Cape Bojador is a headland on the west coast of Western Sahara, at 26° 07' 37"N, 14° 29' 57"W, as well as the name of the large nearby town with a population of 42,651. The name of the surrounding province also derives its name from the cape.
Gil Eanes was a 15th-century Portuguese navigator and explorer.
USS Saratoga, a sloop-of-war, was the third ship of the United States Navy to be named for the Battle of Saratoga of the American Revolutionary War. Her keel was laid down in the summer of 1841 by the Portsmouth Navy Yard. She was launched on 26 July 1842 and commissioned on 4 January 1843 with Commander Josiah Tattnall III in command.
MV Dunedin Star was a UK refrigerated cargo liner. It was built by Cammell Laird and Co in 1935–36 as one of Blue Star Line's Imperial Star-class ships, designed to ship frozen meat from Australia and New Zealand to the United Kingdom. It served in the Second World War and is distinguished for its role in Operation Halberd to relieve the siege of Malta in September 1941.
Ras Nouadhibou is a 60-kilometre (37 mi) peninsula or headland divided by the border between Mauritania and Western Sahara on the African coast of the Atlantic Ocean. It is internationally known as Cabo Blanco in Spanish or Cap Blanc in French.
James Riley was the captain of the United States merchant ship Commerce.
Dean King is an American author of narrative non-fiction on adventure, historical and maritime subjects. His books include Skeletons on the Zahara (2004) and Unbound (2010), both published by Little, Brown. He is the author of companion books to Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series of novels and is the first biographer of O'Brian. In his biography, Patrick O'Brian: A Life (2000), which was excerpted in four full pages in The Daily Telegraph in London, King revealed that O'Brian was not really of Irish origin, as O'Brian claimed, and that he had changed his name by deed poll in London in 1945. King has also published articles in The New York Times, National Geographic Adventure, New York Magazine, Outside and other magazines and newspapers.
Marlborough was an iron-built two-decked merchant sailing ship which disappeared in 1890. She was built by the firm of Robert Duncan and Co., Port Glasgow and launched in 1876 for her owner John Leslie, who later sold her to the Albion Line. Marlborough disappeared during a voyage in January 1890, and has not been seen or heard from in over a century. Searches and investigations have yielded nothing conclusive, and the ship's ultimate fate, and that of her crew, remains unknown.
The wreck of the Grosvenor, an East Indiaman, occurred on 4 August 1782 on the Pondoland coast of South Africa, north of the mouth of the Umzimvubu River. The shipwreck was close to the place where the Portuguese ship, São João, had gone down more than two centuries earlier on 8 June 1552. The Grosvenor was a three-masted ship of 729 tons on her return voyage to England when she was wrecked, carrying a crew of 132 and 18 passengers, and a cargo valued at £75,000. Of the 123 survivors, only 18 reached Cape Town and were repatriated, the remainder dying of their privations or joining with tribes. Four survivors, Robert Price, Thomas Lewis, John Warmington, and Barney Larey, eventually got back to England.
William Willshire also known as William Wiltshire, was British Vice Consul to Mogadore (Essaouira), Morocco from 1814 until 1844, before being assigned to the Consularship of Adrianople (Edirne) in 1845, until his death in 1851.
Sufferings in Africa is an 1817 memoir by James Riley. The memoir relates how Riley and his crew were captured 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 switch on the usual master-slave relationship.
Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival is a 2004 nonfiction book written by maritime historian Dean King. It is based on two of the survivors' journals, primarily Captain James Riley's memoir Sufferings in Africa. To research the book, Dean King embarked on a National Geographic Society sponsored expedition to retrace the horrific journey of Riley and his crew across the Saharan ("Zahara") desert. A screenplay adaptation was in 2010 reportedly being written by Roman Bennett for Independent studios.
Lady Shore was a barque-rigged merchantman, launched in 1793 at Hull, England. She made two voyages as an "extra ship" for the British East India Company (EIC), though capture by a French privateer cut short the second. She then returned to mercantile service, sailing primarily to the West Indies. She was wrecked near the Saint Lawrence River in 1815.
Robert Adams was a twenty-five-old American sailor who claimed to be enslaved in North Africa for three years, from 1810 to 1814. During this time he claimed to have visited Timbuktu, which would have made him the first Westerner to reach the city, though his narrative is dubious. Upon his stated liberation, and return to Europe, Adams' story was published in two heavily edited and divergent accounts, most notably The Narrative of Robert Adams in 1816.
The Narrative of Robert Adams is a memoir by American sailor Robert Adams first published in 1816. The narrative is the story of the adventures of Adams, then a twenty-five-year-old American sailor who claimed to be enslaved in North Africa for three years, from 1810 to 1814, after surviving a shipwreck. He was said to have finally been ransomed by the British Consul, where he eventually made his way to London. It was there that, as a random beggar on the streets, he was "discovered" by the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa, where he narrated the full details of his adventure.
The Magellan expedition was the first voyage around the world in human history. It was a Spanish expedition that sailed from Seville in 1519 under the command of Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese-born explorer but naturalized (nationalised) Spanish, in search of a maritime path to East Asia through the Americas and across the Pacific Ocean, and was concluded by Spanish navigator Juan Sebastian Elcano in 1522. Elcano and the 18 survivors of the expedition were the first men to circumnavigate the globe in a single expedition.
St Helena was a schooner, launched in 1814, that the British East India Company (EIC), used as a packet ship, sailing between Saint Helena and the Cape of Good Hope. She did two tours of duty at St Helena, from 1814 to 1821, and again from 1822 to 1830, carrying, cattle, grain and stores to St Helena. While there she made regular voyages to the Cape. On her way home in 1830, a pirate captured her, killing most of the crew. The survivors were nevertheless able to get her to Sierra Leone. A group of officers and men from the Royal Navy then sailed her for England, only to be arrested and detained by the Portuguese navy as pirates. She was sold in 1831 to commercial interests and returned to Cape Town. She served there until she was wrecked in September 1851.
Abeona was launched at Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1811. A fire at sea destroyed her in November 1820, killing many passengers and crew.
Several ships have been named Commerce: