author
James Scurry
Best known for a vivid captivity memoir, this late-18th-century British seaman left behind a firsthand account of ten years held in the dominions of Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan. His story offers both adventure and a rare personal window into a turbulent period of Indian and British history.
1 Audiobook
About the author
James Scurry (1766–1822) was a British soldier and memoirist from Devonshire, England. As a teenager he went to sea and was captured during the Second Anglo-Mysore War, then spent about ten years as a prisoner under Hyder Ali and later Tipu Sultan.
He is remembered for The Captivity, Sufferings, and Escape of James Scurry, a memoir published in 1824, after his death. The book drew attention for its detailed, dramatic account of imprisonment, survival, and escape, and it remains one of the better-known personal narratives connected to the Mysore wars.
Scurry’s writing is valued not just for its adventure, but for the way it preserves a lived perspective on war, empire, and captivity in the late 1700s. For listeners interested in eyewitness history, his work has an immediacy that still stands out.