Zia Wesley's Blog: The Veil and the Crown, page 2

Americans Kidnapped by Algerian Corsairs in 1790

Aimée de Rivery was not the only person to be kidnapped by Barbary pirates. Abduction was a common occurrence at that time. In 1790 an attempt was made to rescue 17 Americans being held for ransom. Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State, recommended going to war against Algiers but President George Washington preferred to pay the ransom, arguing it would ultimately cost less than a war in both money and lives lost. The sum of $144,000 was approved to pay the ransom and the Americans were eventually released. However, corsairs continued to plunder goods as well as people and four years later, in September of 1794, Washington signed a bill authorizing the sum of $688,888 to build six frigates “adequate for the protection of the commerce of the United States against Algerian corsairs.” These six vessels ultimately became the first ships of the American Navy.

In September of 1800, the first American frigate entered the port of Algiers carrying $500,000 in gold; tribute to be paid to the Dey of Algiers, Baba Mohammed Ben Osman. I suspect that Ben Osman, in turn, used that money to increase his own fleet of ships; vessels that would eventually be used to fight the Janissaries in their attempt to bump Sultan Selim off the throne.

You can read more about the ransom of the 17 Americans in 1790 here

Introducing The Stolen Girl

As a famous songwriter once said, “What a long, strange trip it’s been,” to The Stolen Girl. I first read Aimée’s story in an obscure out-of-print book from the UK in 1971. The book gave a brief accounting of four European women who lived extremely unusual lives in the Middle East during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Actually, for any European woman to even be present in the Middle East in those days was highly unusual. Most females would only be in that situation on the arm of a husband who had either business or political reasons for making the trip. The four women in the book were there alone…two by choice and two by circumstances beyond their control.

To make it even more interesting, Aimée’s story had an unusual effect on me. As I read it, I saw it, as if remembering rather than reading it for the first time. It was very odd that her life felt like my memory. Remember, this was 1971 and women were just beginning to come into their own in this country so, it made me wonder what her life behind the heavily-guarded walls of the harem might really have been like two hundred years earlier.The more I discovered about the Ottomans, the more I wondered how she had survived and, more miraculously, how she had succeeded on such a grand scale.

I began doing lots of research and investigation, reading every book on the Ottoman Empire I could find. The stories of the Sultans were so fantastic and unlike anything I’d ever known or imagined. They were the stuff that dreams and nightmares are made of. I kept thinking what a fabulous film the story would make. It had everything I loved, sex, opulence, exotic music and clothes, interesting locales like Paris, Martinique and the Sultan’s harem in Istanbul, sea voyages on sailing ships, pirates, intrigue, murder and love! I always thought someone in Hollywood would turn it into a spectacular movie like Gone With the Wind or Cleopatra.

Throughout the next thirty years, it hovered in the back of my mind like a dream so real I never forget it. When I’d finished with careers, businesses, and marriages, I realized that writing the story was exactly what I wanted to do. My first task was learning how to write a novel. You’ll have to let me know if I succeeded. As I said earlier, it’s been quite a ride!