Pirate Friday: Alwilda, Avery, and Rahmah ibn Jabir

For the past couple of weeks I have been reading The Pirates Own Book by Charles Ellms, first published in 1837. Wikipedia does not appear to have a page about the book, nor have I been able to figure out how much of the text can be regarded as “factual” and how much is pure fabrication for the audience’s amusement. Overall, I have mixed opinions about the book–some parts have been entertaining and thought provoking, while some of the pirate stories have begun to blend together. I have chosen therefore to excerpt some of the parts I have enjoyed. (As usual, I’ll be using “” instead of blockquotes for readability.)


“On Viking Expeditions of Highborn Maids: Two female warriors, of royal family according to the crowns on their heads, are participating in a sea battle.” From Olaus Magnus’ A Description of the Northern Peoples, 1555.

“Even the females of the North caught the epidemic spirit, and proudly betook themselves to the dangers of sea-life. Saxo-Grammaticus relates an interesting story of one of them. Alwilda, the daughter of Synardus, a Gothic king, to deliver herself from the violence imposed on her inclination, by a marriage with Alf, the son of Sygarus, king of Denmark, embraced the life of a rover; and attired as a man, she embarked in a vessel of which the crew was composed of other young women of tried courage, dressed in the same manner.

“Among the first of her cruises, she landed at a place where a company of pirates were bewailing the loss of their commander; and the strangers were so captivated with the air and agreeable manners of Alwilda, that they unanimously chose her for their leader. By this reinforcement she became so formidable, that Prince Alf was despatched to engage her. She sustained his attacks with great courage and talent; but during a severe action in the gulf of Finland, Alf boarded her vessel, and having killed the greatest part of her crew, seized the captain, namely herself; whom nevertheless he knew not, because she had a casque which covered her visage. The prince was agreeably surprised, on removing the helmet, to recognize his beloved Alwilda; and it seems that his valor had now recommended him to the fair princess, for he persuaded her to accept his hand, married her on board, and then led her to partake of his wealth, and share his throne.”

EvX: Wikipedia has an article on Alwida (aka Awilda), which describes her as “legend” and depends heavily on TPoB for its sources.

Captain Avery

“During his own time the adventures of Captain Avery were the subject of general conversation in Europe. It was reported that he had married the Great Mogul’s daughter, who was taken in an Indian ship that fell into his hands, and that he was about to be the founder of a new monarchy–that he gave commissions in his own name to the captains of his ships, and the commanders of his forces, and was acknowledged by them as their prince. In consequence of these reports, it was at one time resolved to fit out a strong squadron to go and take him and his men; and at another time it was proposed to invite him home with all his riches, by the offer of his Majesty’s pardon. These reports, however, were soon discovered to be groundless, and he was actually starving without a shilling …

“Avery proceeded on his voyage to Madagascar, and it does not appear that he captured any vessels upon his way. When arrived at the northeast part of that island, he found two sloops at anchor, which, upon seeing him, slipped their cables and ran themselves ashore, while the men all landed and concealed themselves in the woods. These were two sloops which the men had run off with from the East Indies, and seeing Avery’s ship, supposed that he had been sent out after them… he sent some of his men on shore to inform them that they were friends, and to propose a union for their common safety. …

“Near the river Indus, the man at the mast-head espied a sail, upon which they gave chase; as they came nearer to her, they discovered that she was a tall vessel, and might turn out to be an East Indiaman. … The sloops, however attacked, the one on the bow, and another upon the quarter of the ship, and so boarded her. She then struck her colors. She was one of the Great Mogul’s own ships, and there were in her several of the greatest persons in his court, among whom, it was said, was one of his daughters going upon a pilgrimage to Mecca; and they were carrying with them rich offerings to present at the shrine of Mahomet.”

EvX: This might be enough booty for the whole crew to live on comfortably for the rest of their lives, but the real difficulty lay in converting Mugal riches into dollars without anyone suspecting you of being a pirate:

“Avery and his men hastened towards America, and being strangers in that country, agreed to divide the booty, to change their names, and each separately to take up his residence, and live in affluence and honor. The first land they approached was the Island of Providence, then newly settled. It however occurred to them, that the largeness of their vessel, and the report that one had been run off with from the Groine, might create suspicion; they resolved therefore to dispose of their vessel at Providence. Upon this resolution, Avery, pretending that his vessel had been equipped for privateering, and having been unsuccessful, he had orders from the owners to dispose of her to the best advantage, soon found a merchant. Having thus sold his own ship, he immediately purchased a small sloop.

“In this he and his companions embarked, and landed at several places in America, where, none suspecting them, they dispersed and settled in the country. Avery, however, had been careful to conceal the greater part of the jewels and other valuable articles, so that his riches were immense. Arriving at Boston, he was almost resolved to settle there, but, as the greater part of his wealth consisted of diamonds, he was apprehensive that he could not dispose of them at that place, without being taken up as a pirate… he resolved to sail for Ireland, and in a short time arrived in the northern part of that kingdom, and his men dispersed into several places. Some of them obtained the pardon of King William, and settled in that country.

“The wealth of Avery, however, now proved of small service, and occasioned him great uneasiness. He could not offer his diamonds for sale in that country without being suspected. … going into Devonshire, sent to one of his friends to meet him at a town called Bideford. … they agreed that the safest plan would be to put his effects into the hands of some wealthy merchants, and no inquiry would be made how they came by them. … Accordingly, the merchants paid Avery a visit at Bideford, where, after strong protestations of honor and integrity, he delivered them his effects, consisting of diamonds and some vessels of gold. After giving him a little money for his present subsistence, they departed. …

“He changed his name, and lived quietly at Bideford, so that no notice was taken of him. In a short time his money was all spent, and he heard nothing from his merchants though he wrote to them repeatedly; at last they sent him a small supply, but it was not sufficient to pay his debts. … He therefore determined to go privately to Bristol, and have an interview with the merchants himself,–where, instead of money, he met with a mortifying repulse; for, when he desired them to come to an account with him, they silenced him by threatening to disclose his character; the merchants thus proving themselves as good pirates on land as he was at sea.”

EvX: Money laundering always seems to be one of the weak spots of any pirate operation carried out near civilized ports.

On the Capt. Babcock’s near-death at the hands of Arab Pirates:

“…two English brigs, the Shannon, Capt. Babcock, and the Trimmer, Capt. Cummings, were on their voyage from Bombay to Bussorah. These were both attacked, near the Islands of Polior and Kenn, by several boats, and after a slight resistance on the part of the Shannon only, were taken possession of, and a part of the crew of each, cruelly put to the sword. Capt. Babcock, having been seen by one of the Arabs to discharge a musket during the contest, was taken by them on shore; and after a consultation on his fate, it was determined that he should forfeit the arm by which this act of resistance was committed.

“It was accordingly severed from his body by one stroke of a sabre, and no steps were taken either to bind up the wound, or to prevent his bleeding to death. The captain, himself, had yet sufficient presence of mind left, however, to think of his own safety, and there being near him some clarified butter, he procured this to be heated, and while yet warm, thrust the bleeding stump of his arm into it. It had the effect of lessening the effusion of blood, and ultimately of saving a life that would otherwise most probably have been lost.”

Arab Pirates:

“The line of coast from Cape Mussenndom to Bahrain, on the Arabian side of the Persian Gulf, had been from time immemorial occupied by a tribe of Arabs called Joassamees. These, from local position, were all engaged in maritime pursuits. Some traded in their own small vessels to Bussorah, Bushire, Muscat, and even India; others annually fished in their own boats on the pearl banks of Bahrain; and a still greater number hired themselves out as sailors to navigate the coasting small craft of the Persian Gulf.

“The Joassamees at length perceiving that their local position enabled them to reap a rich harvest by plundering vessels in passing this great highway of nations, commenced their piratical career. The small coasting vessels of the gulf, from their defenceless state, were the first object of their pursuit, and these soon fell an easy prey; until, emboldened by success, they directed their views to more arduous enterprises, and having tasted the sweets of plunder in the increase of their wealth, had determined to attempt more promising victories….

“The town of Bushire, on the Persian Gulf is seated in a low peninsula of sand, extending out of the general line of the coast, so as to form a bay on both sides. One of these bays was in 1816, occupied by the fleet of a certain Arab, named Rahmah-ben-Jabir, who has been for more than twenty years the terror of the gulf, and who was the most successful and the most generally tolerated pirate, perhaps, that ever infested any sea.”

EvX: Rahmah ibn Jabir al-Jalahimah was a real person–according to Wikipedia:

Rahmah ibn Jabir al-Jalahimah (Arabic: رحمة بن جابر بن عذبي الجلهمي أو الجلاهمة‎‎; c. 1760–1826) was an Arab ruler in the Persian Gulf and was described by his contemporary, the English traveller and author, James Silk Buckingham, as ‘the most successful and the most generally tolerated pirate, perhaps, that ever infested any sea.’[1]

As a pirate his reputation was for being ruthless and fearless, and he wore an eye-patch after he lost an eye in battle. He is the earliest documented pirate to have worn an eye-patch.[2] He is described by the former British adviser and historian, Charles Belgrave, as ‘one of the most vivid characters the Persian Gulf has produced, a daring freebooter without fear or mercy’[3] (perhaps paradoxically his first name means ‘mercy’ in Arabic).

He began life as a horse dealer and he used the money he saved to buy his first ship and with ten companions began a career of buccaneering. So successful was he that he soon acquired a new craft: a 300-ton boat, manned by 350 men.[4] He would later have as many as 2000 followers, many of them black slaves. At one point his flagship was the ‘Al-Manowar’ (derived from English).[5]

“His followers, to the number of two thousand, were maintained by the plunder of his prizes; and as the most of these were his own bought African slaves, and the remainder equally subject to his authority, he was sometimes as prodigal of their lives in a fit of anger as he was of his enemies, whom he was not content to slay in battle only, but basely murdered in cold blood, after they had submitted. An instance is related of his having put a great number of his own crew, who used mutinous expressions, into a tank on board, in which they usually kept their water, and this being shut close at the top, the poor wretches were all suffocated, and afterwards thrown overboard.”

EvX: TPoB quotes James Buckingham’s account:

“On one occasion (says Mr. Buckingham), at which I was present, [Rahmah] was sent for to give some medical gentlemen of the navy and company’s cruisers an opportunity of inspecting his arm, which had been severely wounded. The wound was at first made by grape-shot and splinters, and the arm was one mass of blood about the part for several days, while the man himself was with difficulty known to be alive.

“He gradually recovered, however, without surgical aid, and the bone of the arm between the shoulder and elbow being completely shivered to pieces, the fragments progressively worked out, and the singular appearance was left of the fore arm and elbow connected to the shoulder by flesh and skin, and tendons, without the least vestige of bone.

“This man when invited to the [British] factory for the purpose of making an exhibition of his arm, was himself admitted to sit at the table and take some tea, as it was breakfast time, and some of his followers took chairs around him. …

“Rahmah-ben-Jabir’s figure presented a meagre trunk, with four lank members, all of them cut and hacked, and pierced with wounds of sabres, spears and bullets, in every part, to the number, perhaps of more than twenty different wounds. He had, besides, a face naturally ferocious and ugly, and now rendered still more so by several scars there, and by the loss of one eye.

“When asked by one of the English gentlemen present, with a tone of encouragement and familiarity, whether he could not still dispatch an enemy with his boneless arm, he drew a crooked dagger, or yambeah, from the girdle round his shirt, and placing his left hand, which was sound, to support the elbow of the right, which was the one that was wounded, he grasped the dagger firmly with his clenched fist, and drew it back ward and forward, twirling it at the same time, and saying that he desired nothing better than to have the cutting of as many throats as he could effectually open with his lame hand.”

TPoB concludes Rahmah’s tale:

“This barbarous pirate in the year 1827, at last experienced a fate characteristic of the whole course of his life. His violent aggressions having united the Arabs of Bahrene and Ratiffe against him they blockaded his port of Daman from which Rahmah-ben-Jabir, having left a garrison in the fort under his son, had sailed in a well appointed bungalow, for the purpose of endeavoring to raise a confederacy of his friends in his support. … A desperate struggle ensued, and the Sheikh finding after some time that he had lost nearly the whole of his crew by the firing of Rahmah’s boat, retired for reinforcements. These being obtained, he immediately returned singly to the contest.

“The fight was renewed with redoubled fury; when at last, Rahmah, being informed (for he had been long blind) that his men were falling fast around him, mustered the remainder of the crew, and issued orders to close and grapple with his opponent. … he was led with a lighted torch to the magazine, which instantly exploded, blowing his own boat to atoms and setting fire to the Sheikh’s, which immediately afterwards shared the same fate. Sheikh Ahmed and few of his followers escaped to the other boats; but only one of Rahmah’s brave crew was saved; and it is supposed that upwards of three hundred men were killed in this heroic contest.”


On Germanic and Polish DNA

Distribution of Y-chromosomal haplogroup I1a in Europe.

Commentator Unknown123 asks what we can tell about the differences between German and Polish DNA. Obviously German is here referring to one of the Germanic peoples who occupy the modern nation of Germany and speak a Germanic language. But as noted before, just because people speak a common language doesn’t necessarily mean they have a common genetic origin. Germans and English both speak Germanic languages , but Germans could easily share more DNA with their Slavic-language speaking neighbors in Poland than with the English.

According to Wikipedia, the modern Germanic peoples include Afrikaners, Austrians, Danes, Dutch, English, Flemish, Frisians, Germans, Icelanders, Lowland Scots, Norwegians, and Swedes.[225][226]

And here is a map that is very suggestive of Viking raiders:

(It’s also not a bad map of the distribution of Germanic peoples in 750 BC.)

Wikipedia states:



Note, though, that this map has some amusing results; clearly it’s a more Nordic distribution than specifically German, with “Celtic” Ireland just as Nordic as much of England and Germany.

Wikipedia also states:

According to a study published in 2010, I-M253 originated between 3,170 and 5,000 years ago, in Chalcolithic Europe.[1] A new study in 2015 estimated the origin as between 3,470 and 5,070 years ago or between 3,180 and 3,760 years ago, using two different techniques.[2] It is suggested that it initially dispersed from the area that is now Denmark.[8]

A 2014 study in Hungary uncovered remains of nine individuals from the Linear Pottery culture, one of whom was found to have carried the M253 SNP which defines Haplogroup I1. This culture is thought to have been present between 6,500 and 7,500 years ago.[12]


In 2002 a paper was published by Michael E. Weale and colleagues showing genetic evidence for population differences between the English and Welsh populations, including a markedly higher level of Y-DNA haplogroup I in England than in Wales. They saw this as convincing evidence of Anglo-Saxon mass invasion of eastern Great Britain from northern Germany and Denmark during the Migration Period.[13] The authors assumed that populations with large proportions of haplogroup I originated from northern Germany or southern Scandinavia, particularly Denmark, and that their ancestors had migrated across the North Sea with Anglo-Saxon migrations and DanishVikings. The main claim by the researchers was:

“That an Anglo-Saxon immigration event affecting 50–100% of the Central English male gene pool at that time is required. We note, however, that our data do not allow us to distinguish an event that simply added to the indigenous Central English male gene pool from one where indigenous males were displaced elsewhere or one where indigenous males were reduced in number … This study shows that the Welsh border was more of a genetic barrier to Anglo-Saxon Y chromosome gene flow than the North Sea … These results indicate that a political boundary can be more important than a geophysical one in population genetic structuring.”

In 2003 a paper was published by Christian Capelli and colleagues which supported, but modified, the conclusions of Weale and colleagues.[14] This paper, which sampled Great Britain and Ireland on a grid, found a smaller difference between Welsh and English samples, with a gradual decrease in Haplogroup I frequency moving westwards in southern Great Britain. The results suggested to the authors that Norwegian Vikings invaders had heavily influenced the northern area of the British Isles, but that both English and mainland Scottish samples all have German/Danish influence.

But the original question was about Germany and Poland, not England and Wales, so we are wandering a bit off-track.

source: Big Think: Genetic map of EuropeLuckily for me, Wikipedia helpfully has a table of European Population Genetic Substructure based on SNPs[48][59]. We’ll be extracting the most useful parts.

A score of “1” on this graph means that the two populations in question are identical–fully inter-mixing. The closer to 1 two groups score, the more similar they are. The further from one they score, (the bigger the number,) the more different they are.

Why isn't it in English? Oh, well. We'll manage.
Here is a potentially relevant map of the neolithic cultures of Europe

For example, the most closely related peoples on the graph are Austrians and their neighbors in southern Germany and Hungary (despite Hungarians speaking a non-Indo-European language brought in by recent steppe invaders.) Both groups scored 1.04 relative to Austrians, and a 1.08 relative to each other.

Northern and southern Germans also received a 1.08–so southern Germans are about as closely related to northern Germans as they are to Hungarians, and are more closely related to Austrians than to northern Germans.

This might reflect the pre-Roman empire population in which (as we discussed in the previous post) the Celtic cultures of Hallstatt and La Tene dominated a stretch of central Europe between Austria and Switzerland, with significant expansion both east and west, whilst the proto-Germanic peoples occupied northern Germany and later spread southward.

The least closely related peoples on the graph are (unsurprisingly) the Sami (Lapp) town of Kuusamo in northeastern Finland and Spain, at 4.21. (Finns are always kind of outliers in Europe, and Spaniards are kind of outliers in their own, different way, being the part of mainland Europe furthest from the Indo-European expansion starting point and so having received fewer invaders.

So what does the table say about Germans and their neighbors?

source: Big Think: Genetic map of Europe

Northern Germany:
South Germany 1.08
Austria 1.10
Hungary 1.11
Sweden 1.12
Czech Repub 1.15
Poland 1.18
France 1.25
Bulgaria 1.32
Switzerland 1.36

Southern Germany:
Austria 1.04
North Germany 1.08
Hungary 1.08
France 1.12
Czech Repub 1.16
Switzerland 1.17
Bulgaria 1.19
Latvia 1.20
Sweden 1.21
Poland 1.23


Czech Repub 1.09
Hungary: 1.14
Estonia 1.17
North Germany 1.18
Russia 1.18
Austria 1.19
Lithuania 1.20
South Germany 1.23
Latvia: 1.26
Bulgaria 1.29
Sweden 1.30
Switzerland 1.46

Obviously I didn’t include all of the data in the original table; all of the other sampled European groups, such as Italians, Spaniards, and Finns are genetically further away from north and south Germany and Poland than the listed groups.

So northern Germany and Poland are quite closely related–even closer than northern Germans are to the French (whose country is named after a Germanic tribe, the Franks, who conquered it during the Barbarian Migrations at the Fall of the Roman Empire,) or the Swiss, many of whom speak German. By contrast, southern Germany is more closely related to France and Switzerland than to Poland, but still more closely related to the Poles than Italians or Spaniards.

To be continued…