A journal, comprising an account of the loss of the brig Commerce, of Hartford, (Con.) James Riley, Master, upon the western coast of Africa, August 28th, 1815; also of the slavery and sufferings of the author and the rest of the crew, upon the desert of Zahara, in the years 1815, 1816, 1817; with accounts of the manners, customs, and habits of the wandering Arabs; also, a brief historical and geographical view of the continent of Africa

Hartford: Silas Andrus, 1818. Sixth Edition. With a folding map at the end of the text. Rebound in modern brown cloth; browning due to paper stock, small hole on p. 141-142 affecting portion of text, map separated along fold lines. Small stamp of the Troy Public Library on title. Sixth Silas Andrus edition. A gripping first-person account of the shipwreck and subsequent slavery of the crew of the sailing ship Commerce. This work, first published in 1817, was a best-seller in its time, as is evidenced by this sixth edition the following year. This edition is not listed in Sabin, which does list a fifth edition and a seventh edition by the same publisher, also dated 1818. Robbins’ account, together with another account of the same events by James Riley, formed the basis of the non-fiction work Skeletons in the Zahara by Dean King, published in 2004.

Robbins (1792-1865) was a young man at the time of his shipwreck and capture. However, he had made his first voyage when he was about 16 years old. The voyage he describes in this work, on which he served as an “able seaman,” was his sixth.