Skeletons On The Zahara (6 page)

This was no small feat. It expanded the navigable universe for good. Even so, it did not prevent hundreds of sailing ships, each vessel powered by wind and vulnerable to the ripping current, from wrecking on Bojador over the next four centuries. The decades around the start of the nineteenth century were particularly calamitous because of an increase in international shipping.

In his groundbreaking Account of the Empire of Marocco (1809), British merchant James Grey Jackson speculated that of the vessels wrecked on the Saharan coast, “many are probably never heard of; and if any of the crew survive their hardships, they are induced, seeing no prospect of emancipation, to become Mohammedans.” Among the thirty known wrecks between 1790 and 1806, he tallied seventeen English, five French, five American, and three of various other nationalities. The seamen who were lucky enough to escape from the desert did so with horrific tales.

The French merchant F. Saugnier, on board Les Deux Amies, and diplomat Pierre Raymond de Brisson, in the Ste. Catherine, had been stranded on Cape Bojador in 1784 and 1785, respectively. In 1800, Judah Paddock, captain of the Oswego out of New York, wrecked there, as did New Yorker Robert Adams on board the Charles in 1810. Also that year, sixteen-year-old apprentice seaman Alexander Scott of Liverpool, England, began six years of wandering after the Brazil-bound ship Montezuma, under Captain Knubley, wrecked north of Cape Bojador. All left accounts of death and bondage on the Sahara and suffering so extreme that the authors begged forgiveness for sounding like liars. And they were among the very, very few survivors.

The Commerce had no intention of going near Cape Bojador. Carrying brandy, wine, and Spanish dollars acquired in Gibraltar, as well as Riley's private venture (known as an “adventure”)— a chest full of silk lace veils and handkerchiefs— the Commerce set sail for the Cape Verde Islands on August 23, after nearly two weeks in Gibraltar.1

According to Riley's account, the brig's primary cargo for North America was to be salt, a major export of the dry, windswept tropical archipelago 330 miles west of Africa, which also dealt in ships' provisions and slaves. Riley's plan made sense. The salt trade between the United States and these Portuguese islands had been choked off by the war. Stores would be ample and demand in the States strong.

It is possible that Riley instead intended to buy slaves. He could have done so in the islands, or he may actually have considered landing on the slave coast of Africa. If so, he probably would have planned to sell them in the West Indies, most likely in Cuba, where Connecticut River merchants were well established, and to then take on a cargo of sugarcane, molasses, and rum before returning home. Although the importation of slaves had been illegal in Connecticut since 1790 and in the United States since 1808, some New England vessels, including those of reputable merchants, practiced this lucrative so-called triangular trade well into the nineteenth century.

According to Sherman Adams and Henry Stiles's History of Ancient Wethersfield, a rumor later surfaced that the brig was in fact after slaves. This was reported by Charles Williams, a citizen of the town, who reasoned that the Commerce was “a long way out of the course she should have sailed,” and that “her cargo consisted principally of salt beef, potatoes and many casks of fresh water— circumstances which were suspicious.” He believed the stores were slave provisions. His logic is unconvincing, however. Riley was already admittedly heading to the Cape Verde Islands, a common salt-trading destination where slave trading also took place. Veering off course did not take him nearer to any other slave port. Furthermore, the provisions Williams cited were typical and not indicative of a slaving ship, which generally served its human cargo corn mush or rice with palm oil, horsebeans (usually used to feed cattle), cassava, and other inexpensive and easily obtained foods. Slavers rarely provided the Africans with meat. Finally, at the time of Riley's voyage, American ships were not officially welcomed in most of the West Indian colonies. Since the West Indies were both an important source of salt for the United States and the place where African slaves were typically taken to be sold, it made perfect sense for the Commerce not to carry slaves to the West Indies but to take salt back to Connecticut from the Cape Verdes.

On the morning of August 24, the Commerce passed through the Strait of Gibraltar, clearing Cape Spartel, the southern point of the west end of the strait, by some thirty-five miles. With a fair wind, Riley set a west-southwesterly course for the Canary Islands, intending to pass through the narrow channel between the islands of Tenerife and La Palma. The usual course from Gibraltar to the Cape Verde Islands, according to Archie Robbins, was more westerly, via Madeira, the Portuguese island some four hundred miles from the coast of Morocco. But, said Robbins, Riley wished to make the passage “as expeditious as possible.”

In the Atlantic, the brig encountered unusually difficult weather. Along the stretch of coast between Cape Spartel and Dakar, Senegal, visibility of less than five miles, considered poor, is fairly common, but the Commerce was engulfed in a rare fog. The crew could see little more than half a mile and could make out no sign of land.

Riley and his mates made noontime observations twice, but they considered that “neither could be much depended upon.” The wind was fair, and Riley wished to take advantage of it. He held to the course he had set after clearing Cape Spartel. On August 28, using dead reckoning— the courses steered, the brig's speed as determined by heaving the log, and the amount of time the courses were held, but no astronomical observations— he estimated their latitude to be 29° 30' N, just north of the Canary Islands.

That day the clouds finally parted long enough for him to take “good meridian altitudes” (measurements of the angle the sun makes with the horizon at its zenith, or local noon), which would allow him to determine his latitude. At the same time, Williams and Savage and some of the crew noticed that the water had changed color, suggesting to them that they were nearing land. The mates informed Captain Riley, but he shrugged off the warnings. Judging such signs was tricky here. Along parts of the coast, sand from the desert gives the seafloor a dark olive hue and does not necessarily indicate proximity to the shore. The clouds were a bigger factor, to his mind; any change in the tint of the water here, he assured them, was only an effect of the changing cloud cover.

Riley was more concerned about accurately determining their latitude. What he discovered from his sights and calculations was startling. The brig was in latitude 27° 30' N— 120 miles to the south of where he thought they were, and past the Canary Islands. Had the Commerce sailed eight hundred miles down to the Canaries on one compass setting and then passed blindly through a channel less than fifty miles wide? Had they sailed right by Tenerife, a volcanic island towering twelve thousand feet above the sea, without even a glimpse of it?

It hardly seemed possible, but Riley decided they had, rationalizing that “it was in the night, which was very dark, and black as pitch.” Just how unlikely this was would take him some time to grasp.

In reality, the Commerce had drifted east and was being swept south by the Canary Current. From Agadir (known then in the West as Santa Cruz) in Morocco, the coast forms a long, shallow bay jutting westward on the south end at Cape Juby. All of this south-flowing water is suddenly forced into the bottleneck formed by Cape Juby and the Canary Islands, sixty miles west. The Canary Current races around Juby at up to six knots, a pace too strong to row against, one that sweeps even large fish along with it.

It was through this funnel that the Commerce had passed on the night of August 27. To the south, the current flows along a south-southwest-sloping face that takes another western turn at Lemsid out to Cape Bojador. Essentially, while the current flows south along the Moroccan coast, the coast steps out to the west. But Riley had no solid evidence to convince him that he was not where he intended to be— only a gnawing feeling that something was not right.

Soon after they took their observations on the 28th and the men mentioned the change in the color of the sea, the weather turned even more menacing. That evening Riley studied his reckoning again and asked Williams and Savage to recheck their own calculations. He certainly knew that, as Saugnier put it, “the currents always set towards the Coast of Africa, that there are long banks of sand which run a great way out to sea, that in the morning and evening it is difficult to distinguish them from the water.” But from his calculations and his discussions with his mates, Riley determined that he was not near the coast, that he was indeed correct in assuming the brig had passed between Tenerife and La Palma— through the eye of the needle.

Nevertheless, the crew's opinion and his misgivings made Riley increasingly uneasy. He was confounded by the contradiction between the physical evidence and the ineffable, which had never before “so much prevailed” over his reasoned calculations. He altered the course to the southwest, thinking he was veering toward the easternmost of the Cape Verde Islands.

At 7:20 P.M., the sun set. The moon, Riley knew, would not rise until after midnight. With the weather thickening to the point that they could barely make out their own jibboom, Riley ordered the crew to “round the vessel to,” which brought her to the wind, slowing her down. They sounded with 120 fathoms (720 feet) of line. The weight did not touch bottom, indicating to the captain that they were still in the deeps and not approaching the coast. He would not succumb to “his fears,” as he put it. He was not paid to be shy. He ordered the helmsman to resume his former course.

Soon they were bowling along again at nine and ten knots, with a strong breeze and a high sea. Riley stayed on deck all evening, looking for signs and mulling over their situation. It bothered him that they had not seen land. He had never passed the Canaries without seeing the islands, even at night and in the fog.

At nine o'clock, he decided that he could not continue on the present course much longer. An hour later, when his sailing log indicated that he should be just thirty miles off the infamous Cape Bojador, he gave the order to Savage, the officer on watch, to haul off to the northwest. He ordered the crew to furl the light sails, the small high ones that give a vessel that much more velocity but make her a little less manageable, and to rig in snug the studding-sail booms, the spars that stick out past the yardarms to add even more canvas power. They had made good time thus far; he was willing to take a few mild precautions.

After the main boom jibed over, Riley heard a roaring sound that stopped him cold. Thinking it was a squall approaching unseen in the dark, he shouted, “All hands on deck!” and ordered Savage to brace up the yards. Under his direction, the men brought the square sails more fore-and-aft. Riley was about to order the sails lowered when he saw foam surging against the lee side of the brig. He was wrong. The roar was not a squall. Even worse, it was the sound of breakers.

Riley kept his head, sizing up the situation and barking out commands almost simultaneously. There was one hopeful sign: he could see no rocks directly ahead. He ordered the men to make the anchors ready, and they cleared away the fourteen-hundred-pound iron and wood behemoth on either bow. Before Riley could order them to be dropped, a ghastly jolt hurled all hands to the deck. Every sailor knew instantly that his worst nightmare— the violent end that had stalked him all his working life, waiting for his vigilance to slacken or his luck to sour— had finally come to pass. Only instead of going to the bottom, the bottom had come to them.

Rising to his feet, Riley commanded the men to drop the best bower, the brig's larger anchor, believing it might prevent them from going further aground. Such was his will and authority that the men obeyed as one. He next ordered them to let the sheet anchor go and then to haul up the sails, to reduce the windage that pinned them against the rocks. They did, but 2,800 pounds of anchor had no effect against the heave of the Atlantic. The thundering surf rammed the Commerce onto the rocks again and again, until the brig, facing the beach to the southwest, lodged in a jagged crevice.

Waves broke one after another over the stern and starboard quarter, sweeping the decks. Each deluge of foaming sea sent the men sprawling or scurrying for a handhold to keep from being washed overboard. Riley quickly realized that there was no hope of saving the Commerce, which would soon bilge and fill with water. But, carrying only a light cargo, she sat high on the rocks, and her oak timbers could stand the beating for a while.

He ordered part of the crew to bring provisions up from the hold and to draw water from the large casks. They emptied two quarter-casks of wine and began filling them with water. On deck, he and the rest of the crew hauled in the small stern boat, which was being pounded by the waves, and slung it so as to keep it from beating against the side of the brig and staving. They cleared away the larger longboat and hung it in tackles, ready for launching.

The Commerce wedged deeper into the mandible-like rocks with each surge of the sea. Water poured into her hold, yet the men remained orderly and calm. Those working below had already brought up half a dozen barrels each of water and wine. Three barrels of bread and four of salt meat were also on deck, ready to be loaded in the boats. They had secured a variety of chests and trunks, including some with clothing and Spanish coin. Riley still had not seen land and had no idea how close they were. Not knowing what his next move would be was the worst part. He had to act decisively— both to save the crew and to convince them he could save them. For now, his close ties with his mates and men were paying off. He could sense their alertness, their sharp determination to follow his orders. But if they saw any wavering, any weakness, on his part, then their discipline might collapse and all could be lost. As he considered his next move, Riley instructed the men to load his books, charts, and navigational instruments.