an interesting bit of connecticut lore

i never imagined a few americans and europeans were captured and enslaved in africa. i'll bet this would be a fascinating read (and it's going to be a tv movie on the history channel tonight)

Connecticut Yankees To Sahara Slaves

October 28, 2006 By ROGER CATLIN, Courant TV Critic
A nearly forgotten story about a 19th-century Connecticut ship whose mates were forced into slavery on the scorching Sahara Desert is getting a new day in the sun. James Riley's remarkable best-seller, "Suffering in Africa: An Authentic Narrative of the Loss of the American Brig Commerce, Wrecked in the Western Coast of Africa in the Month of August, 1815," was one of the best-known books of its day........

...........Writer Dean King came across a dusty copy at the New York Yacht Club in the 1990s and was fascinated by the ordeal of the captain and crew, who survived their months in slavery in one of the world's most unforgiving climates. King wrote his own book, "Skeletons of the Zahara," following the ancient spelling of the desert, in 2004.It has now been turned into a History Channel special tonight, "Skeletons on the Sahara," that features extensive re-enactments of the ordeal on location in the Sahara............