Tim Severin - Corsair

Details
Paperback - As new

Rating
3.5/5 Goodreads

Synopsis
1677 - snatched from an Irish village by Barbary corsairs, seventeen-year-old Hector Lynch is sold at auction in Algiers. Befriended by fellow captive Dan, a Miskito Indian from the Caribbean, he finds himself in a bewildering world where life is cheap and only the quick-witted survive.
To escape the horrors of the slave barracks, the two friends convert to Islam; then, serving aboard a Turkish ship, their vessel is sunk at sea. By a savage twist of fortune they are condemned to further slavery: this time for Christian masters, when they are chained to the oar bench of a French galley with vagabonds and convicts for company.
Throughout his ordeal Hector is driven by the need to find out what happened to his sister, Elizabeth, who was also kidnapped by the corsairs. He learns the chilling truth when he and his colourful band of brothers are shipwrecked off the coast of Morocco...
Tim Severin, the master storyteller of Viking, returns with this new action-packed adventure series and introduces us to a cast of ferocious historical characters, including pickpockets and sadistic sea officers, venal merchants and cultured Turkish sea captains, a power-crazed sultan and fanatical members of the Knightly Orders. Their violent, treacherous and sometimes gallant deeds take place against a meticulously researched backdrop extending from the casbahs of North Africa to the sands of the Sahara...