“White Gold”

The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa’s One Million European Slaves.

In the summer of 1716, a Cornish cabin boy named Thomas Pellow and fifty-one of his comrades were captured at sea by Barbary corsairs. Their captors – Captain Ali Hakem and his network of fanatical Islamic slave traders – had declared war on the whole of Christendom. Poked, prodded and put through their paces at the great slave markets of Morocco, thousands of Europeans were sold to the highest bidder.

Thomas Pellow was bought by the tyrannical sultan, Moulay Ismail, as a personal slave, and he would witness first-hand the barbaric splendour of the imperial Moroccan court, as well as experience daily terror for twenty-three years. He was one of the fortunate few who survived to tell his tale.