Gales tore at the Mary’s sails, and surf crashed across the brig’s deck. Seventeen-year-old Nathaniel Isaacs tied himself to a railing to avoid being washed overboard. The Mary’s rudder soon splintered against a rocky bar at the entrance to Natal Bay – what is now Durban, South Africa. Helpless to maneuver, the ship took on water.
It was Oct. 1, 1825. Isaacs, a Jewish apprentice merchant from England, loosed the rope around his waist and jumped for his life, landing on the edge of the Zulu kingdom.
