The Barbary Pirates 15th-17th Centuries

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The Barbary Pirates 15th-17th Centuries Page 3

by Angus Konstam


  1627 Treaty between Salé and England. Murad Reis raids as far north as Iceland.

  1628 Treaty between Algiers and France.

  1629 French fleet bombards Salé.

  1631 Murad Reis raids Baltimore, Ireland.

  1637 English and French attacks on Salé and Algiers respectively: with agreement of Sultan of Morocco, William Rainsborough’s squadron attacks Salé and frees some 300 captives. Ali Bitchin attacks French stronghold of La Calle (El Kala) on Algerian coast.

  1638 Algerine and Tunisian corsair fleet defeated by Venetians at Valona.

  1640 Renewed raids around Cornish coast; c. 60 captives reported taken near Penzance.

  1641 Moroccan sultanate gains control of Salé.

  1645 Death of Ali Bitchin in Algiers. Report of 240 Cornish captives taken, though it is unclear whether at sea or in shore raids.

  1655 English fleet under Cromwell’s ‘General at Sea’ Robert Blake destroys Tunisian squadron at Porto Farina.

  1659 Treaty between Algiers and England.

  Relevant later events:

  1662–84 Establishment of garrisoned English colony in Tangier.

  1682–85 French punitive attacks on Algiers and Tripoli.

  1704–08 English (British from 1707) gain naval bases in Gibraltar and Minorca.

  1796 Treaty between Algiers and the United States.

  1798–1800 French capture Malta, ending rule by the Knights of St John.

  1801–05 Barbary War between Morocco, Tripoli and the United States.

  1803–04 US frigate captured off Tripoli, then destroyed by US forces in punitive raid.

  1815–16 Punitive attacks on Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli by British, US and Dutch squadrons.

  1827 Ottoman naval power crushed by British, French and Russian fleets at battle of Navarino.

  1830 French capture Algiers, and subsequently establish Algerian colony.

  1881 French capture Tunis, and establish Tunisian colony.

  1911 Italians capture Tripoli, and establish Libyan colony.

  1912 Morocco divided between French and Spanish ‘protectorates’.

  Looking from east to west, this 16th-century engraving of the capture of Tunis in 1535 shows the Spanish fleet supporting the siege of the Muslim defences on La Goletta (foreground, left centre). Behind it a dredged canal across the shallow lagoon (labelled ‘Stagnum’) leads to a new star fort guarding the approaches to the city of Tunis. In fact this fort did not exist; the city’s waterfront bordered the western edge of the lagoon, and was only lightly fortified with a curtain wall.

  The galley fleet of Khizr Barbarossa anchored off the French port of Toulon during the winter of 1543/44. At that time the great corsair leader was operating in French waters after the Turks and the French formed an anti-Spanish alliance. During the fleet’s stay in Toulon the cathedral was even temporarily redesignated as a mosque so that they could conduct their prayers there. Note that the galleys are shown as all black except for light-coloured upperworks around the stern. (Detail of illustration in Topkapi Museum, Istanbul)

  At the great naval battle of Lepanto (1571) Uluç Ali commanded the left wing of the Turkish fleet, but withdrew his squadron when defeat was inevitable. This detail from a contemporary depiction of the battle captures the confused, close-range savagery of this type of galley fighting.

  As the 17th century wore on, Europe’s leading maritime powers – England, France and Holland – became increasingly enraged by the depredations of the Barbary pirates. This broadsheet demanded that the English parliament take action to free the roughly 1,500 English captives believed to be held in the Barbary states.

  The bombardment of Algiers by an English squadron in July 1661, depicted here by the English mariner Edward Barlow, was thwarted by the strong defences of the port, which included a new fortified shore battery and a strengthened fort on Le Peñón (centre). After two hours the English squadron withdrew from the bay.

  B GALLEY ARMAMENT, & BARBARY GALIOT, 16th CENTURY

  Despite the wealth of information on a variety of strong, adjustable land gun carriages from as early as the 1470s, we have surprisingly little specific information about shipboard carriages in our period.

  1a: A reconstruction, from archaeological study of the Mary Rose, of a cast bronze gun on a heavy, wheeled wooden carriage, c. 1530; smaller guns were mounted on simpler carriages. It is frequently suggested that those in the bows of oared warships had no wheels and simply rested on the deck, but unsecured heavy objects would slide around dangerously and be very difficult to manoeuver. Guns must surely have been securely fastened in place so that their recoil could be absorbed by the ship’s timbers; we may be certain that 16th-century engineers were capable of designing efficient naval gun carriages.

  1b & 1c: By the mid 16th century at the latest, galleys were mounting a large centreline bow gun firmly fixed in place, flanked on larger vessels by paired lighter guns and anti-personnel swivel guns. Obviously, the weights of all this ordnance had to be carefully balanced astride the centreline. These forward batteries on Barbary galleys were usually surmounted by a small fighting platform (arrumbada), where janissary archers, musketeers and boarding parties could take position. These examples are partly based on Guilmartin (see ‘Further Reading’).

  2: Galiot

  These small warships, well suited for privateering and coastal raiding, formed the bulk of the Barbary fleets throughout the 16th century. Their design was dictated by the need to accommodate two long lines of rowing benches and oarsmen, so any guns were necessarily mounted in the bow behind the spur or ram. The size of the battery varied, and smaller galiots typically carried only one centreline cannon. This image of a galiot seen from the stern is based on a surviving drawing by the Italian artist Raphael (d. 1520) and other contemporary references. Note the ‘outrigger’ support for the oars

  C ACTION AGAINST A VENETIAN GALLEY, c. 1540

  Normally privateers tried to avoid tangling with Christian warships, but sometimes this could not be prevented; they might be escorting something valuable, or forming part of a Turkish squadron actively seeking out the enemy. Here the crew of a Barbary vessel are shown defending themselves against a determined boarding attack from a larger Venetian galley; the Venetians are clothed and equipped according to various Italian Renaissance paintings and extant examples in the Venice Armoury collection, and the Muslim weapons are based on those in the Algiers Museum of Antiquities. Contemporary paintings and prints show a huge variety of mixed arms and armour in use by common soldiers of this period.

  The pirate Reis (1) probably wears ringmail or light composite protection beneath his loose, colourful outer robe. He defends himself against the Venetian commander (2), who wears a light, partly gilded sallet firmly strapped in place, and half-armour of plate over a mail shirt. At centre, a well-equipped Berber musketeer (3) wears a turban untidily wrapped around the ubiquitous red cap, and a substantial mail shirt under his burnous; with no time to draw his sword or dagger, he tries unsuccessfully to defend himself with his discharged matchlock against a Venetian sword-and-buckler man (4). In the background, a Venetian musketeer (5) fires at point-blank range into the ranks of the defenders; over his doublet and hose he is protected only by a small steel skullcap helmet and an extended mail collar. In the foreground the unfortunate galley slaves, chained to their benches by the ankle, struggle amid the oars shattered by the Venetian ship’s preliminary cannon-fire or the collision of the hulls.

  THE BARBARY COAST

  Cape St Vincent and nearby Sagres Point in Portugal, where Henry the Navigator established his centre for exploration, mark the south-west corner of Europe. Mariners should have felt reasonably safe here; after all, the bustling port of Cadiz lay an easy day’s sail to the east, and the southern coast of Portugal and Spain was studded with harbours. However, from the late 15th century on, seafarers – especially Christian ones – took their lives in their hands when they rounded the two headlands southwards. Although the Str
ait of Gibraltar lay 170 miles away, they were already entering the home waters of the Barbary corsairs. The North African port of Tangier lay at the western end of the Strait, and from there, for more than 300 miles southward, the Atlantic coast of Morocco was dotted with pirate havens such as Salé/Rabat and Safi. From these the Muslim pirates could easily prey on ships rounding the twin capes, or passing through the Strait eastwards.

  Once Christian mariners bound for the Mediterranean passed Tangier they had to run the gauntlet of the Barbary Coast stretching eastwards for 800 nautical miles until it reached Tunis – another great corsair haven. There the coast turned south beyond Cape Bon into the Gulf of Gabès, before turning eastwards again past the island stronghold of Djerba towards Tripoli. Beyond this last great Barbary port lay the Gulf of Sidra (today, the Gulf of Sirte), and a coastline that was largely devoid of harbours until it reached the north-eastern corner of the gulf and the coastline of Cyrenaica – after which Christian mariners ventured into waters controlled by the Ottoman Turks.

  The Barbary Coast, showing the main bases of the 16th- and 17th-century corsairs. (Map by Nick Buxey)

  The coastline itself was almost perfectly designed as a pirate hunting-ground. Between Tangier and Tunis it was made up of a seemingly endless succession of small headlands, inlets and bays. In many places wooded mountains ran almost to the shore, giving lookouts excellent vantage points. A reasonably fertile hinterland supported enough agriculture to sustain the communities who made the coast their home, though studded with salt pans, small lagoons and rocky headlands. Dangerous shoals and shifting sandbanks made navigation tricky unless you knew the waters well. Beyond Tunis the coastline changed; apart from the small ports of Mahdia and Sfax, with one major exception the Gulf of Gabès was devoid of shelter all the way to Tripoli. The exception was the island of Djerba, one of the great havens of the Barbary pirates.

  This detail from a mid 17th-century Dutch map shows that mariners of that period were well informed about the basic geography of the Barbary Coast, identified as ‘BARBARIA’, even if relative distances are inaccurate. The second line of longitude from the right (actually, 10° E) is incorrectly shown as passing through Cape Bon, Tunisia, just across the unrealistically narrow straits from Sicily. At the bottom of the Gulf of Gabès the pirate lair of Djerba is labelled as ‘I zerbi’. (From Joan Blaeu’s Atlas Maior, Amsterdam, 1662–65)

  Herodotus declared that the island of Djerba was identified as Homer’s ‘island of the lotus eaters’ where Odysseus was stranded on his voyage home from Troy. The largest island off the North African coast, Djerba was once a thriving ancient colony, but by 1500 it had become a backwater. It lay just off the mainland, to which its southern shore was linked by a shifting spit of sand. This enclosed the Boughrara, a lagoon large enough to accommodate a fleet, with only one narrow entrance at its north-western corner. This secure anchorage was of great value on a coast largely devoid of natural harbours, and where the highly changeable winds made navigation difficult.

  Indeed, all along the Barbary Coast the winds could be dangerous. In winter northerly gales sprang up, blowing ships towards the African shore. In spring or summer a hot, sand-laden wind swept up from the Sahara Desert. Meteorologists call it the sirocco, but in Tunis it is called the chili; further east around Tripoli it becomes the ghibli, while in Egypt it is known as the khamsin. In its mildest form it is merely uncomfortable, but it can develop into a fierce storm. On at least two occasions during the 16th century Spanish fleets were caught unawares by these sand-laden gales, and many of their ships were lost.

  Dotting this often capricious coastline were the great port cities of Tangier, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, and between them lay smaller ones such as Oran, Bougie and Bône. These were the centres of power in the region, where the local rulers and the Barbary corsairs maintained a symbiotic relationship. Away from the coast the belt of fertile countryside gave way to rugged mountains, and then to the desert. The coastal plain varies greatly in depth; in what is now Algeria it may extend 70–100 miles inland, but is slashed across with mountains that reach the coast; in Libya the desert runs right up to the shore, and fertility was limited to a series of oases and settlements linked by a dusty east–west road used by merchants and Muslim pilgrims alike.

  Both geography and prudence favoured travel by sea. On land Bedouin tribesmen preyed on travellers in the east, while in the west Berber highlanders did the same. For a ruler in Tripoli, a trip to Cyrenaica took three weeks’ travel by road, while the southern province of the Fezzan lay two months’ away across the rocky desert. By contrast, the Christian island stronghold of Malta was just three days’ sailing to the north. Throughout this period the sea was the main avenue of trade and communications; the coast was busy with the everyday shipping that linked its major ports, and other vessels venturing further afield.

  The proximity of the Barbary ports to their Christian enemies meant that they were all well-defended, often with fortifications that long pre-dated the risk of Christian attacks. Many of these settlements, including Algiers and Tunis, had been Roman towns, and had been fortified for centuries before the ‘eternal war’ began. By 1500 almost all of them had spilled beyond the bounds of their walls, and sat at the heart of developed hinterlands of suburbs and farms. At various times during our period these ports were captured by the Christians, and additional fortifications were established. In particular, the forts of Le Peñón at Algiers and La Goletta at Tunis were built by the Spanish to control these ports, and much of the campaigning between Spain and the Barbary states centred on these small but strategic island strongholds. For much of this period both the religious ‘superpowers’ of the Mediterranean – the Spanish and the Ottoman Turks – regarded the Maghreb as an arena in which to pursue their own ends; a series of invasions by the Spaniards driving eastwards could only be thwarted by Ottoman intervention on a similar scale. That the Barbary states survived was due not only to Ottoman help, and also to the enterprise and tenacity of their pirates.

  THE BARBARY STATES

  The small Berber states that played host to the pirates were independent from each other, and all functioned as feudal realms. With the exception of Morocco, any political entity’s major port was its seat of power, and these were ruled and administered in similar ways. Each began this period as a Berber fiefdom, but during the 16th century all of them outside Morocco succumbed to Ottoman control. By the end of that century the cities’ rulers were the commanders of either privateering fleets or of the janissaries – the Turkish soldiers installed in each regency to protect the ruler and the state.

  In the early 17th century the small port of Salé on the Atlantic coast of Morocco became a hotbed of piracy. This 17th-century engraving of the place shows Salé on the left (north), separated from nearby Rabat by the intervening mouth of the river Bou Regreg.

  Morocco

  Morocco, in the west of the Maghreb, was the one significant exception to the pattern of development followed by the states of the Barbary Coast. This kingdom had long been an independent entity, and at its peak its influence extended into Spain. Now, however, it was on the defensive, beset by Christian invaders and unruly tribesmen. It also differed from the other states in lacking any major port. The Berber city of Tangier was held by the Portuguese, as was nearby Ceuta, and while they made no determined effort to venture deeper into Morocco their presence deprived its rulers of a safe haven for privateers on the Mediterranean coast.

  The Berber Wattasid dynasty had ruled Morocco since 1472, when they wrested control of the country from the Marinids. Muhammad ibn Yahya ruled his newly won Moroccan sultanate from his inland capital of Fez, but he lacked the military muscle to repel the Portuguese. On his death in 1504 he was succeeded by his son Mohammed al-Burtuqali, who in 1508 launched an attack on Tangier. His assault was repulsed, as were two more over the next decade; the sultanate lacked the resources to oust either the Portuguese, or the new power in the region – the Spanish. In 1497 a Spanish ar
my had captured Morocco’s small Mediterranean port of Melilla as their first staging post on their drive eastwards along the Barbary Coast. Wisely, Mohammed al-Burtuqali left them well alone. (Remarkably, Melilla is still a Spanish enclave on the soil of the Sharifian Kingdom of Morocco, as is Ceuta).

  The Christians were not the only threat to the Wattasid kingdom. The Arab Saadi family allied itself with the tribesmen of Marrakesh to the south, which gave them the strength to drive the Wattasids from power in 1554. The Ottoman Turks had backed the Wattasids, and in 1558 they sent an invasion force into Morocco led by the ruler of Algiers, Hasan Pasha (son of the privateer leader Khizr Barbarossa). However, after the inconclusive battle of Wadi al-Laban the invaders were forced to retreat, and the Saadid dynasty continued to rule Morocco for the remainder of our period. They proved slightly more adept at dealing with the Portuguese than their predecessors, driving them from several towns on the Atlantic seaboard; this campaign culminated in their victory at Ksar-el-Kebir (Alcazarquivir) in 1578.

  This success brought the sultanate control of several small ports strung along Morocco’s Atlantic coast. While there had already been some small-scale piracy, it was the expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain in 1609 that turned this into a major enterprise. Most of these Christianized Muslims went into exile in Rabat, just south across the Bou Regreg river mouth from the small port and privateering base of Salé. The Moriscos saw privateering as a tool for revenge, so piracy thrived there during the early 17th century. The Salé privateers (known in Britain as the ‘Sallee Rovers’) continued to be a major threat to trade, ranging deep into the Mediterranean, and in the Atlantic once even as far north as Iceland. Salé also attracted other pirates, including European renegades such as the Dutch-born Jan Janszoon (see below, ‘The Pirates’). In 1624 he founded the Republic of Salé, which survived as an independent entity until its subjugation by the Moroccan sultanate in 1668.

 

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