![]() ![]() Sultan Moulay Ismail appears almost like a pantomime emir, "wrapped in fabulous silks and damasks, with a voluminous silk turban, his waist-length cloak wrought all over with silver and gold and bright red riding boots." Taken to the enormous Moroccan imperial palace at Meknes, Pellow's first sight of the sultan was on a gilded chariot being drawn by a harnessed band of wives and eunuchs. ![]() The voyage was the beginning of 23 years' imprisonment at the hands of a savage despot. ![]() They had set sail from Cornwall en route to Genoa with a cargo of salted pilchards. The 11-year-old Pellow was unfortunate enough to be taken prisoner along with the rest of the five-man crew of the Francis in the summer of 1715. Two remarkable characters form the linchpins of this story: Pellow, a Cornish boy, and Sultan Moulay Ismail, the ruler to whom he was enslaved. The "Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow" is a lens through which the wider story of the relationship between the emerging European maritime powers and the long-established sultanates of Barbary is told. ![]()
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