Peter Williamson crossed the Atlantic twice, once as a self-professed kidnapping victim and once as a prisoner of war. As I write this review while crossing Lake Erie upon the US Brig Niagara, I can perhaps understand to a degree the uncertainty felt by Williamson in 1743 and 1756 as he traveled upon a wooden world similar to the one surrounding me. My sustenance and living conditions, however, are most certainly better than that experienced by him and other eighteenth-century travelers.1 In Indian Captive, Indian King: Peter Williamson in America and Britain, author Timothy J. Shannon concludes that Williamson's remarkable life “defies … easy reduction” (267). The same might be said of Shannon's monograph. Williamson's many and varied experiences allowed (or forced?) the author down many exploratory paths. The result is a deeply fascinating study of the eighteenth-century British Atlantic world.
Depending on who one asked, Peter...
