CHAPTER 1 THE EARLIEST PIRATES I suppose there are few words in use which at once suggest so much romantic adventure as the words pirate and piracy. You instantly conjure up in your mind a wealth of excitement, a clashing of lawless wills, and there pass before your eyes a number of desperate daredevils whose life and occupation are inseparably connected with the sea. The very meaning of the word, as you will find on referring to a Greek dictionary, indicates one who attempts to rob. In classical times there was a species of Mediterranean craft which was a light, swift vessel called a myoparo because it was chiefly used by pirates. Since the Greek verb pyraeo means literally to attempt, so it had the secondary meaning of to try one's fortune in thieving on sea. Hence a pirates, in Greek and a pirata, in Latin, signified a float the counterpart of a brigand or highwaymen on land. To many minds piracy conjures up visions that go back no further than the 17th century, but though it is true that during that period piracy attained unheard of heights in certain seas, yet the avocation of sea robbery dates back very much further. Robbery by sea is certainly one of the oldest professions in the world. I use the word profession advisedly, for the reason that in the earliest days to be a pirate was not the equivalent of being a pariah and an outcast. It was deemed just as honorable then to belong to a company of pirates as it is today to belong to the navy of any recognized power. It is amusing fact that if in those days two strange ships met on the high seas, and one of them hailing the other inquired if she were a pirate or a trader, the inquiry was neither intended nor accepted as an insult, but a correct answer would follow. It is a little difficult in these modern days of regular steamship routes and powerful liners, which have little to fear beyond fog and exceptionally heavy weather, to realize that every merchant ship sailed the seas with fear and trepidation. When she set forth from a port of lading there was little certainty that even if the ship herself reached the port of destination, her cargo would ever be delivered to the rightful receivers. The ship might be jogging along comfortably, heading well up toward her destined port, when out from the distance came a much faster and lighter vessel of smaller displacement and finer lines. In a few hours the latter would have overhauled the former. The scanty crew of the merchant man would have been thrown into the sea, or pressed into the pirate's service, or else taken ashore to the pirate's haunt and sold to slaves. The rich cargo of merchandise could be sold or bartered when the land was reached, and the merchant ship's sunk or left to wallow in the Mediterranean swell. It is obvious that because the freight ship had to be big-bellied to carry the maximum cargo, she was in most instances unable to run away from the swift moving pirate except in heavy weather. But in order to possess some means of defense it was not unusual for these peaceful craft to be provided with turrets of great height from which heavy missiles could be dropped on the attacking pirate. In the bowels, in the stern, and amid ships these erections could easily be placed and as quickly removed. And as a further aid oars would be got out in an endeavor to accelerate the ship's speed. For whilst the pirate relied primarily on oars, the trader relied principally on sail power. Therefore in fine settled weather, with a smooth sea, the low-lying piratical craft was at its best. It could be maneuvered quickly, it could dart in and out of little bays, it could shelter close into the shore under the lee of a friendly reef, and it was because of its low freeboard, not easy to discern at any great distance, unless the sea was literally smooth. But all through history this type of vessel has been shown to be at a disadvantage as soon as it comes on to blow and the unruffled surface gives way to high crests and deep furrows. It is impossible to explain the growth of piracy as it is to define precisely the call of the sea. A man is born with a bias in favor of the sea or he is not. There is no possibility of putting that instinct into him if he has not already been endowed with that attitude. So also we know from our own personal experience, every one of us, that while some of our friends fret and waste in sedentary pursuits, yet from the time they take to the sea or become explorers or colonizers they find their true metier. The call of the sea is the call of adventure in a specialized form. It has been said, with no little truth, that many of the yachtsmen of today, if they had been living in other ages, would have gone afloat as pirates or priveteers. And so if we want to find an explanation for the amazing historical fact that for century after century, in spite of all the efforts that many a nation made to suppress piracy, it revived and prospered, we can only answer that quite apart from the lust of wealth, there was at the back of all that love of adventure, that desire for exciting incident, that hatred of monotonous security which one finds in so many natures. An distinguished British admiral remarked the other day that it was his experience that the best naval officers were usually those who as boys were most frequently getting into disfavor for their adventurous escapades. It is, at any rate, still true that unless a man or boy has in him the real spirit of adventure, the sea, whether as a sport or profession, can have but little fascination for him. International law and the growth of navies have practically put an end to the progression of piracy, though private hearing would doubtless reassert itself in the next great naval war. But if you look throughout history you will find that certainly up to the 19th century, wherever there was a seafaring nation there too had flourished a band of pirates. Piracy went on for decade after decade in the Mediterranean till it linked that became unbearable and Rome had to take the most serious steps and use the most drastic measures to stamp out the nests of hornets. A little later you find another generation of sea robbers growing up and acting precisely as their forefathers. Still further on in the history you find the barbarian corsairs and their descendants being an irrepressible menace to Mediterranean shipping. For four or five hundred years, Galley's way-laid ships of the great European nations attacked them, murdered their crews, and plundered their leventine cargoes. Time after time were these corsairs punished. Time after time they rose again. In vain did the fleets of southern Christian Europe, or the ships of Elizabeth, or the Jacobian Navy go forth to quell them. Algiers and tunas were veritable plague spots in regard to piracy. Right on through time the northern coast of Africa was the hotbed of pirates. Not till Admiral Lord Exmouth in the year 1816 was sent to quell Algiers did Mediterranean piracy receive its death blow, though it lingered on for some little time later. The piracy is not confined to any particular nation or to any particular sea. Any more than the spirit of adventure is the exclusive endowment of any particular race. There have been notorious pirates in the North Sea, as in the Mediterranean. There have been European pirates in the Orient, just as there have been Moorish pirates in the English Channel. There have been British pirates on the waters of the West Indies as there have been of Madagascar. There have flourished pirates in the North, in the South, in the East and the West, in China, Japan, off the coast of Malibar, Borneo, America, and so on. The species of ships are often different. The racial characteristics of the sea rovers are equally distinct, yet there is still the same determined clashing of wills, the same desperate nature of the contests, the same exciting adventure, and in the following pages it will be manifest that in spite of differences of time and place, the romance of piratical incident lives on for the reason that human nature, at its basis, is very much alike the whole world over. But we must make a distinction between isolated and collected pirates. There is a great dissimilarity for instance between a pickpocket and a band of brigands, the latter work on a grander, bolder system. So it has always been with the robbers of the sea. Some have been brigands and some have been mere pickpockets. The grand pirates set to work on a big scale. It was not enough to lie and wait for single merchant ships. They swooped down on seaside towns and villages, carried off by sheer force the inhabitants and sold them into slavery. Whatever else of value might attract their fancy they also took away. If any important forces were sent against them, the contest resolved itself not so much into a punitive expedition as a piratical war. There was nothing petty in piracy on these lines. It had its proper rules, its own grades of officers and drill. Le Starches was the Greek name for the captain of a band of pirates. It was their splendid organization, their consummate skill as fighters that made them so difficult to quell. I have said that piracy was regarded as an honorable profession. In the earliest times this is true. The occupation of a pirate was deemed no less worthy than a man who gained his living on the sea or hunting on the land. Just as in Elizabethan age we find sons of some of the best English families going to sea on a roving expedition to capture Spanish treasure ships, so in classical times the Mediterranean pirates attracted to their ships adventurous spirits from all classes of society, from the most patrician to the most plebeian. The summons of the sea was as irresistible then as later on. But there were definite arrangements made for the purpose of sharing in any piratical success, so there was an incentive other than that of mere adventure which prompted men to become pirates. Today, if the navies of the great nations were to be drawn, and the policing of the seas to cease, it is pretty certain that those so disposed would presently revive piracy. Nothing is so inimical to piracy as settled peace and good government, but nothing is so encouraging to piracy as prolonged unsettlement in international affairs and weak administration. So it was that the incessant Mediterranean wars acted as a keen incentive to piracy. War breeds war, and the spirit of unrest on the sea affected the pirate no less than the regular fighting man. Seat brigandage was rampant. These daring robbers went roving over the sea wherever they wished. They waxed strong. They defied opposition. And there were special territories which these pirates referred to others. The Lyperian Isles, from about 580 BC to the time of the Roman conquest, were practically a republic of Greek Corsairs. Similarly, the Ionians and the Lycians were notorious for piratical activities. After the period of Thucydides, Corinth endeavored to put down piracy, but in vain. The irregularity went on until the conquest of Asia by the Romans, in spite of all the precautions that were taken. The Aegean Sea, the Pontus, the Adriatic, were the happy cruising grounds for the Corsairs. The pirate admiral, or as he was designated the Archiparates, with his organized fleet of assorted craft, was a deadly foe to encounter. Under his command were the Maio Parones, already mentioned, light and swift they darted across the sea. Then there were two, the Hemiolia, which were so-called because they were rowed with one and a half banks of oars. Next came the two banked Byremes, and the three banked Triremes, and with these four classes of ships the admiral was ready for any craft that might cross his wake. Merchantmen fled before him, warships by him were sent to the bottom, wherever he coasted there spread panic through the sea-girt towns. Even Athens itself felt a thrill of fear. Notorious too were the Cretan pirates, and for a long time the Etruscan Corsairs were a great worry to the Greeks of Sicily. The inhabitants of the Bolaric islands were especially famous for their piratical depredations, and for their skillful methods of fighting. Wherever a fleet was sent to attack them, they were able to inflict great slaughter by hurling vast quantities of stones with their slings. It was only when they came to close quarters with their aggressors the Romans, and the latter's sharp javelins began to take effect, that these islanders met their match and were compelled to flee in haste to the shelter of their coves. At the period which preceded the subversion of the Roman Commonwealth by Julius Caesar, there was an exceedingly strong community of pirates at the extreme eastern end of the Mediterranean. They hailed from that territory which is just in the bend of Asia Minor, and designated Cilicia. Here lived, when ashore, one of the most dangerous body of sea rovers recorded in the pages of history. It is amazing to find how powerful these Cilicians became, and as they prospered in piracy so their numbers were increased by fellow Corsairs from their neighbors the Syrians and Panfilians, as well as by many who came down from the shores of the Black Sea, and from Cyprus. So powerful indeed became these rovers that they controlled practically the whole of the Mediterranean from east to west. They made it impossible for peaceful trading craft to venture forth, and they even defeated several Roman officers who had been sent with ships against them. And so it went on until Rome realized that piracy had long ceased to be anything else but a most serious evil that needed firm and instant suppression. It was the ruin of overseas trade and a terrible menace in her own territory. But the matter was at last taken in hand. Im Antonius, proprietor, was sent with a powerful fleet against the Cilician Pirates. They were crushed thoroughly, and the importance of this may be gathered from the fact that on his return to Rome the conqueror was given an ovation. In the wars between Rome and Mithridides the Cilician Pirates rendered the latter excellent service. The long continuance of these wars and the civil war between Marius and Silla afforded the Cilicians a fine opportunity to increase both the numbers and strength. To give some idea of their power it is only necessary to state that not only did they take and rob all the Roman ships which they encountered, but they also voyaged among the islands and maritime provinces and plundered no fewer than 400 cities. They carried their depredations even to the mouth of the Tiber, and actually took away from then several vessels laden with corn. Bear in mind too that the Cilician Piratical fleet was no scratch squadron of a few antique ships. It consisted of a thousand vessels which were of great speed and very light. They were well manned by the most able seamen, and fought by trained soldiers, and commanded by expert officers. They carried an abundance of arms, and neither men nor officers were lacking in daring and prowess. When again it became expedient that these Cilicians should be dealt with it took no less a person than Pompey, assisted by fifteen admirals, to tackle them, but finally after a few months he was able to have the sea once more cleared at these rovers. We can well sympathize with the merchant seamen of those days. The perils of wind and wave were nothing compared with the fear of falling into the hands of powerful desperados, who not merely were all powerful afloat, but in their strong fortresses on shore were most difficult to deal with. With the Bolaric Islanders in the West, the Cilicians in the East, the Carthaginians in the South, the Illyrians along the Adriatic and their low, handy Liburnian galleys, there were pirates ready to encircle the whole of the Mediterranean Sea. It is worth noting for he who reads naval history must often be struck with the fact that an existing navy prevents war, but the absence of a navy brings war about, that as long as Rome maintained a strong navy, piracy died down, but so soon as she neglected her sea service, piracy grew up again. Commerce was interrupted both East and West. Numerous illustrious Romans were captured in either ransom to put to death, though some others were pressed into the service of the pirates themselves. By means of prisoners to work at the oars, by the addition of piratical neighbors and by mercenaries as well, a huge piratical community with a strong military and political organization continued to prevent the development of overseas trade. This piracy was only thwarted by keeping permanent Roman squadrons always ready. Of course there were pirates in these early times and waters other than the Mediterranean. On the west coast of Gaul, the Veneti had become very powerful pirates, and you will recollect how severely they tried Caesar, giving him more trouble than all the rest of Gaul put together. They owned such stalwart ships and were such able seamen that they proved most able enemies. During the time of the Roman Empire piracy continued also on the Black Sea and the North Sea, though the Mediterranean was now for the most part safe for merchant ships. But when the power of Rome declined, so proportionally did the pirates reappear in their new strength. There was no fearful navy to oppose them, and so once more they were able to do pretty much as they liked. But we must not forget that long before this they had ceased to be regarded as the equivalent of hunters and fishermen. They were, by common agreement, what Cicero had designated as enemies of the human race, and so they continued till the 19th century, with only temporary intervals of inactivity. The thousand ships which the Cilician pirates employed were disposed in separate squadrons. In different places they had their own naval magazines located, and during that period already mentioned when they were driven off the sea, they resisted capture by retreating ashore to their mountain fastnesses, until such a time as it was safe for them to renew their venture to float. When Pompey defeated them, he had under him a fleet of 270 ships. As the inscription, carried in the celebration of his triumph on his return to Rome, narrated, he cleared the maritime coasts of pirates and restored the dominion of the sea to the Roman people. But the pirates could always boast of having captured two Roman Praetors, and Julius Caesar, when a youth on his way to Rhodes to pursue his studies also fell into their hands. However, he was more lucky than many another Roman who, when captured, was hung up to the art arm, and the pirate ship went proudly on her way. In the declining years of the Roman Empire, the Goths came down from the north to the Mediterranean, where they got together fleets, became very powerful, and crossed to Africa, made piratical raids on the coast, and carried on long wars with the Romans. Presently, the Saxons in the northern waters of Europe made piratical descents on the coasts of France, Flanders, and Britain. Meanwhile, in the south, the Saracens descended upon Cyprus and Rhodes, which they took, seized many islands in the archipelago, and then proceeded to Sicily to capture Syracuse, and finally overran the whole of Barbary from Egypt in the east to the straits of Gibraltar in the west. From there, they crossed to Spain, and reduced the great part thereof, until under Ferdinand and Isabella, these moors were driven out of Spain, and compelled to settle once more on the north coast of Africa. They established themselves notably in Algiers, took to the sea, built themselves galleys, and, after living a civilized life in Spain for 700 years, became for the next three centuries a scourge of the Mediterranean, a terror to ships and men, inflicted all the cruelties which the fanaticism of the Muslim race is capable of, and cast thousands of Christians into the bonds of slavery. In many ways, these terrifying Moorish pirates, of which to this day some still go afloat in their craft off the north coast of Africa, became the successors of those Cilician and other corsairs of the classical age. In due course, we shall return to note the kind of piratical warfare which these expatriated moors waged for most of 300 years. But before we come to that period, let us examine into an epoch that preceded this. I am anxious to emphasise the fact that piracy is nearly as old as the ship herself. It is extremely improbable that the Egyptians were ever pirates, for the reason that, accepting the expedition to Punt, they confined their navigation practically to the Nile only. But as soon as men built sea-going vessels, then the instinct to rob and pillage on sea became as irresistible as on land. Might was right, and the weakest went to the bottom. Bearing this in mind and remembering that there was always a good deal of trade from the continent up the Thames to London, especially in Corn, and that there was considerable traffic between Gaul and Britain across the English Channel, it was but natural that the sea rovers of the north should exist no less than in the south. After Rome had occupied Britain, she established a navy which she called the Classes Britannica, and it cannot have failed to be effective in polishing the narrow seas and protecting commerce from wandering corsairs. We know very well that after Rome had evacuated Britain, and there was no navy to protect our shores, came the Angles and Saxons and Jutes. We may permissively regard these Northmen, who pillaged and plundered till the time of William the Conqueror and after, as pirates. In the sense that a pirate is one who not merely commits robbery on the high seas, but also makes descents on the coast for the purpose of pillage, we may call the Viking seamen pirates. But strictly speaking, they were a great deal more than this, and the object of this book is concerned rather with the incidence of the sea than the incursions into the land. Although the Vikings did certainly commit piracy both in their own waters and off the coasts of Britain, yet their depredations in disrespect, even if we could obtain adequate information thereof, would sink into insignificance before their greater conquests. For a race of men who first swooped down onto a strange coast, vanquished the inhabitants and then settled down to live among them are rather different from a body of men who lie in wait to capture ships as they proceed on their voyages. The growth of piracy in English waters certainly owed much to the sink ports. In these havens dwell the privileged class of seamen, who certainly for centuries were a very much favoured community. It was their privilege to do that which in the Mediterranean Cicero had regarded with so much disfavour. These men of the sink ports, according to Matthew of Paris, were commissioned to plunder as they pleased all the merchant ships as they passed up and down the English Channel. This was to be without any regard to nationality, with the exception that English ships were not to be molested. But French, Genoese, Venetian, Spanish or any others could be attacked at the will of the sink port seamen. Some persons might call this sort of thing by the title of privateering, yet it was really piracy and nothing else. You can readily imagine that with this impetus, thus given to a class of men who were not particularly prone to lawfulness, the practice of piracy on the waters that wash great Britain, grew at a great rate. Thus in the 13th century the French, the Scotch, Irish and Welsh fitted out ships, hung about the narrow seas till they were able to capture a well laden merchant man as their fat reward. So before long the English Channel was swarming with pirates, and during the reign of Henry III their numbers grew to an alarming extent. The net result was that it was a grave risk for commodities to be brought across the Channel, and so therefore the price of these goods rose. The only means of remedy was to increase the English fleet, and this at length was done in order to cope with the evil. But matters were scarcely better in the North Sea, and English merchant ships sailed in perpetual fear of capture. During the Middle Ages pirates were always hovering about for any likely ship, and the wool trade especially was interfered with. Matters became somewhat complicated when, as happened in the reign of Edward II, peaceable English ships were arrested by Norway for having been suspected, erroneously, of slaughtering a Norwegian knight, whereas the latter had been actually put to death by pirates. We marvel not a little, wrote Edward II in complaint to her queen as king of Norway, and are much disquieted in our cogitations, considering the grievances and oppressions, which, as we have been informed by pitiful complaints, are at this present more than in times past without any reasonable cause inflicted upon our subjects, which do usually resort unto your kingdom for traffic's sake. For the fact was that one nation was as bad as the other, but that whenever the one had suffered, then the other would lay violent hands on a ship that was merely suspected of having acted piratically. Anger that the loss to their own countrymen, they were prompted by revenge on alien seamen found in their own waters, and even lying quietly in their own havens, with their cargos of herrings. As an attempt to make the North Sea more possible for the innocent trading ships, the kings of England at different dates came to treaties with those in authority on the other side. Richard II, for example, made an agreement with the king of Prussia. In 1403 full restitution and recompense were demanded by the Chancellor of England from the Master General of Prussia for the sundry piracies and molestations offered of late upon the sea. Henry IV, writing to the Prussian Master General, admitted that, as well our as your merchants, have by occasion of pirates roving up and down the sea, sustained grievous loss. Finally it was agreed that all English merchant ships should be allowed liberty to enter Prussian ports without molestation. But it was further decided that if in the future any Prussian cargoes should be captured on the North Sea by English pirates and this merchandise taken into an English port, then the harbour master or governor was, if he suspected piracy, to have these goods promptly taken out of the English ship and placed in safekeeping. Between Henry IV and the Hanseatic towns a similar agreement was also made which bound the cities of Lübeck, Bremen, Hamburg, Sund and Greifswald. That convenient just and reasonable satisfaction and recompense might be made unto the injured and undamaged parties for all injuries, damages, grievances and drownings or manslaughter done and committed by the pirates in the narrow seas. It would be futile to weary the reader with a complete list of all these piratical attacks, but a few of them may here be instanced. About Easter time in the year 1394 a Hanseatic ship was hovering about the North Sea when she fell in with an English merchant man from Newcastle on Tyne. The latter's name was the Gordesere and belonged to a quartet of owners. She was, for those days, quite a big craft, having a burden of two hundred tons. Her value, together with that of her sails and tackle, amounted to the sum of four hundred pounds. She was loaded with a cargo of woolen cloth and red wine, being bound for Prussia. The value of this cargo, plus some gold and certain sums of money found aboard, aggregated two hundred marks. The Hanseatic ship was able to overpower the Gordesere, slew two of her crew, captured ship and contents, and imprisoned the rest of the crew for the space of three whole years. A hullcraft belonging to one Richard Horus and named the shiper Berlin of Prussia, was in the same year also attacked and robbed by Hanseatic pirates, goods to the value of one hundred sixty nobles being taken away. The following year a ship named the John Tutterbury was attacked by Hanseatics when off the coast of Norway, and goods consisting of wax and other commodities to the value of four hundred seventy six nobles were captured. A year later, and pirates of the same federation captured a ship belonging to William Terry of Hull, called the Koggle, with thirty woolen broad cloths and a thousand narrow cloths to the value of two hundred pounds. In thirteen ninety-eight the Trinity of Hull, laden with wax, oil and other goods, was captured by the same class of men of Norway. Dutch ships, merchant craft from the port of London, fishing vessels, Prussian traders, zealand, jarmouth, and other ships were constantly being attacked, pillaged and captured. In the months of September of the year thirteen ninety-eight a number of Hanseatic pirates way-laid a Prussian ship whose skipper was named Oralbeck. She carried a valuable cargo of woolen cloths which was the property of various merchants in Colchester. This the pirates took away with them, together with five Englishmen whom they found on board. The latter they thrust into prison as soon as they got them ashore, and of these two were ransomed subsequently for the sum of twenty English nobles, while another became blind owing to the rigors of his imprisonment. In thirteen ninety-four another Prussian ship, containing a number of merchants from Jarmouth and Norwich, was also captured off the Norwegian coast with a cargo of woolen goods and taken off by the Hanseatic pirates. The merchants were cast into prison and not allowed their liberty until the sum of one hundred marks had been paid for their ransom. Another vessel laden with the hides of oxen and sheep with butter, masks and spars and other commodities to the value of one hundred marks was taken in Long Sound, Norway. In June thirteen ninety-five another English ship laden with salt fish was taken off the coast of Denmark, the value of her hull, inventory and cargo amounting to one hundred and seventy pounds. The crew consisted of a master and twenty-five mariners, whom the pirates slew. There was also a lad found on board, and him they carried into Vismar with them. The most notorious of these Hanseatic pirates were two men named respectively Godikins and Sturtebeker, whose efforts were as untiring as they were successful. There is scarcely an instance of North Sea piracy at this time in which these two men or their accomplices do not figure, and it was these same men who attacked the ship named the Dogger. The letter was skippered by a man named Gervais Kett, and she was lying at anchor while her crew were engaged fishing. The Hanseatic pirates, however, swept down on them, took away with them a valuable cargo of fish, beat and wounded the master and crew of the Dogger, and caused the letter to lose their fishing for that year, being undamaged thereby to the sum of two hundred nobles. In the year 1402, other Hanseatic corsairs, while cruising about near Plymouth, captured a Yarmouth barge named the Michael, the master of which was one Robert Rigwaze. She had a cargo of salt and a thousand canvas cloth. The ship and goods being captured, the owner, a man named Yu Upfen, complained that he was the loser to the extent of eight hundred nobles, and the master and mariners assessed the loss of wages, canvas and armor at two hundred nobles. But there was no end to the daring of these corsairs of the North. In the spring of 1394 they proceeded with a large fleet of ships to the town of Norburn in Norway, and having taken the place by assault they captured all the merchants therein, together with their goods and kettles, burned their houses and put their persons up to ransom. Twenty-one houses to the value of four hundred and forty nobles were destroyed, and goods to the value of one thousand eight hundred and fifteen pounds were taken from the merchants. With all this lawlessness on the sea and the consequent injury to overseas commerce it was none too soon that Henry IV took steps to put down the most serious evil. We cannot but feel sorry for the long-suffering North Sea fishermen, who in addition to having to ride out bad weather in clumsy leaky craft, and having to work very hard for their living, were liable at any time to see a pirate ship approaching them over the top of the waves. You remember the famous Doga Bank incident a few years ago, when one night the North Sea trawlers found themselves being shelled by the Russian Baltic fleet. Well, in much the same way were the medieval ancestors of these Harley fishermen surprised by pirates when least expecting them, and when most busily occupied in pursuing their legitimate calling. The fisherman was like a magnet to the pirates, because his catch of fish had only to be taken to the nearest port and sold. That was the reason why in 1295 Edward had been induced to send three ships of Yarmus across the North Sea to protect the herring ships of Holland and Zealand. The following incident well illustrates the statement that, in spite of all the efforts which were made to repress piracy, yet it was almost impossible to attain such an object. The month is July, and the year 1327, the scene being the English Channel. Picture to your mind the beamy, big-bellied, clumsy ship with one mast and one great square sail. She has come from water-fort in Ireland, where she has taken on board a rich cargo consisting of wool, hides and general merchandise. She has safely crossed the turbulent Irish Sea. She has wallowed her way through the Atlantic swell, round land's end, and found herself making good headway up the English Channel in the summer breeze. Her port of destination is Bruge, but she will never get there. For from the eastward have come the famous pirates of the Sink Ports, and of the Isle of Wight they fall in with the merchant ship. The rovers soon sight her, come up alongside, board her, and relieve her of forty-two sacks of wool, twelve dickers of hides, three pipes of salmon, two pipes of cheese, one bale of cloth, to say nothing of such valuable articles as silver-plate, maser-cups, jewels, sparrow-hawks, and other goods of the total value of six hundred pounds. Presently the pirates bring their spoil into the downs below Sandwich, and dispose of it as they prefer. End of chapter 2 Chapter 3 of the Romance of Piracy This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Dan Ficklin The Romance of Piracy by Edward Cable Chatterton Chapter 3 Piracy in the Early Tudor Times The kind of man who devotes his life to robbery at sea is not the species of humanity who readily subjects himself to laws and ordinances. You may threaten him with terrible punishments, but it is not by these means that you will break his spirit. He is like the Gypsy or the Vagrant. He has in him an overwhelming longing for wandering and adventure. It is not so much agreed for gain, which prompts the pirate, any more than the Land Tramp finds his long march inspired by wealth. But some impelling blind force does it work within. And so not all the treaties and agreements, not all the menaces of death could avail to keep these men from pursuing the occupation which their fathers and grandfathers had for so many years been employed in. Therefore, piracy was quite as bad in the 16th century as it had been in the Middle Ages. The dwellers on either side of the English Channel were ever ready to pillage each other's ships and property. About the first and second decade of the 16th century, the Scots rose to some importance in the art of sea robbery, and some were promptly taken and executed. In vain did Henry VIII write to Francis I, saying that complaints had been made by English merchants, their ships had been pirated by Frenchmen pretending to be Scots, for which redress could not be obtained in France. In 1581 matters had become so bad, and piracy was so prevalent, that commissioners were appointed to make inquisitions concerning this illegal warfare around our coasts. This Count Lyle, Vice Admiral of England, and others were appointed to cede to the problem. So cunning had these rovers become that it was no easy affair to capture them. But in this same year a notorious pirate named Kel Wanton was taken in the Isle of Man, while another, Demelton by name, who was one of his accomplices, fled with the rest of the crew and shipped to Grimsby. Sometimes the very ships which had been sent by the king against the pirates actually engaged in pillaging themselves. There was at least one instance about this time of some royal ships being unable to resist the temptation to plunder the richly laden Flemish ships. But after complaint was made, the royal reply came that the Fleming should be compensated, and the plunder was punished. It was all very well to set a thief to catch a thief. But there were few English seamen of any experience, who had not done some piracy at some time of their career. And when they at last formed the crews of preventative ships, and got weary of waiting for pirate craft to come along, it was too much to expect them to remain idle on the seas when a rich merchant man went sailing past. Sometimes the pirates would waylay a whole merchant fleet, and if the latter were sailing light, would relieve the fleet of their victuals, their clothes, their anchors, cables, and sails. But it was not merely to the North Sea, nor to the English Channel, that the English pirates confined themselves. In October 1533 they captured a Biscayne ship off the coast of Ireland, and during the reign of Henry VIII there was an interesting incident, connected with a ship named the Santa Maria de Cy. This craft belonged to one Peter Alvis, a portangale, who hired a mariner, William Fellop, to pilot a ship from Tenby to Basta Bill Haven. But whilst off the Welsh coast, a piratical bark named the Fertescoese, containing 35 desperate corsairs, attacked the Santa Maria and completely overpowered her. Alvis they promptly got rid of by putting him somewhere on the Welsh coast, and then they proceeded to sail the ship to Cork, where they sold her to the mayor and others. The value of the captured craft and goods being 1,524 crowns. Alvis did not take this assault with any resignation, but naturally used his best endeavours to have the matter set right. From the King's Council he obtained a command to the mayor of Cork for restitution. But such was the lawlessness of the time that this was of no avail. The mayor, whose name was Richard Gawillies, protested that the pirates had told him that they captured the ship from the Scots and not from the portangale, and he added that he would spend one hundred pounds rather than make a restitution. But stricter vigilance caused the arrest of some of these pirates. Six of them were sentenced to death in the Admiralty Court of Bologna. Eleven others were condemned to death in the Guildhall, London, and in 1537 a ship was lying at Windchelsea engaged to bell the mayor for 35 pounds for the piracies committed in her, for she had been captured after having robbed a gaskin merchantman of a cargo of wines. The finest of the French sailors for many a century until even the present day have ever been the Bretons, and just as in the 18th century the most expert sailor men on our coasts are the greatest smugglers, so in Tudor times the pick of all seamen were sea rovers. About the time of Lent, 1537, a couple of Breton pirate ships cost a great deal of anxiety to our west countrymen. One of the two had robbed an English ship off the Cornish coast and pillaged his cargo of wine. From Easter time till August these rovers hung about the Welsh coast, sometimes coming ashore for provisions and most probably also to sell their ill-gotten cargoes, but for the most part remaining at sea. It would seem from the historical records that originally there had only been one Breton ship that had sailed from St. Malo, but having the good fortune to capture a fishing craft belonging to Milford Haven, the crew had been split up into two. Presently the number of these French pirates increased and there was quite a fleet of them cruising about the Welsh coast. A merchant ship that had loaded a fine cargo at Bristol, bound across the Bay of Biscay, had been boarded before the voyage had little more than begun. For week after week these men robbed every ship that came past them, but especially were they biding their time waiting for the English, Irish and Welsh ships who were wont about this period of year to come to St. James Fair at Bristol. However, in the meanwhile the men of the west were becoming much more alert and were ready for any chance that might occur. And a Bristol man named Bowen, after 14 Breton pirates had already come ashore near Tenby to obtain vitals, acted with such smartness that he was able to have the whole lot captured and put into prison. And John Weintraer, another Bristolian, knowing that the pirates were hovering about for those ships bound to the fair, promptly manned a ship, embarked 50 soldiers, as well as able seamen, and cruised about ready to swoop down on the first pirate ship which showed up on the horizon. The full details of these men and what they did would make interesting reading if they were obtainable, but we know that of the above mentioned 14, one, John Doolar Korak, was captain of the Breton craft. On being arrested he stoutly denied that he'd ever spoiled English ships. That was most certainly a bare-faced lie, and presently Peter Dramue, one of his own mariners, confessed that he himself had robbed one Englishman, whereupon Ler Korak made a confession that as a matter of fact he had taken ships' ropes, sailors wearing apparel, five pieces of wine, a quantity of fish, a gold crown and money, and 11 silver half-pence or pence, as well as four daggers and a cuvacheur. It was because the English merchants complained that they lost so much of their imports and exports by depredations from the ships of war belonging to Biscay, Spain, the Low Countries, Normandy, Brittany, and elsewhere, that Henry VIII had been propelled upon to send Sir John Dudley, his vice admiral, to sea with a small fleet of good ships. Dudley's orders were to cruise between the Downs on the East and St. Michael's Mount on the West, in other words the whole length of the English Channel, according as the winds should serve. In addition he was to stand off and on between Ustrand and Skilly, and so guard the entrance to the Channel. Furthermore he was to look in at the Isle of Lundy in the Bristol Channel, for both Lundy and the Skillies were famous pirate haunts, and after having done so he was to return and keep the narrow seas. Dudley was especially admonished to be on the lookout to secure any English merchant ships, and should he meet with any foreign merchant craft which, under the pretense of trading, were actually robbing the king's subjects, he was to have these foreigners treated as absolute pirates and punished accordingly. For the state of piracy had become so bad that the king can no longer suffer it. So also Sir Thomas Dudley, as well as Sir John, were busily employed in the same preventative work. On the 10th of August of that same year, 1537, he wrote to Cromwell that he had at Harwich arrested a couple of Frenchmen who two years previously had robbed a poor English skipper's craft off the coast of Normandy, and this Englishman had in vain sued in France for a remedy, since the pirates could never be captured. But there were so many of these corsairs being now taken that it was a grave problem as to how they should be dealt with. If they were all committed to ward, wrote Sir Thomas, as your letters direct, they would fill the jail. Then he adds, they would feign go and leave the ship behind them which only contains ordinance and no goods or victuals to find themselves with. If they go to jail, they are likely to perish for hunger, for Englishmen will do no charity to them.  Eleven days later came the report from Sir John Dudley of his experiences in the channel. He stated that while on his way home he encountered a couple of Breton ships in the vicinity of St. Helens, Isle of Wight, where he believed they were lying in wait for two Cornish ships that were within Portchamont Haven laden with ten to the value of three thousand pounds. Portsmouth is, of course, just opposite St. Helens, and on more than one occasion in naval history was the latter found a convenient anchorage by hostile ships waiting for English craft to issue forth from the mainland. But when these Breton pirates aspired Dudley's ships coming along under sail, they made in with the Portchmouth, where Dudley's men promptly boarded them and placed them under arrest, with the intention of bringing them presently to the Thames. Dudley had no doubt whatever that these were pirates, but at a later date the French ambassador endeavored to show that there was no foundation for such a suspicion. These two French crafts, he sought to persuade, were genuine merchantmen who would discharge their cargo at St. Walerys, that is to say St. Valerys or Somme, but had been driven to the Isle of Wight by bad weather, adding doubtless as a subtle hint that they had actually rescued an Englishman chased by a Spaniard. It is possible that the Frenchmen were telling the truth, though unless the wind had come southerly and so made it impossible for these bluff-bowed craft to beat into the port, it is difficult to believe that they could not have run into one of their own havens. At any rate it was a yarn which Dudley's sailors found not easy to accept. This was no isolated instance of the capture of Breton craft. In the year 1532, a Breton ship named the Michele, whose owner was one Haman Gillard, her master being Nicholas Barb of St. Malo, was encountered by a crew of English seamen who entertained no doubts whatsoever as to her being anything else than a pirate. Their suspicions were made doubly sure when they found her company to consist of nine Bretons and five Scots. They arrested her at sea, and when examined she was found well laden with wool, cloth, and sold hides. Some French pirate ships even went so far as to wear the English flag of St. George, with the Red Cross on a white ground. This not unnaturally infuriated English seamen, especially when it was discovered that the Bretons had also carried Englishmen as their pilots and chief mariners, and were training them to become experts in piracy. But there were times when the English seamen and merchants were able to get their own back with interest, as the following incident will show. At the beginning of June in the year 1538, an English merchant, Henry Davy, created a London ship named the Clement, which was owned by one Greenberry, who lived in Tame Street, and dispatched her with orders to proceed to the Bay and Brittany. She set forth under the command of a man named Lilac, the ship's purser being William Scarlet, a London cloth worker. Seven men formed her crew, but when off Marguerite they took on board nine more. They then proceeded down Channel and took on board another four from the shore, but aspiring a flimmy ship of war they deemed it prudent to get hold of the coast of Normandy as soon as possible. In the Main Sea, by which I understand the English Channel near the mainland of the continent, they described coming over the waves three ships, and these were found to be Breton merchantmen. This caused some discussion on board of the Clement, and Davy, the charterer who had come aboard the ship, remarked to the skipper Lilac that they had lost as much as 60 pounds in goods, which had been captured by Breton pirates at an earlier date, and had never been able to obtain compensation in France in spite of all their endeavors. Anyone who has any imagination, and a knowledge of seafaring human nature, can easily picture Lilac in his crew cordially agreeing with Davy's point of view, and showing more than a mere passive sympathy. The upshot of the discussion was that they resolved to take the law into their own hands, and capture one of these three ships. The resolution was put into effect, so that before long they had become possessed of the craft. The Breton crew were rowed ashore in a boat and left there, and after collecting the goods left behind, the Englishmen stowed them in the hold of the Clement. A prize crew consisting of a man whose name was Cornelies, and four seamen, were placed in charge of the captured ship, which now got underway. The Clement, too, resumed her voyage, and made for Perrin and Cornwall, where she was able to sell at a good price the goods taken out of the Breton. The gross amount obtained was divided up among the captors, and though the figures may not seem very large, yet the sum represented the equivalent of what would be today about ten times that amount of money. Henry Davy, being the charterer, received seventeen pounds. The master, the mate, the quartermaster, and the purser received each thirty shillings, while the mariners got twenty shillings apiece. Lilac and nine of the crew then departed, while Davy, Scarlet, Leverith, the carpenter, and two others got the ship underway, sailed up Channel, and brought the Clement back to the Thames, where they delivered to the wife of the owner. But Englishmen were not always so fortunate, and the North Sea pirates were still active, in spite of the efforts which had been made by the English kings in previous centuries. In 1538 the cargo ship George Modi put to sea with goods belonging to a company of English merchant adventurers, consisting of Sir Ralph Warren, Good Mr. Locke, and Roland Hill, among others. She never reached her port of destination, however, for the Norwegian pirates pillaged her and caused a loss to the adventurers of ten thousand pounds, whereupon after complaint had been made, Cromwell was invoked to obtain letters from Henry VIII to the kings of Denmark, France, and Scotland that search might be duly made. There was, in fact, a good deal of luck, even yet, as to whether a ship would ever get to harbor whether she was sent. In September 1538 we find Walter Herbert complaining that twice since Candlemas he has been robbed by Breton pirates, but a week later it is recorded that some pirates, who had robbed peaceable ships bound from Iceland, had been chased by John Chatterton and others of Porthmouth and captured about this time. And it was not always that Englishmen dealt with these foreigners in any merciful manner, regardless of right or wrong. I have already emphasized the fact that as regards to the question of legality, there was little to choose between the seamen of any maritime nation. Rather it was a question of opportunity, and the very men who today complain bitterly of the robbery of their ships and cargoes might tomorrow be found performing piracy themselves. A kind of sea vendetta went on, and in the minds of the mariners the only sin was that of being found out. So we noticed that in the spring of 1539, an instance of a Breton ship being captured by English corsairs, who, according to the recognized customs of the sea, forthwith threw overboard the French sailors. These were all drowned except one who, as if by miracle, swam six miles to shore. So says the ancient record, though it is difficult to believe that even a strong swimmer could last so long after being badly knocked about. The Bretons had their revenge this time, for complaint was made to the chief justices, who within 15 days had the culprits arrested and condemned, and six of them were executed on the 19th of May. Before the end of the month, Francis I wrote to thank the English king for so promptly dealing with these culprits. Bearing in mind the interest which Henry VIII took in nautical matters, and in the welfare of his country generally, recollecting to the determination with which he pursued any project to the end, when once his mind had been made up, we need not be surprised to find that a few months later in this year, this resolute monarch against sent ships, this time a couple of barks of 120 and 90 tons respectively, well manned and ordnanced, to scour the seas for these pirate pests that inflicted so many serious losses on the Tudor merchants. A little earlier in that year, Vaughn had written to Cromwell that he had spoken with one who had lately been a common passenger, in Hoy's between London and Antwerp, and knew of certain pirates who intended to capture the merchant ships plying between these two ports. Valuable warning was given concerning one of these roving craft. She belonged to Hans von Meglin, who had fitted out a ship of portage of twenty lass and forty-five tons berthen. She was manned by a crew of thirty. Her halt was painted black with pitch. She had no forespirit, and her foremass leaned forward like a loadman's boat. Loadman was the old word for pilot, the man who hold the lead. Cromwell was advised that this craft would proceed first to Oxfordness, the natural landfall for a vessel to make when bound across the North Sea from the Sheldah, and then she would proceed south and lie and wait for ships at the mouth of the Thames. In order to be ready to pillage either the inward or outward bound craft which traded with London, this pirate would have her abound off the White Stable, Wittstable. Vaughn's informant thought that sometimes, however, she would change her locality to the Melton shore, in order to avoid suspicion, and he advised that it would be best to capture her by means of three or four well manned oyster boats. It was also another Easterling, that is one from the east of Germany or the Baltic, pirate who had received his commission from the grave of Odenburg. This rover was named Francis Beam, and was now at Canfire with a ship waiting for the grave of Odenburg's return from Brussels with money. But the warning news came in time, and in order to prevent the English merchant ships from falling into the sea rover's hands, the former were ordered by proclamation to remain in Antwerp, from Ash Wednesday till Easter. End of Chapter 3. Recording by Dan Ficklin Chapter 4 of the Romance of Piracy. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by A. Brian Johnson, from Kent, Ohio. The Romance of Piracy by Edward Keebold-Chatterton. Chapter 4. The Corsairs of the South When, in the year 1516, Hadrian Cardinal St. Crygon wrote to Wolsey, bitterly lamenting that, from Teresina, right away to Pisa, pirates consisting of Turks and African moors were swarming the sea, he was scarcely guilty of any exaggeration. Multifarious and murderous though the pirates of Northern Europe had long since shown themselves, yet it is the Mediterranean, which throughout history and more especially during the 16th century, has earned the distinction of being the favorite and most eventful sphere of robbery by sea. You may ask how this came about. It was no longer the case of the Old Sicilians or the Balyric Islanders coming into activity once more. On the contrary, the last mentioned people, far from being pirates in the 16th century, were actually pillaged than pillagers. A new element had now been introduced, and we enter upon a totally different sphere of the practical history. Before we seek to inquire into the origin and development of this new force, which comes across the pages of history, let us bear in mind the change which had come over the Mediterranean. During the classical times, piracy was indeed bad enough because, among other things, it interfered so seriously with the corn ships, which carried the means of sustenance. But in those days, the number of freight ships of any kind was infinitesimal compared with the enormous number of fighting craft that were built by the Mediterranean nations. And however much Greece and Rome labored to develop the warlike galley, yet the evolution of the merchant ship was sadly neglected, partly no doubt because of the risks which a merchant ship ran, and partly because the centuries of fighting evoked little encouragement for a ship of commerce. During the centuries which followed the downfall of the Roman Empire, it must not be supposed that the sea was bereft of pirates. As we have already seen, the decay of Rome was commensurate with the revival of piracy, but with the gradual spread of southern civilization, the importance of and the demand for commercial ships, as differentiated from fighting craft, increased to an unheard of extent. No one requires to be reminded of the rise to great power of Venice and Genoa and Spain. They became great overseas traders within limits, and dispostulated the ships in which goods could be carried. So it came to this, that crossing and recrossing the Mediterranean, there were more big-bellied ships full of richer cargoes and traversing the sea with greater regularity than had ever been in the history of the world. And as there will always be robbers when given the opportunity, either by sea or by land, irrespective of race or time. So when this amount of wealth was now afloat, the sea robber had every incentive to get rich quickly, by means that appealed in the strongest terms to an adventurous temperament. In Italy, the purely warlike ship had become so obsolete that, in the opinion of some authorities, it was not till about the middle of the 9th century that these began to be built, at any rate as regards to that great maritime power, Venice. She had been too concerned with the production and exchange of wealth to center her attention on any species of ship, other than those which would carry freight. But so many defeats had she endured at the hands of the Saracens, and pirates that ships specially suitable for combat had from the year 841 to be built. The Saracens hailed from Arabia, and it is notable that at that time, the Arabian sailors who used to sail across the Indian Ocean were far and away the most scientific navigators in the whole world. Many of their Arabic terms still are surviving in nautical terminology to this day. Indeed, the modern mariner, who relies so much on nautical instruments, scarcely realizes how much he owed to these early seamen. Just as the Sicilians and others had in olden times harassed the shores of the Mediterranean, so now the Saracens made frequent incursions in Cisardinia, Corsica, Sicily, as well as intercepting the ships of the Adriatic. Let us remember that in both the north and south of Europe, the sailing seasons for century after century were limited to that period which is roughly indicated between the months of April and the end of September. Therefore, the pirate knew that if he confines his attentions to that period, and within certain sea areas, he would be able to encompass practically the whole of the world's seaborn trade. The sailing periods were no arbitrary arrangement. They were part of the maritime legislation, and only the most daring and at the same time, most lawless merchant skippers ventured forth in the offseason. Realizing that the mariner had in any lengthy voyage to contend not merely with bad weather, but probably with pirates, the merchant pilots were instructed to know how to avoid them. For instance, their main object should be to make the merchant ship as little conspicuous on the horizon as possible. Thus, after getting clear of the land, the white sail should be lowered and a black one hoisted instead. They were warned that it was especially risky to change sail at break of day, when the rising sun might make this action easily observable. A man was to be sent off to scan the sea, looking for these rovers and keep a good look out. That black sail was called the wolf, because it had the color and cunning of such an animal. At night, too, similar precautions were employed against any danger or practical attack. So that the boat's wane was not even allowed to use his whistle, nor the ship's bell to be sounded. Everyone knows how easily a sound carries on the sea, especially by night, so the utmost care was to be exercised lest a pirate, hovering about, might have the rich merchant ship's presence betrayed to her avaricious ears. But the Saracens, whose origin I have just mentioned, must not be confused with the barbarian corsairs. It is with the latter, the grand pirates of the south, that I pass on now to deal. So powerful did they become, that it took the effort of the great maritime powers of Europe to the first quarter of the 19th century, before they could exterminate this scourge.  If this statement should seem to any reader somewhat incredible, I would refer him to the captain of any modern steamship who habitually passes that coast. And I would beg also to call his attention to the incident a few years ago, that occurred to the famous English racing yacht, Isla, which was lying be calmed somewhere between Spain and Africa. But for a lucky breeze springing up, her would-be assailants might have captured a very fine prize. I shall use the word Muslim to mean Muslim or Mohammedan or Moor, and I shall ask the reader to carry his mind back to the time when Ferdinand and Isabella turned the Moors out from Spain and sent them across the straits of Gibraltar back to Africa. For 700 years these Moors had lived in the Iberian Peninsula. It must be admitted in fairness that these Moors were exceedingly gifted intellectually, and that there are ample evidences in Spain to this day of their accomplishments. On the other hand, it is perfectly easy to appreciate the desire of a Christian government to banish these Mohammedans from a Catholic country. Equally comprehensible is the bitter hatred which these Moors forever after manifested against all Christians of any nation, but against the Spanish more especially. What were the Spanish Moors now expatriated to do? They spread themselves along the North African coast, but it was not immediately that they took to the sea. When however they did so accustomed themselves, it was not as traitors, but as pirates of the worst and most cruel kind. The date of their explosion from Granada was 1492, and within a few years of this, they had set to work to become avenged. The type of craft which they favored was of the galley species, a vessel that was of great length in proportion to her extreme shallowness. And was manned by a considerable number of oarsmen. Sail power was employed, but only as auxiliary rather than of main reliance. Such a craft was light, easily and quickly maneuvered, could float in creeks and bays close to the shore, or could be drawn up to the beach if necessary. In all essential respects, she was the direct lineal descendant of the old fighting galleys of Greece and Rome, from about the beginning of the 16th century to the battle of Lepanto in 1571. The Muslim Corsair was at his best as a sea rover and a powerful racial force, and if he was still a pest to shipping after that date, yet his activities were more of a desultory nature. Along the barbarian coast at different dates, he made himself strong, though of these strongholds, Algiers remained for the longest time the most notorious. In considering these Muslim Corsairs, one must think of men who were as brutal as they were clever, who became the greatest galley tacticians which the world has ever seen. Their greed and lust for power and property were commensurate with their ability to obtain these. Let it not be supposed for one moment that during the grand period, these moreish pirate leaders were a mere ignorant and uncultured number of men. On the contrary, they possessed all the instincts of a clever diplomatist, united the ability of a great admiral and an autocratic monarch. Dominating their very existence was their bitter hatred of Christians, either individually or as nations. And though a careful distinction must be made between these barbarian Corsairs and the Turks, who were often confused in the 16th century accounts of these rovers. Yet from a very early stage, the moreish pirates and the Turks assisted each other. You have only to remember that they were both Muslims. To remind yourself that the downfall of Constantinople in 1453 gave an even keener incentive to harass Christians. And to recollect that though the Turks were great fighters by land, yet they were not seamen, they had an almost illimitable quantity of men to draw upon. And for this as well as other reasons, it was to the more's interests that there should be a close association with them. During the 15th and especially the 16th centuries, there was in general European use a particular word, which instantly suggested a certain character that would stink in the nostrils of any Christian, be he under the domination of Elizabeth or Charles the Fifth. This word was renegade, which of course is derived from the Latin nego I deny. Renegade or as the Elizabethan sailors often used it, renegado, signifies an apostate from the faith, a deserter or turncoat. But it was applied in those days almost exclusively to the Christian who had so far betrayed his religion as to become a Muslim. In the 15th century, a certain Balkan renegade was exiled from Constantinople by the Grand Turk. From there, he proceeded to the southwest, took up his habitation in the island of Lesbos in the Aegean Sea, married a Christian widow, and became the father of two sons, named respectively Urech and Keredin. The renegade being a seaman, it was natural that the two sons should be brought up to have the same avocation. Having regard to the ancestry of these two men, and bearing in mind that Lesbos had long been notorious for its peretical inhabitants, the reader will in no wise be surprised to learn that these two sons resolved to become pirates too. They were presently to reach a state of notoriety. Which time can never expunge from the pages of historical criminals. For the present let us devote our attention to the elder brother, Urech. We have little space to deal with the events of his full life, but this brief sketch may suffice. The connection of these two brothers with the banished Moors is that of organizers and leaders of a potential force of pirates. Urech, having heard of the success which the Moorish galleys were now attaining, of the wonderful prizes which they had carried off from the face of the sea, felt the impulse of ambition and responded to the call of the wild. So we come to the year 1504 and we find him in the Mediterranean, longing for a suitable base once he could operate, where too he could haul his galleys ashore during the winter and refit. For a time, Tunis seemed to be the most luring spot in every way, and strategically, it was ideal for the purpose of rushing out and intercepting the traffic passing between Italy and Africa. He came to terms with the Sultan of Tunis, and in return for one-fifth of the booty obtained, Urech was permitted to use this as his headquarters. And from here, he began with great success to capture Italian galleys, bringing back to Tunis both booty and aristocratic prisoners for perpetual exile. The women were cast into the Sultan's harem, and the men were chained to the benches of the galleys. One incident alone would well illustrate the daring of Urech, who had not been joined by his brother. The story is told by Mr. Stanley Lane Poole in his history of barbarian corsairs. That one day, when off Elba, two galleys belonging to Pope Julius II were coming along, laden with goods from Genoa for Civitavetia. The disparity and the daring may be realized when we state that each of these galleys was twice the size of Urech's craft. The papal galleys had become separated, and this made matters easier for the corsair. In spite of the difference in size, he was determined to attack. His Turkish crew, however, were monstrated and thought it was madness, but Urech answered this protestation by hurling most of the oars overboard, thus making escape impossible. They had to fight or die. This was the first time that Turkish corsairs had been seen off Elba, and as the papal galley came on and saw the turbaned heads, a spirit of consternation spread throughout the ship. The corsair galley came alongside. There was a volley of firing. The Turkish men leapt aboard, and before long the ship and the Christians were captured. The Christians were sent below, and the papal ship was now manned by Turks who disguised themselves in the Christians' clothes, and now they were off to pursue the second galley. As they came up to her, the latter had no suspicion, but a shower of arrows and shot, followed by another short, sharp attack, made her also a captive. Into tunis came the ships, and the capturer made both barbarian corsair and the whole of Christendom alike. The fame of Urech spread, and along the whole coast of North Africa, he was regarded with a wonder, mingled with the utmost admiration. He became known by the name Barbara Rosa, owing to his own physical appearance the Italian word Rosa, signifying red, and barba, meaning a beard. He followed up this success by capturing next year a Spanish ship with 500 soldiers, and there were other successes, so that in five years he had eight vessels. But tunis had now become too small for him, so for a time he moved the island of Jerba on the east coast of tunis, and from there he again harassed Italy. Such was the fame of Barbara Rosa that he was invited to help the Moors. It chanced that the Muslim king of Bujea had been driven out of his city by the Spaniards, and the exile appealed to Barbara Rosa to assist him in regaining his own. The reward offered to the Turk was that, in the event of victory, Barbara Rosa should henceforth be allowed the free use of Bujea, the strategic advantage of this port, being that it commanded the Spanish sea. The Turk accepted the invitation on these terms, and having now a dozen galleys with ample armament, in addition to 1,000 Turkish soldiers, as well as a number of renegades and Moors, he landed before the town in August of 1512. Here he found the king ready with his 3,000 troops, and they proceeded to storm the Bastion, in which an all too weak Spanish garrison had been left. Still, for eight days the Spaniards held out, and then when a breach was made and a fierce assault was being carried out, Barbara Rosa had the misfortune to have his left arm amputated. So, Bujea being now left alone, Barbara Rosa and his brother put to sea again. They had not won the victory, but they had captured a rich Genoese galley full of merchandise. Barbara Rosa took her back with him to his headquarters, and while he recovered from his wounds, his brother, Keridin, acted in his stead. Not unnaturally, the Genoese were anchored at the loss of their fine caliote, and sent forth Andrea Doria, the greatest Christian admiral, with a dozen galleys to punish the Turks. The Christians landed before Tunis, drove Keridin back into Tunis, and took away to Genoa one half of Barbara Rosa's ships. Keridin now proceeded to Jerba to build other ships as fast as possible, and as soon as his wounds allowed him, Barbara Rosa here joined him. Meanwhile, the Moors were still chafing at their inability to get even with the Spaniards, and once more an attempt was made to take Bujea, although unsuccessfully, and the Corsairs' ships were burnt lest they might fall into the hands of the enemy. At length, the Barbara Rosa's resolved to quit Tunis, and Jerba, for they had now chosen to settle at Jadil, 60 miles to the east of Bujea. Their fame had come before them. The inhabitants were proud to welcome the brother Corsairs, who had done many wonderful things by land and sea, and before long, the elder Barbara Rosa was chosen as their Sultan. In 1516 died Ferdinand, and about this time, the Algerian Moors declined any longer to pay tribute to Spain. To Barbara Rosa came an invitation to aid these inhabitants of Algiers in driving the Spanish garrison from their fort. The invitation was accepted. Six thousand men and sixteen galliots were got together. Arrived before the fortress of Algiers, Barbara Rosa offered a safe conduct to the garrison, if they would surrender. But the latter's reply was merely to remind the Corsair of Bujea. Then, for twenty days, Barbara Rosa paddered away at the fortress, but without making a breach. And meanwhile, the Moors began to regret that they had asked the Red Beard to aid them. But it would be less easy to turn them out now that once these daredevils had set foot on their territory. Barbara Rosa knew this, and waxed insolent. The Algerians made common calls with the soldiers in the fortress, and a general rising against the Red Beard was planned. But they had reckoned without their guest. For Barbara Rosa had spies at work, and became informed of this plot. Whilst at prayers on Friday in the mosque, Barbara Rosa had the gates closed. The conspirators brought before them one by one, and then, after twenty-two of them had been put to death, there was an end to this plotting against the Corsair of Lesbos. Barbara Rosa increased in power, in the number of his galliots, in the extent of his territory, and in the number of his subjects, so that by now, he had become the Sultan of Middle Barbary. Practically the whole of that area, marked on our modern maps of Algeria, was under his way. Step by step, leaping from one success to another, ignoring his occasional reverses, he had risen from a mere common pirate to the rank of a powerful Sultan. So potent had he become, in fact, that he was able to make treaties with other barbarian sultans. And all the summer season, his galleys were scouring the sea, bringing back increased wealth and more unfortunate Christian prisoners. Richly laden merchant ships from Genoa, from Naples, from Venice, from Spain, set forth from home, and neither the ships nor their contents were ever permitted to return or to reach their ports of destination. However, the time came when the Christian states could no longer endure this terrible condition of affairs, and Charles V was moved to send a strong force to deal with the evil. Ten thousand season troops were sent in a large fleet of galleys to Northern Africa, and at last, the wasp was killed for Barbarossa with his 1500 men, was defeated, and he himself was slain while fighting boldly. Unfortunately, the matter ended there, and the troops, instead of pressing home their victory and wiping the barbarian coast, clean of this moorish dirt, left Algiers severely alone and returned to their homes. Had they instead ruthlessly sought out this lawless barackle brood, the troublesome scourge of the next three centuries would probably never have caused so many European ships and so many English and foreign sailors and others to end their days under the lash of tyrannical monsters. End of Chapter 4. Recording by A. Brian Johnson from Kent, Ohio. Chapter 5 of The Romance of Piracy. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Dan Ficklen. The Romance of Piracy by Edward Cable Chatterton. Chapter 5. The Wasps at Work. But if Barbosa was dead, his sagacious brother, Caer Eddeen, was ready to take up his work, and he proceeded on more scientific principles. He began by sending an ambassador to Constantinople and begged protection for the province of Algiers. This, having been granted, he was appointed officially in 1519 Governor of Algiers. His next step was to reinforce his garrisons at different parts of the coast and so secure his territory from attacks by sea, and in order to make for safety on the southern or landward side, he entered into alliances with the leading Arabian tribes of country. He was thus about to secure as it was possible for human diplomacy and organization to achieve. His ships could still go on their piratical cruises and return with little enough risk. In vain did the Spaniard send an awrada against him. The men indeed landed, but they were driven back, and a storm sprang up to the rest. Gradually more and more seaports fell into the net of this Corsair, so that there were plenty of harbors to run for, plenty of safe shelters whether to bring the valuable prizes. It was not merely the middle or the eastern end of the Mediterranean which was now harassed, but the west end. Those were the days, you will remember, when Spain was developing the rich resources of the New World, so there was a great opportunity for the barbarian pirates to go out some little distance into the Atlantic, and capture the West Indium and homeward bound for caddies with gold and other treasures. And in addition to those prizes, no less than the merchant men of Italy, Caradine occasionally made raids on the Spanish coast, or even carried off slaves from Valeric islands. From end to end these Algerine Corsairs were thus masters of the Mediterranean. No commercial ship could pass on her voyages in any safety. Even Spanish flagships found themselves being brought captive into Algiers. True, the small Spanish garrison still remained in Algiers, and because it was a myriad with a very strong fortress it held out, the time now came for this to be attacked with great vigor. For a period of fifteen days it was bombarded, and at length, after a most stubborn resistance, it was overcome. The stronghold was then pulled down, and Christian prisoners who in the summer season had rode chained to their seats in the Corsair galleys, were in the off-season employed to build with those stones a great mold to protect the harbor of Algiers from the western side. It was a stupendous undertaking, and seven thousand of these unhappy creatures accomplished the work in most two years. Nothing succeeds like success, and the Corsair prospered in power and possession to such an extent that he was preeminent. This naturally attracted to his dominion many thousands of other followers, and it was thus established not a mere colony of pirates, but a grand Corsair kingdom, where the industry of sea robbery was well organized with its foundries and dockyards, and with every assistance to agriculture, and a firm hard government to keep the land in fit and proper cultivation. And now yet another invitation came to Cara Deen. Andrea Doria defeated the Turks at Patras and in the Dardanelles. Like the policy of the Corsairs, after each victory the Christian Admiral employed the infidel captives to work the ores of his galleys. Thus it was that the Sultan of Turkey, Soylomon the Magnificent, realizing that the Christian Admiral was draining the best Turkish seafaring men, determined to invite Cara Deen to help them against Andrea Doria. So one of the Sultan's personal guard was dispatched to Algiers, requesting Barbarossa to come to Constantinople and place himself at the head of the Ottoman Navy. Barbarossa accepted this, as he accepted other imitations, seeing that it was in his own interest, and in August 1533 he left Algiers with seven galleys and eleven other craft. On the way he was joined by sixteen more craft belonging to a pirate named Delazouf, but before they had gotten the end of the void Delazouf was killed in an attack on a small island named Diba. There followed some friction between the men of the deceased pirate and those of Barbarossa, and finally one dark night the ships of Delazouf stole away from Barbarossa's fleet. Eventually this Sultan of Algiers, with his ships, arrived at Constantinople. The case stood thus, the Ottoman subject was an excellent man to fight battles by land, but not by sea. Barbarossa was a true fighting seaman, therefore let him do for us that which we ourselves cannot do. He was only three years short of becoming an octogenarian, yet this veteran Corsair was as able as he was wicked, and so after the Ottoman dockyards in the following year had divided him with additional ships, Barbarossa set forth from Constantinople and began by sacking Reggio, burning Christian ships and carrying off their crews. Then he laid waste to the coast until he came to Naples, and altogether made eleven thousand Christian prisoners, and returned to the Bosporus with an abundance of spoil and slaves. Sardania too was depleted of wealth and humanity, so it was almost bereft of both, and at last the fleet arrived before Tunis, to the amazement of the inhabitants. To condense a long story it may be said at once that after some fighting Tunis found himself now in submission to him who was also Sultan of Algiers and commander-in-chief of the Ottoman fleet, but trouble was brewing. Again Christendom was moved to action. Successes of this all-conquering King of Corsairs were endangering the world, so the great Charles V set on foot most elaborate preparations to cope with the evil. The preparations were indeed slow, but they were sure and they were extensive. But there was just one disappointing fact. When Francis I, to King of France, was invited to take his share in the great Christian expedition, it is as true as it is regrettable to have to record the fact that not only did he decline, but he actually betrayed the news of these impending activities to Barbarossa. This news was not welcome even to such a hardened old pirate, but he set to work in order to be ready for the foe. Employed the Christian prisoners in repairing the fortifications of Tunis, some had helped to his standard from all sides, all united in the one's desire to defeat and crush utterly any Christian force that might be sent against the followers of Mohammed. Spies kept him informed of the latest developments, and from Algiers came all the men that could be possibly spared. And finally, when all preparations had been made, there was on one side the mightiest Christian expedition about to meet the greatest aggregation of Muslims. By the middle of June, the invaders reached the African coast and found themselves before Tunis. It was to be a contest of Christian forces against Infidels. It was to represent an attempt once and for all to settle with the greatest pirate even the Mediterranean, had ever witnessed. It was, if possible, to set free the hordes of brother Christians from the terrorist cruelty of a despotic Corsair. Of those who came now over the sea, many had lost wife, or sister, or father, or son, or brother at the hands of these heathens. For once at last, this great Christian armada had the sea to itself. The wasps had retreated into their nest. So the attack began simultaneously from the land and from the sea. The men on shore and those in the galleys realized that they were battling no ordinary contest, but in a veritable crusade. 25,000 infantry and 600 lancers with their horses had been brought across the sea in 62 galleys, 150 transports, as well as a large number of other craft. The Muslims had received assistance from along the African coast and from the inland tribes. 20,000 horsemen, as well as a large quantity of infantry, were ready to meet the Christians. The Emperor Charles V was himself present. In Andrea Doria, the greatest Christian admiral was there opposed to the greatest admiral of the Muslims. Needless to say, the fight was fierce, but at last the Christians were able to make a breach in the walls not once but in several places, and the fortress had to be vacated. Tunis was destined to fall into Christian hands. Barbarossa realized this now full well. What hurt him most was that he was beaten at his own game. His own beloved galleys were to fall into the enemy's hands. Presently the Corsairs were routed utterly, and Barbarossa with only about 3,000 of his followers escaped by land. Now inside Tunis were no fewer than 20,000 Christian prisoners. These now succeeded in freeing themselves of their fetters, opened the gates to the victorious army, and the latter, unable to be controlled, massacred the people they had been sent against right and left. The 20,000 Christians were rescued, the victory had been won, the Corsair had been put to flight, and Mully Hassan, a mere puppet, was restored to his kingdom of Tunis by Charles V on conditions amongst which it was stipulated that Mully Hassan should liberate all Christian captives who might be in his realm, give them a free passage to their homes, and no Corsair should be allowed again to use his ports for any purpose whatsoever. This was the biggest blow which Barbarossa had ever received. But brute though he was, cruel tyrant that he had shown himself, enemy of the human race though he undoubtedly must be reckoned, yet his was a great mind. His was a spirit which was only impelled and not depressed by disasters. At the end of the pitiful flight he arrived farther along the African coast to the port of Bona, where there remained just 15 galleys which he had kept in reserve. All else that was his had gone, ships, arsenal, men, but the sea being his natural element and piracy to his natural profession, he began at once to embark. But just then there arrived 15 of the Christian galleys, so Barbarossa, not caring for conflict, drew up his galleys under the fort of Bona, and the enemy deemed it prudent to let the Corsair alone and withdrew. Soon after, Barbarossa put to sea and disappeared, when Andrea Doria with 40 galleys arrived on the scene too late. Just as on an earlier occasion already narrated, the Christian expedition made the mistake of not pressing home their victory and so settling matters with the pirates for good and all. Algiers had been drained so thoroughly of men that it was really too weak to resist an attack. But no, the Christians left that alone, although they took Bona. About the middle of August, Charles re-embarked his men and, satisfied with the thrashing he had given these pirates, returned home. But Barbarossa proceeded to Algiers. Where he got together a number of galleys and waited till his former followers, or as many as survived battle in the African desert, returned to him. If Muslim piracy had been severely crushed, it was not unable to revive, and before long Barbarossa with his veterans was afloat again, looting ships at sea and carrying off more prisoners to Algiers. For this piracy was like a highly infectious disease. You might think for a time that it was stamped out, that the world had been cleansed of it. But in a short time it would be manifest that the evil was as prevalent as ever. Once more he was summoned to visit Solemna in the Magnificent. Once more the arch Corsair sped to Constantinople to receive instructions to deal with the conquering Christians. Andrea Doria was at sea, burning Turkish ships, and only this Sultan of Algiers could deal with him. So away Barbarossa went in his customary fashion, raiding the Adriatic towns, sweeping the islands of the archipelago, and soon he returned to Constantinople with 18,000 slaves to say nothing of material prizes. Money was obtained as easily as human lives, and the world marveled at this Corsair admiral, the scourge of the sea, this enemy of the Christian race should, after crushing defeat, be able to go about his dastardly work, terrifying towns and ships as though the expedition of Charles V had never set forth. But matters were again working up to a crisis. If the Corsair admiral was still afloat, so was Andrea Doria, the great Christian admiral. At the extreme southwest corner of the Epirus, on the Balkan side of the Adriatic, and almost opposite the heel of Italy, Las Provisas, hither in 1569 came the fleets of the cross and the crescent respectively. The Christian ships had been gathered together at the island of Corfu, which is 30 or 40 miles to the northwest of Provisa. Barbarossa came, assisted by all the great pirate captains of the day, and among them must be mentioned Droget, about whom we shall have more to say later. But Provisa, from a spectacular standpoint, was disappointing. It was too scientific, too clearly marked by strategy and too little distinguished by fighting. If the reader has ever been present at any athletic contest, where there has been more skill than sport, he will know just what I mean. It is the spirit of the crowd at a cricket match, when the batsman is all on the defensive, and no runs are being scored. It is manifested in the spectator's indignation at a boxing match where neither party gets in a good blow, when there is an excess of science, when both contestants fairly matched and perhaps overtrained and nervously the others prowess, hesitate to go in for a hard hitting, so that in the end the match ends in a draw. It was exactly on this wise at Provisa. Andrea Doria and Barbarossa were the two great champions of the ring. Neither was young. Both had been trained by years of long fighting. They were as fairly matched as it was possible to find a couple of great admirals. Each realized the other's value. Both knew that for spectators they had the whole of Europe, both Christian and Muslim. Victory to the one would mean downfall to the other, and unless a lucky escape intervened, one of the two great admirals that's been the rest of his life rowing his heart out as a galley slave. Certainly it was enough to make the boxers nervous and hesitating. They were a long time getting to blows, and there was but little actually accomplished. There was an unlucky calm on the sea, and the galleon of Venice was the center of the fighting which took place. It was the splendid discipline on board this big craft. It was the excellence of her commander and the unique character of her great guns which made such an impression on Barbarossa's fleet that although the galleon was severely damaged, yet at the critical time when the corsairs might have rushed on board and stormed her as night was approaching, for once in his life the great nerve of the corsair king deserted him. No one was more surprised than the Venetians when they found the pirate not pressing home his attack. True, the latter had captured a few of the Christian ships, but these were a mere handful, and out of all proportion to the importance of the battle. He had been sent forth to crush Andrea Doria and the Christian fleet. He had failed so to do. Next day, with a fair wind, Andrea Doria made away. The honor of the battle belonged to the galleon of Venice, but for Barbarossa it was a triumph, because with an inferior force he had put the Christian admiral to flight. Doria's ship had not been so much as touched, and yet Barbarossa had not been taken prisoner. That was the last great event in the career of Caire Eddin, and he died in 1548 at Constantinople as one of the wickedest and coolest murderers of history, the greatest pirate that has ever lived, and one of the cleverest tacticians and strategists the Mediterranean ever bore in its waters. There has rarely lived a human being so bereft of the quality of mercy, and his death was received by Christian Europe with a sigh of the greatest relief. In the whole history of piracy there figures some remarkably clever and consummate semen. Like many another criminal, they had such tremendous natural endowments that one cannot but regret that they began badly and continued. The bitterest critic of this Muslim monster cannot but admire his abnormal courage, resource, his powers of organization, and his untameable determination. The pity of it all is that this should have been wasted in bringing misery to tens of thousands, in dealing death and robbery and pillage. End of Chapter 5. Recording by Dan Ficklen Chapter 6 of the Romance of Piracy This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Dan Ficklen The Romance of Piracy by Edward Cable Chatterton Chapter 6 Gallies and Gallantry But there was a third great barbarian Corsair to complete this terrible trio. Uruj and Karadine we have known. There is yet to be mentioned Dragot, who succeeded to the latter. He too was a Muslim who had been born in a coast village of Asia Minor opposite the island of Rhodes. His early life is that of most pirates. He went to sea when quite young, was devoted to his profession, was filled with ambition, became an expert pilot and later became a skipper of his own craft. Then, feeling the call of the wild, he devoted himself to piracy and rose to notoriety. But the turning point in his career came when he joined himself to the service of Karadine, who appointed Dragot to the entire command of a dozen of the Corsair king's galleys. Henceforward his life was that of his master, ravaging the Italian coast, pillaging Mediterranean ships, and dragging thousands of lives away into slavery. Two years after the battle for Vesa, Dragot was in fame second only to Karadine, and another Doria, the nephew of Andrea, was sent forth to capture this new wasp of the sea. Doria succeeded in throwing his net so well that off the Corsican coast he was able to bring back Dragot as prisoner, and for the next four years the ex-Corsair was condemned to row as a slave in a Christian galley, until on a day his late master Karadine came sailing into Genoa. During his active pillaging life he had obtained plenty of riches, so it was nothing for him to pay three thousand ducats and thus redeem from slavery a man who had been particularly useful to his own schemes. And from this day until Dragot fell fighting in 1565, he followed in the footsteps of the man who brought him his release. When Karadine died, the Turkish sultan appointed Dragot as admiral of the Ottoman fleet. Like Barbarossa, Dragot's first object was to obtain a base in Northern Africa, and eventually he was able to capture the town of Africa, or Mahidiya, to the east of Tunis. His next proceeding was to fortify this place. The news came to the ears of Charles V that this had happened. The two Barbarossas were dead, but there was another almost as pernicious. Was this pestilence a piracy never to cease? Andrea Doria was an old man now, but he was bitten by Charles to go after Dragot, and he went. Nor was he sorry for an opportunity of wiping out his own undistinguished action at Preveza. Dragot was always harrying the coast of Spain, and his nephew Aiza was left in charge of Africa. Meanwhile, Doria's search for him along the African coast came to Africa, but after losing some men and with great damage to his own ship, Doria, as the season was getting late, returned home. But the following June, Doria with his fleet arrived off Mahidiya, who seized the city, and after an expenditure of great effort, took it, capturing Aiza. Mahidiya was lost, but Dragot was still at large. He repaired to Constantinople, and thence to Jerba, the island off the east coast of Tunis. Hither also came Andrea Doria, and him the Corsair in. At last the pirate was in a trap, but like many another clever rascal he found a way out with consummate cleverness. What he did may briefly be summed up as follows. Outside were the waiting Christian fleet, which was merely amused by the sight of a new fort becoming daily greater. These earthworks were just so much bluff. For Dragot, by means of these, was able to conceal what was being down on the other side. With marvelous ingenuity he had caused a road to be made across the island to the sea on the other side. He had laid down a surface of well-greased planks, and under the further cover of darkness had made his men drag his galleys cross until they were launched into the sea on the opposite coast. The rest was easy, and the Corsair fleet once more escaped, having fooled Doria in a manner that amazed him. To add impudence to insult Dragot at once captured a Sicilian galley on its way to Doria, containing Mule Hasan, Sultan of Tunis. The latter was promptly sent as a present to the Sultan of Turkey, who allowed him to end his days in prison. Of the rest of the acts of this Corsair we have but little space to speak. It is sufficient if we say that he well bore the mantle which had fallen to him from the shoulders of Barbarossa. He continued his scourging of the seas. He fought gallantly. He laid waste, and he captured prisoners for slavery. Power and dominion came to him as his predecessors, and before long he was the ruler of Tripoli, and more than ever the enemy of the Christian race. Finally he died at the Siege of Malta, but he in turn was succeeded by Ali Bashar of Algiers who conquered the Kingdom of Tunis, captured Maltese galleys, and showed that the old Corsair spirit was still alive. But the day of reckoning was at hand, and there was to be settled in one of the most momentous events of history a death that had been long owing to the Christians. Of all the decisive battles of the world few stand out more conspicuously than the Battle of Lepanto. In spite of all the great maritime expeditions which would have been sent to put down piracy in the Mediterranean, the evil had recurred again and again. There were two reasons why Christian Europe was determined to beat these Corsairs. Firstly the latter were natural enemies because they were Muslims, but secondly they were the worst type of pirates. All the losses of Christian lives, goods, and ships merely increased the natural hatred of these Mohammedans. And in Lepanto we see the last great contest in which these treculent Corsairs fought as a mighty force. Thereafter there were repeated piratical attacks by these men, but they have a more individualistic nature than proceeding from an enormous organization. Lepanto was fought 16 years before the Elizabethans defeated the Armada. Before we say anything of the contest itself it is necessary to remind the reader that whereas in this contest it took place in the waters that wash England the bulk of the ships were sail propelled and had high freeboard with some exceptions. Yet at Lepanto it was a reverse. The fighting ships with the Mediterranean from the very earliest times had always been the galley type, even though it contained variations of species. And never was this characteristic more clearly manifested than at the battle of which we are now to speak. There were galleys and galleesses, but though the former were certainly somewhat big craft, yet the latter were practically only big additions of the galley. The value of Lepanto is twofold. It proved to the world that the great Ottoman Empire was not invincible on sea. It showed also that in spite of all the cleverest Corsair Seaman could do, there was sufficient unity and seaman-like ability in Christian Europe to defeat the combined efforts of organized piracy and Mohammedanism. No one can deny that Alibasha distinguished himself as a fine admiral of this battle, yet he was not on the side of victory. When he found himself defeated there fell simultaneously the greatest blow which organized piracy had received since it established itself along the southern shores of the Mediterranean. Lepanto was no mere isolated event. It was the logical outcome of the conflict between Christianity on one hand and Mohammedanism with piracy on the other. It is as unfair to admit the consideration of Muslimism from the cause of this battle as it were to leave out the fact of piracy. The solidarity of the Christian expedition was formed by what was called the Holy League, embracing the ships of the Papal States, Spain, and Venice. The unity of the opposing side was ensured by the fidelity of the barbarian Corsairs to the Sultan of Turkey, and the supreme command of the former was Don John of Austria, son of that Charles V who had done so much to oust these Corsair wasps. The Christian fleet numbered about 300, of which two-thirds were galleys, and they were collected at Messina. The scene where the battle was to take place was already historic. It was practically identical without a pervasive, of which we have already spoken, and without the classical actium in 31 BC, though exactly it was a little to the south of where pervasive had been fought. Just as in the latter, Caradine had fought against Andrea Doria, so now Dragot was to fight against John Andrea Doria. The Muslim strength may be gauged from the statement that it contained 250 galleys, plus a number of smaller ships. But just as pervasive had been marked by little fighting but much maneuvering, so Lepanto was distinguished by an absence of strategy and a prevalence of desperate, heart-hitting. Whatever strategy was displayed belonged to Alibasha. The galleys of the Christian side dealt wholesale death into the Muslims, though Andrea's own flagship suffered severely in the fight. Spanish, Venetian, and Maltese galleys fought most gallantly, but Alibasha, after capturing the chief of the Maltese craft, was obliged to relinquish Toeinger, and himself compelled to escape from the battle. At least 5,000 Christians perished at Lepanto, but six times that amount were slaughtered of the Muslims, together with 200 of the latter's ships. The Corsairs had rendered the finest assistance, but they failed with distinction. Christian craft had won the great day, and ever since that autumn day in 1571 have the pirates of Barbary attained to their previous dominion and organized power. Ali returned to Constantinople, and even the next year was again anxious to fight his late enemies, though no actual fighting took place. Still another year later, Tunis was taken from the Turks by Don John of Austria. For nine years after the event of Lepanto, Alibasha lived on, and like his predecessor, spent much of his time harrying the Christian coastline of southern Italy. There were many pirates for long years after his death, but with the decease of Alibasha closed the grand period of the Muslim Corsairs. It had been a century marked by the most amazing impudence on the part of the self-made kings and tyrants, but if it showed nothing else, it made perfectly clear what enormous possibilities the sea offered to any man who had enough daring and self-confidence in addition to that essential quality of sea scents. From mere common sailor men, these four great Corsairs, the two Barbaroses, Dragit and Alibasha rose to the position of autocrats and admirals. Mere robbers and bandits though they were, yet the very mention of their names sent a shudder through Christendom, and it was only the repeated and supreme efforts of the great European powers which could reduce these pirate kings into such a condition that honest ships could pursue their voyages with any hope of reaching their destined ports. Surely, in the whole history of lawlessness, there were never malefactors that prospered for so long and to such an extent. We have spoken in this chapter of galleys and galeuses. Before we close, let us add a few words of explanation to facilitate the reader's vision. Bearing in mind the interesting survival of the galley type throughout Mediterranean warfare, it must not be forgotten that in detail this type of craft varied in subsequent centuries. There remained, however, the prevailing fact that she relied primarily on oars, and that she drew comparatively little water and had but little freeboard in proportion to the caravos, caracks, and ocean-going ships of war and commerce. The great virtue of the galley consisted in her mobility. Her greatest defect lay in her lack of sea-keeping qualities. For the galley's work was concerned with operations within a limited sphere, with the land not far away. In other words, she was suited for conditions of the exact opposite of that kind of craft which could sail to the West Indies, or go round Cape Horn. The amazing feature of these galleys was the large number of oarmen required, but this was an age when human life was regarded more cheaply than today. Slaves could be had by raiding towns or capturing ships. The work of pulling at the oar was healthy, if terribly hard. A minimum of food and the stern lash of the bosom, as he walked up and down the gangway that ran fore and aft down the center of the ship, kept the men at their duty, and their shackles forbid them from deserting. But when their poor, weary bodies became weak, they were thrown overboard before their last breath had left them. The prints, which are still in existence, show that the number of oarsmen in the sixteenth-century galley ran into the hundreds. Two or three hundred of these galley slaves would be no rare occurrence in one craft. They retained the beak and the arrangement of the yards from the times of the Romans. At the stern sat the commander with his officers. When these craft carried cannon, the armament was placed in the bowels. By the sixteenth, or at any rate the seventeenth century, the galley had reached her climax, and it was not thought remarkable that her length should be about a hundred and seventy feet, and her breath only about twenty feet. She may be easily studied by the reader on referring to an accompanying illustration. Whether used by Christian or horse-air, by Maltese knights or Muslim Turks, they were not very different from the picture which is here presented. With five men to each heavy oar, with seamen to handle the sails when employed, with soldiers to fight the ship, she was practically a curious kind of raft or floating platform. Irrespective of religion or race, it was customary for the sixteenth-century nations to condemn their prisoners to row chain to these benches. Thus, for example, when the Spaniards captured Elizabethan seamen, the latter were thus employed, just as Venetian prisoners were made to row in Muslim galleys. Convicted criminals were also punished by this means. The difference between the old and new was never better seen than in the late sixteenth century, when the big-bellied man of war with sails and guns were beginning to discard the old boarding tactics. It was the gun, and not the sword, on which they were now relying. But the galley was dependent less on her gunnery than on boarding. It was her aim to fight not at a distance, but at close quarters, to get right alongside and then pour her soldiers onto the other ship and obtain possession. The Galleys of the Mediterranean, although the word was somewhat largely used, signified an attempt to combine the sea qualities of the big-bellied ship with the mobility of the galley. Compromises are, however, but rarely successful, and though the Galleys was a much more potent fighting unit, yet she was less mobile, if a better sea-craft. She began by being practically a big galley with a forecastle and sterncastle and another deck. She ended in being little less clumsy than the contemporary ship of the line which relied on sails and guns. Anyone who cares to examine the contemporary pictures of the Spanish Galleys is used by the Armada against England and the reign of Elizabeth can see this for himself. It is true that even as far north as Amsterdam in the 17th century the galley was employed, and there are many instances when she fought English ships in the Channel, off Portsmouth and elsewhere. For a time some lingered on in the British Navy, but they were totally unsuited for the waters of the North Sea and the English Channel, and gave way to the sail-propelled ships of larger displacement. End of Chapter 6. Recording by Dan Ficklin Chapter 7 of The Romance of Piracy. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Dan Ficklin. The Romance of Piracy by Edward Cable Chatterton. Chapter 7. Piracy in Elizabethan Times But although the Mediterranean was the sphere of the barbarian Corsairs, yet the sea lawlessness was all confided to that area. The narrow seas were just about as bad as they had been in the Middle Ages, and Elizabeth, with the determination for which she was famous, took the matter in hand. As early as the year 1564 she commanded Sir Peter Carew to fit out an expedition to clear the seas of any pirates and rovers that haunted the coasts of Devonshire and Cornwall, yet it was an almost impossible task. For the men of these parts had gotten the sea fever. Fishing was less profitable than it might be. But to capture ships instead of fish was a very paying industry, and had just that amount of adventure which appealed to the Elizabethans. And bear in mind that, as in the case of the later smugglers, these men had at their backs for financial support the rich landowners, who found the investment tempting. It was because the colonies in the New World were yielding such wondrous treasure that the English pirates found the Spanish ships so well worth waiting for and pillaging. Again and again did Philip make demands to Elizabeth that this nuisance would be stopped, insisting that in no case should a convicted English pirate be pardoned. He requested that Her Majesty's officers in the west of England ports should cease from allowing these marauders to take stores aboard or even frequent these harbors. Rewards, he begged, should even be offered for their capture, and all persons on shore who aided these misgrants should be punished severely. It was because of Philip's complaint, no less than the complaint of her own merchants, that the Queen was compelled to adopt severe measures. She dispatched more ships to police the seas, but with what advantage? Up came a ship down from Flanders to Spain with a cargo of tapestry, clocks, and various other articles for Philip. The English pirates could not let such a prize go past, so they stopped the ship and plundered her. The Queen's next effort was to cause strict inquiries to be made along the coast in order to discover the haunts of these northern corsairs. Harbour commissioners were appointed, says Lindsay, to inquire and report on all vessels leaving or entering port, and all landed proprietors who would encourage the pirates were threatened with penalties. But it was an impossible task, as I will explain. First of all, consider the fact that after centuries of this free sea roving, no government, no amount of threats could possibly transform the character of the English seaman. If, for instance, tomorrow Parliament were to make a law forbidding the North Sea fishermen to proceed in their industry, nothing but shells for men of war would prevent the men from putting to sea. Years of occupation would be too strong to resist. So what was with the seaman and the Elizabethan age? It began by that hatred of their French neighbours. It was encouraged by the privileges which the Sincay ports enjoyed, though it was in the blood of the English seaman quite apart from any royal permission. But there was, in the time of Elizabeth, still further difficulty. Those privateers whom the law had permitted to go forth sea roving had become too strong to be suppressed. Privateering strictly consists of a private ship or ships having a commission to seize or plunder the ships of an enemy. In effect, it amounts to legalized piracy, and anyone can realize that in a none too law abiding age such as the 16th century, the dividing line between piracy and privateering was so very fine that it was almost impossible to say which pillaging was legal and which was unjustifiable. That alone was sufficient reason for the frequent releases of alleged pirates at the time. True, the Crown allowed privateering, though the commissions were limited only to the attacks on our acknowledged enemies. Yet it was futile to expect that these rude Devonshire seamen would have any respect to legal finesse. To control these men adequately was too much to expect. French and Spanish and Flemish merchantmen, regardless of nationality, were alike liable to fall into English pirates' hands. Some of the backers were making quite a handsome income, and who shall say that some of those fine Elizabethan mansions in our country were not built out of such illegal proceeds? The mayor of Dover, for instance, with some of the leading inhabitants of that port had captured over 600 prizes from the French to say nothing of the number of neutrals which he had pillaged. This was in the year 1563, and already he had plundered 61 Spanish ships. And it was the valuable trade passing to and from Antwerp and London, which was a steady source of revenue for the pirates at this time. You cannot be surprised, then, at that important incident in 1564 that did so much to enrage the English seamen and help matters forward to the climax in the form of the Spanish armada, for what happened? Philip, seeing how little Elizabeth was doing to put down this series of attacks on his treasure ships, had in the year mentioned suddenly issued an order arresting every English ship and all the English crews that happened to be found on his own harbors. It was a drastic measure, but we can quite understand the impetuous and furious Spaniard acting on this was. During Elizabeth's reign there were, of course, some pirates who had the bad fortune to be arrested. One little batch suspected including a Captain Haydn, Richard Daigle, and a man named Corbet. Included in the same gang were Robert Hitchens, Philip Redhead, Roger Shaster, and others. The first three mentions succeeded in fleeing away beyond capture, but the remainder admitted their guilt. Hitchens was a man of about 50 years old and a native of Devonshire, but both he and his companions contested that they had been deceived by Haydn and Daigle, and they had undertaken a voyage to Rochelle, presumably in a merchant ship, whereas the trip had turned out to be nothing else than a piratical expedition. Their version of the incident was that in June 1564 they captured a Flemish ship, and to her were transferred 13 Scots, who were forming part of this supposedly merchant ship. The Flemish ship with the Scots on board now sailed away, as there was some disagreement with the rest of the party. They proceeded to Ireland, where the skipper joined them, and they also committed robberies on the coast of Spain. Having captured a ship with a cargo of wine, they proceeded to the extreme southwest corner of Ireland, which, even in this 20th century, is still a wild, lonely spot, and rarely visited by any craft excepting the British Navy, an occasional cable-lying ship, and sometimes a coaster or two. Bearhaven is a ford which goes out of Bantry Bay. On the one side rise high rocky hills, on the other lies the island of Bear. It is a safe, clear anchorage, and a wild, inaccessible spot. Here the captured ship was taken, and the wine sold. An arrangement was made with the Lord O'Sullivan by which the pirates could rely on his assistants. For Cobay with one ship, and a man named Lusingham, who was in charge of another ship, were prevented by O'Sullivan from falling into the hands of Elizabeth ships that had been sent to capture them. Lusingham, however, had been slain by a piece of ordinance, as he was in the act of waving his cap towards the Queen's ships at Bearhaven, but Cobay was yet alive. It was alleged that Hyden and Cobay had agreed jointly to fit out the John of Sandwich, giving her all the necessary guns with the hope of being able to capture a good ship we're with to provide Cobay. But whilst in the English Channel a storm had sprung up, and the ship had sprung a leak, they were therefore forced into Alderney, where the vessel became a wreck, and Hyden, Cobay, Daigle, as well as fourteen others, made their escape in a small penance. It was discovered that Robert Hitchens had been all of his life given to piracy, so, after having been arrested in the Channel Isles, he was executed at the low water mark near St. Martin's Point, Guernsey, and there his body was left in chains as a warning to others. The rest of the prisoners were afterwards ordered by Elizabeth to be set free, after a good and sharp admonition to beware hereafter to fall again into the damage of our laws. They were bidden to return to their native places and to get their living by honest labor. It is approved that the Crown valued her seamen by an interesting proclamation that was made in 1572 when there was a lightliness of war. The Queen went so far as to promise pardon for all piracies hitherto committed by any mariners who should now put their ships into her naval service. And we must not forget that, at a later date, the first tidings of the Armada's advent were brought into Plymouth by a patriotic English pirate named Fleming. Fleming, wrote John Smith, the great Elizabethan traveler and founder of the English colony of Virginia, was an expert and as much sought for as any other pirates of the Queen's reign, yet such a friend to his country that, discovering the Spanish Armada, he voluntarily came to Plymouth, yielded himself freely to my Lord Admiral, and gave notice to the Spaniards coming, which good warning came so happily and unexpectedly that he had his pardon and a good reward. As in all lands, writes this delightful Elizabethan, where there are many people, there are some thieves, so in all seas much frequented, there are some pirates. The most ancient within the memory of three-score years was one Callus, who most refreshed himself upon the coast of Wales. Clinton and Purser, his companions, who grew famous, till Queen Elizabeth of Blessed Memory, hanged them at Wapping. Now this John Callus, or Callus, after his arrest, wrote a letter of repentance to Walsingham, saying, I bewail my former wicked life, and beseech God and her majesty to forgive me. If she will spare my life and use me in her service by sea, with those she can trust best, either to clear the coasts of other wicked pirates or otherwise, as I know their haunts, roads, creeks, and maintainers so well, I can do more therein than if she sent ships abroad and spent twenty thousand pounds. Thinking thereby to obtain pardon, Callus accordingly forwarded particulars of his fellow pirates, their maintainers, and victuulers of me and my companies. This list contained the names and addresses of the purchasers and receivers of goods which had been pillaged from two Portuguese, one French, a Spanish, and a Scotch ship, which Callus and a captain Sturgis of Rochelle had pirated. If he were given his liberty, this locationscorsair further promised that he would also bring in a Danish ship, which he had pirated. He promised also to warn Walsingham to take care that Sullivan Bear, Bearhaven, does not practice any treason, towards her majesty there, as he alleged that Sullivan had told Callus and the former's castle of Bearhaven that James fit Morris, and a number of Frenchmen would determine to land there if they could attain pilots to guide them nither. The old pirate further alleged that they had tried to persuade himself to join them and become their guide, promising him large gifts. But I would not join any rebel of her majesty, he wrote grand eloquently, hoping her mercy and time to come. Last March he went on, while he was riding at anchor at Torbay, he met a Frenchman commanded by Captain Maloner, who came aboard Callus' ship and sought information regarding the Irish coast and the best harbors. Callus informed him the best recor could conceal. His inquirers then asked whether Bearhaven and Dingle were good places to land. They told me if I would go over with them to France I need not fear the Queen for any offense that I had done. The French king would pardon him for anything Callus had done against his majesty's subjects, and he would give him three thousand crowns to become his subject and be sworn his man, as well as a yearly fee during his life. I asked him why his master wanted to use me, and he said his master shortly wanted to do some service on the coast of Ireland and wanted pilots. Callus protested that he had declined this invitation, to which the other man was reported to have replied that he would never have a chance of such performant offered him in England. But though this made a very fine yarn, the authorities were too well aware of Callus' past history to give it much credence. The misery of a pirate, although many are as sufficient seamen as any, yet in regard of his superfluity, wrote the founder of Virginia, you shall find it such that any wise man would rather live among wild beasts than amongst them, therefore let all unadvised persons take heed how they entertain that quality. And I could wish merchants, gentlemen, and all settlers forth of ships, not to be sparring of any competent pay nor true payment, for neither soldiers nor seamen can live without means, but necessity will force them to steal, and when they are once entered into that trade they are hardly reclaimed. Poverty as well as the love of venture and the lust for gain had certainly to be reckoned among the incentives to this life. So steadily had the evil grown that on the 7th of August 1579, York complained to Lord Burgie that the sea had never been so full of pirates, and a Plymouth ship which had set out from St. Malo, borne from Dartmouth, had been robbed and chased on the rocks. Nonetheless, the persons of credit, who had been appointed in every haven, creek, or other landing place around the coast, in order to deal with the evil, were doing their best, and three notable pirates had some time before been arrested and placed in York Castle together with other pirates. But the practice of piracy, as we have seen, was the peculiar failing of no country exclusively, though in certain parts of the world and in certain centuries pirates were more prevalent than elsewhere. The very men who in the English Channel might have attained disgrace and wealth of sea robbers, also when they went into the Mediterranean, be himself pillaged by those barbarian corsairs of whom we spoke just now. Many an exciting brush to the mariners of England counter with these men, and many were the sad tales which reached England of the cruelties of the Muslim tyrants. An interesting account of such adventure is related by Master Roger Botingham. The incident really happened seven years before Elizabeth came to the throne, but it may not be out of place here to deal with it. After having set forth from Gravesund in the great Barker Outcher, bound for the island of Candia and Chio in the Levant, the ship arrived in Messina and Sicily. But it was made known that a good many Muslim galleys were in the Levant, and the rest of the voyage would be more risky. The Outcher's crew got to know this, so the Botingham was not likely to get farther on his way and deliver his cargo at Chio. Then, he writes, I had no small business to cause my mariners to venture with the ship in such manifest danger. Nevertheless, I wanted them to go with me, except three which I set on land. But these presently begged to come aboard again, and were taken, and the ship got under way. A Greek pilot was taken on board, and, when off Chio, three Turkish pirates were suddenly espoused. These were giving chase to a number of small boats, which were sailing rigged with a Latine sail. It happened that in one of the latter was the son of the pilot, and at this Greek's request Botingham steered towards the Turks, and caused the Outcher's gunner to fire a demiculver and at the chaser that was just about to board one of the boats. This was such a good shot that the Turk dropped a stern. Presently, all the little boats came and begged that they might be allowed to hang on to the Outcher's stern until daylight. After clearing from Chio, Botingham took his ship to Candia and Messina. But whilst on the way of the other, and in the very waters where the battle of La Ponto was presently to be fought, he found some of the Turkish Galiats pirating some Venetian ships laden with muscatels, and, good Samaritan that he was, Botingham succeeded in driving off the Muslim aggressors and rescuing the merchantmen. I rescued them, he writes briefly, and had but a barrel of wine for my powder and shot. End of Chapter 7. Recording by Dan Ficklen