William Okeley

William Okeley was a Puritan who was taken into slavery in Algeria between the years 1639–44, and who wrote a captivity narrative of the 17th century. Okeley published his narrative in 1675, nearly 30 years after his escape from Algiers.

Okeley was fleeing religious persecution and was on his way to the Puritan colony of Providence Island when his boat was captured by Algerian pirates. During his time in Algiers, he served four different masters, and was forced into a variety of occupations, including childcare, working on the crew of an Algerian pirate ship, weaving, and, most importantly, running a business in the city, which was selling alcohol and other goods. Many slaves in Algiers were set loose within the city (whose walls acted as a prison) and forced to pay a monthly allowance to their masters. Many, like Okeley, thrived by trading. Eventually, Okeley and a group of his fellow slaves staged a daring escape by creating a boat with a canvas hull, smuggling it out of the city, and rowing themselves across the Mediterranean Sea to the island of Mallorca.

Unlike many Barbary slave narratives, Okeley constructed his in the form of a spiritual autobiography, and his narrative provides an important precursor to, and possible inspiration for, American Puritan captivity narratives, including the most well-known, that of Mary Rowlandson, who was captured by Native Americans in colonial Massachusetts during King Philip's War. Provided by Wikipedia