back and tailbone. The rising camel threw its rear into the air first, so the sailor hung there, against gravity, staring over the animal’s head straight at the ground. The beast then lurched backward, its bony front legs extending and locking into place as the sailor clutched desperately to its short summer hair. Once up, it was like being aloft on a choppy sea. With no stirrups or saddles, the bones of the sailors’ thighs and rear ends sat directly against the hard shifting anatomy of the camels. One by one, man and beast climbed out of the valley of the well, through a narrow chasm in the bluff to the desert above.

  Of the four men who remained at the well with Riley, only Savage had somehow managed to stay partially clothed, in an old guernsey—a seaman’s close-fitting blue wool shirt—and some ragged trousers. Clark, Deslisle, and Horace all worked at the well naked, hauling up water and filling the troughs until each camel had drunk as much as it could and the goatskins were full.

  The Arabs tied two of these skins together by the legs and slung them over the camels’ backs, where they hung on either side like bloated corpses. These guerba had been used to transport water since at least Neolithic times, and the Sahrawis were expert at decapitating a goat, inserting an arm into the warm cavity, running it around to detach the skin, and then extracting the flesh and bones without marring the skin. The neck, used as a spout, was lashed with a rope to a foreleg to keep it upright during transport.

  The nomads saddled the camels, putting Riley to work fastening on a camel-skin basket, which sat on top of the hump and carried up to four women, children, or old people. (Some of the elderly Arabs looked so fantastically aged from decades of exposure to sun and wind that Riley believed it when he later heard they lived as long as three hundred years.) Swollen and cramped, Riley hoped to ride with the passengers in the basket but was disappointed in this. His master mounted the beast on a small saddle made of wood and camel hide in front of the hump, in the tradition of West African riders.4 Riley clung on behind the hump, where there was no saddle. He was higher than he had ever been on an animal; the camel’s motion combined the worst of a buckboard and a swaying mast.

  Under so much weight, the camels’ splayed feet sank into the yielding sand as they climbed up through the steep chasm that led to the desert. The drove stumbled forward, growing more furious with each cumbersome stride, barking like sea lions and spewing foam as if their insides were boiling over. The Arabs dismounted and ordered the sailors down too. While the former moved nimbly, the latter blundered along, sinking to their knees in the blistering sand. Sweat poured down their backs.

  The Arabs were genuinely surprised by the clumsiness of their captives. At first they laughed and hooted with scorn. Then they cudgeled their backs, bloodying their peeling skin. The seamen grew increasingly desperate, flinging out their arms in order to keep their feet. The reflected sun scorched their downturned eyes. Still, the Arabs beat them.

  On the lethal grade between the sea and the sun, the benefits of the water and camel milk and the corresponding lift in their spirits flamed away. A wrenching knot formed in their bellies: they now knew that the fate they had tried to escape at Cape Bojador was as bad as they had feared.

  chapter 8

  Thirst

  As long as man has trod the western shores of the Sahara—at least seven thousand years—he has wandered and warred. In that time, no state or central authority has ever successfully controlled the remote desert plains. Even today, the smothering presence of Morocco’s national police and military belies a tenuous grasp
on the population of Western Sahara. And that is despite Morocco’s having flooded the region with hundreds of thousands of settlers in the 1976 Green March and winning a two-decade war of attrition, not to mention possessing a historical claim to at least part of the territory.

  “The Emperor, it is true, claims the sovereignty of the desert of Zahara, and the territory of Vled de Non [Oued Noun],” noted the British physician William Lempriere, who traveled in Morocco in 1789, “but his authority over that part of the country is almost nominal, as it entirely depends on the caprice & inclination of the Arabs who inhabit it.” These Arabs, Lempriere wrote, “wander over the country in search of plunder, and are supposed, on some occasions, to extend their depredations as far as Nigritia, whence they carry off Negroes.”1

  By the time Riley reached the desert floor, he believed he was dying. He wished he would. Every step was a struggle.

  Having noted the sailors’ difficulty rising through the chasm, the Arabs now realized the extent of their exhaustion. They culled five camels from the drove, made them kneel, and again instructed the sailors to mount them behind the hump.

  Gesturing and speaking Hassaniya Arabic, a dialect close to classical Arabic and Morocco’s official language until the end of the nineteenth century, the Arabs demanded from the sailors the direction of the boat wreck. The sailors pointed and used their hands to indicate the distance. The Arabs hastily barked out instructions to the women, then lashed their camels and sped off to the southwest, leaving the sailors behind with the women.

  As the women pushed the drove southeast into the desert, the Commerces discovered how painful it is to ride a camel over a long stretch. Unlike a horse, a camel swings both legs on each side in unison, making the rider sway heavily. It is no coincidence that a camel’s gait is called a “rack.”2