Thomas Pellow

Thomas Pellow was a Cornish sailor captured by Barbary corsairs in 1715 and enslaved in Morocco. He spent more than two decades in the service of Sultan Moulay Ismail and his successors before escaping and publishing an account of captivity, military service and Moroccan court life.

During his captivity Pellow was absorbed into the household and military world of Moulay Ismail, endured repeated coercion and was eventually employed in military service. He learned Arabic and Moroccan customs, travelled widely and survived periods of warfare and political instability after the sultan’s death. After escaping Morocco in 1738 he returned to Cornwall, and his published captivity narrative became an unusually detailed English account of eighteenth-century Morocco and of the experience of Europeans enslaved there.

In Giles Milton’s White Gold, in 1716, eleven-year-old Thomas Pellow was captured at sea by corsairs and taken to Morocco, where he entered a system that enslaved Europeans seized from ships and coastal communities.