The Stolen Village: Baltimore and the Barbary Pirates

by Des Ekin

  Soon Morat had left this ‘well-guarded city’ well behind him and was negotiating the hazardous passage through the Straits of Gibraltar. Leaving the Mediterranean was a significant symbolic act for a corsair, and – like all Barbary pirates – Morat would have paused to conduct an important religious ceremony.

  A seventeenth-century English slave named Joseph Pitts actually witnessed one of these Straits rituals. Pitts, who was serving as a soldier on a corsair vessel, watched the crew make a bundle of small wax candles and cast them into the sea. Next they emptied a pot of oil upon the waves. ‘When this is done,’ Pitts wrote, ‘they all together hold up their hands, begging the Marabout’s blessing and a prosperous voyage.’

  The rite continued with the slaughter of a sheep. One portion of entrails was cast over the port side and the other to starboard.

  Finally, the corsairs wrapped a small sum of money in linen cloth and affixed it to the mast, with an oil lamp to make it glow through the darkness of the night watch.

  When the ritual had ended, Morat turned his prow to the north and west. And as he entered the wild and unpredictable Atlantic Ocean, he may have paused for a moment to remember all the pioneering corsairs who had made this same epic journey before him.

  Morat was just the latest in a series of remarkable men who had cast off their ties of nationality and religion in a quest for independence, money, power or, in some cases, as an early form of radical protest against the injustices of their age.

  Captain John Smith, of Pocahontas fame, had once sailed as a privateer in Morocco. He summed up the early renegado corsairs in two concise sentences:

  ‘[John] Ward, a poor English sailor, and [Simon] Danser, a Dutchman, made Morocco their marts, when the Moors scarce knew how to sail a ship … [Peter] Easton got so much as made himself a Marquis in Savoy; and Ward lived like a Bashaw in Barbary.’

  It was the Old Dancer, the Devil Captain, who made it all possible. Without the Dutchman Simon Danser, the corsairs might have remained forever as Mediterranean galley rats; they might never have sailed out from Barbary into the wild Atlantic to bring the Islamic jihad to the very doorsteps of the Christian nations of the north.

  When he taught them how to sail European-style ‘round ships’, it was a decisive moment in history – equivalent, in its own way, to the moment the first horses were introduced to the Plains Indians of America. The corsairs took a giant leap of evolution. Within a generation, they had built up a navy that could rival any European nation.

  Other corsairs followed. Peter Easton, the Somerset farm labourer who terrorised the seas around southern Ireland with his armada of forty corsair ships, amassed a £2 million fortune and ended his days as Marquis of Savoy. Sir Francis Verney was an English nobleman whose career as an Islamic corsair ended when he was captured by a Christian ship and chained to a galley oar. Sir Henry Mainwaring, an Oxford don who sailed as a Barbary pirate, later defected and returned home to become a respectable statesman.

  But perhaps the most feared of all the renegado admirals was Issouf Rais, who was born in Kent as plain John Ward. A Navy deserter, he set up his own corsair fleet in Tunis and considered himself ‘the sole and only commander of the seas’. When the possibility of a royal pardon arose, he replied scornfully that the King of England would soon be begging for his pardon instead.

  By 1609, he had amassed ‘incredible wealth’ and lived in a sumptuous palace of marble and alabaster.

  John Ward died peacefully in Tunis in 1623. His career could be summed up in a verse from a popular ballad written to celebrate an extraordinary life:

  Go tell the King of England

  Go tell him this from me

  If he reign king of all the land

  I will reign king at sea.

  These ‘princes of the sea’ had transformed the Barbary states into a formidable naval power. By 1623, Algiers alone had a corsair fleet of seventy-five fighting ships and one hundred other craft. In 1634, a visiting priest counted eighty ships. Combined with other corsair capitals, they had amassed a navy equal to anything England or Holland could put up at the time.

  What type of ships did Morat sail? The official English account of the Baltimore raid gives only a minimal description. It reads:

  ‘… Captain Matthew Rice [Morat Rais], a Dutch renegado, in a ship of 300 tons, 24 pieces of ordnance, and 200 men, and another ship of 100 tons, 80 men, and 12 iron pieces …’

  At three hundred tons, Morat’s flagship wasn’t particularly big. She would most likely have been a captured prize vessel, and had probably been made in Holland. Corsairs preferred the Dutch flyboat – long, low and sleek, with a shallow draught that gave them access to tricky ports. Morat’s corsort, or second ship, was a mere hundred tons.

  With twelve cannons bristling from the gunports on either side of his flagship and another half-dozen iron guns on each side of the consort, the Dutch renegado had enough firepower to see off most naval patrols. He also had the edge on speed. Corsair vessels were polished with tallow until they streaked through the sea like sharks – which, in a sense, they were. At the height of a chase, they knew how to tune for maximum speed: everything was securely fastened and the entire crew had to ‘sit stock still’ to ensure stability.

  But ships and guns were only part of the story. Morat’s main comfort came from the knowledge that he carried with him the most fearsome, professional and disciplined fighting force in the world – the Janissaries.

  Below deck, the Janissaries would be doing what soldiers always do when they set off on a mission – laughing, joking, kidding around as they stowed their gear. The raw recruits – veterans called them ‘bulls’, or ‘rookies’ – would be joshed about how they’d perform in a real battle.

  Picture them, in the cramped and dampish area between decks. They’re wearing baggy cotton trousers, shirts, sleeveless waistcoats and red caftans. Their red turbans sit aside on their sleeping mats. Around their waist is a long red scarf, folded into a belt to hold some of their weapons. Their iron-heeled shoes clunk heavily as they pace across the wooden decking.

  Each soldier has been armed with a musket and pistols, but the distinctive Janissary weapon is the yatagan – a short, deadly blade shaped in an exotic double curve.

  Maybe some of the veterans are sorting and trimming their arrows. The Janissaries continued to use the Turkish bow right up until the 1700s. If one of the greenhorns, the bulls, had the temerity to make a joke about it, the vets would reply that they could fire thirty arrows while a musketeer was reloading.

  There might be a bit of friendly rivalry between the various platoons – the odjak – whose numbers ranged from twenty to thirty men. These soldiers were overseen by the chaouch, or sergeant, and their overall commander was the agha-bachi, or captain.

  The troops always enjoyed corsair duty – it gave them a chance to earn real money. Even the lowest grunt, the yoldach, would get a fixed share of any prize. If he hit lucky he’d get more in a single day than he could hope to earn in a lifetime’s career. And if he didn’t? No matter – he would still draw a respectable salary of £20 a year, plus the perks of life assurance, a shopping discount and a paid sabbatical.

  Above all, in Algerine society even the lowliest yoldach was king. Powerful men would scurry out of his way in the narrow streets, for no-one dare touch a Janissary, on pain of death.

  Originally, the Janissaries were celibate – a holy order of monkish warriors. But they were now permitted to marry, and the children they fathered with North African women had created a new class of citizen – koulouglis – who were becoming steadily more numerous and influential in Algiers.

  The Janissary militia had started life in Constantinople as a kind of foreign legion whose members were trained from childhood. The idea was that their lack of local ties would make them personally loyal to the Turkish emperor. But while it was still nominally under the control of Constantinople, it had grown in size and power until its officers could regularly challenge the emperor�
�s authority. By the 1600s, according to one French diplomat, there were 16,000 to 22,000 militia troops in Algiers and the province was ‘entirely in the hands of the officers of the [Janissary] Militia’ with the Sultan forced to tolerate the situation.

  The Janissaries felt they had every reason to be elitist. They were the result of an extraordinary selection process – the ‘tribute of children’, which was levied by the Sultan upon the Christian populations he’d defeated. In the late 1400s a grand vizier had advised the emperor: ‘[L]et them choose the fairest and strongest of the Christian boys to become your soldiers.’

  And so it came to be. Torn from their distressed parents, these youngsters were raised in the religion of Islam. The very best were chosen as warriors and subjected to years of rigorous training in which they were:

  ‘… accustomed to privation of food, drink and comfortable clothing, and to hard labour. They are exercised in shooting with the bow and arquebus …

  ‘[T]hey are placed in cloister-like barracks … Here not only the younger continue to obey the elders in silence and submission, but all are governed with such strictness that no one is permitted to spend the night abroad …’

  A Fleming diplomat, Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, wrote a vivid description of the Janissaries:

  ‘The dress of these men consists of a robe reaching down to the ankles, while, to cover their heads, they employ a cowl which, by their account, was originally a cloak sleeve, part of which contains the head, while the remainder hangs down and flaps against the neck …

  ‘[T]hey would stand respectfully with their arms crossed, and their eyes bent on the ground, looking more like monks than warriors … if I had not been told beforehand that they were Janissaries, I should, without hesitation, have taken them for members of some order of Turkish monks …Yet these are the famous Janissaries, whose approach inspires terror everywhere.’

  De Busbecq was awestruck by the stoicism of the corps. He praised their ‘readiness to endure hardships, union, order, discipline, thrift and watchfulness … what a contrast to our men!’

  As Morat’s crack troopers settled in for their long journey north, they may have recalled their original mission statement, as voiced by a celebrated dervish during their first passing-out ceremony more than a century beforehand.

  Ceremonially stretching the sleeve of his gown over the head of the leading soldier, the dervish had intoned:

  ‘Let them be called Yeni-Ceri [new-style soldiers]. May their countenances be ever bright; their hand victorious; their swords keen; may their spear always hang over the heads of their enemies; and wheresoever they go, may they return with a white face.’

  Morat knew he could trust the Janissaries. But could he trust the renegados who sailed with him?

  As he stood on the deck that day, he may have anxiously scanned the faces of the European turncoats who formed the core of his crew. Algiers was full of enemy agents. Any one of his men could have cut a deal to betray him.

  What the corsair captain did not know was that his mission had already been compromised.

  The authorities in London had already received a secret letter warning them that the corsairs were on their way. It even specified the precise area that the Algerines were about to attack.

  The letter was written by an English earl who was in every way a match for Morat Rais in shrewdness, cunning and in ruthless ambition. And he was determined, by any means, to stop him.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Wind Dog

  Baltimore, early 1631

  EVEN on the calmest day, seamen in Baltimore are careful to look out for the wind dog. The wind dog means trouble, especially when the surface of Roaring Water Bay is as flat as a slab of polished grey marble. Before they set out from harbour, they’ll check the horizon. If they see a shimmering mirage, a sort of half rainbow floating slightly over the sea, they know the wind is already rising and that it’ll soon develop into a stiff breeze. So a skipper will always check for that telltale half rainbow, a phenomenon known locally as the wind dog. It is a warning, and, like all warnings, you ignore it at your peril.

  The Great Earl’s pen scratched urgently across the parchment.

  Richard Boyle, Great Earl Of Cork and joint administrator of Ireland, had just received a reliable intelligence report that the Islamist forces of the Turkish empire were about to launch a huge invasion through one of the ports of south-western Ireland and was passing on the alert to his friend Lord Dorchester, the Secretary Of State in London. ‘Such nests,’ Boyle warned colourfully, ‘should not be left unguarded for Turks to lay eggs in.’

  It was February 19, 1631 in the new calendar – that is, four months before the raid on Baltimore – and Boyle had just written one of the most eerily prophetic documents of all time.

  Although he turned out to be wrong about the specific targets (he mentioned the two obvious ones, Cork and Kinsale) he was right about the timing and the general area. His intelligence was spot-on.

  It was access to crucial information like this which had propelled Richard Boyle from obscurity as a humble legal clerk to his present elevated position. At the age of sixty-four, he owned half of the south-western province of Munster, and he had recently achieved the ultimate in political power when he was appointed as one of the two ruling Lord Justices of Ireland.

  Boyle himself was a prime target for pirates. He even knew the price that the corsairs had placed upon his own head: £4,200, or £390,000 in today’s money. Just two years beforehand he had been sailing to England with his wife and two daughters when a heavily-armed pirate ship had given chase. The family had narrowly avoided capture, but a second vessel containing their servants was captured and enslaved. After that close call, Boyle had planted highly-placed spies in the pirates’ camp. The move paid off: only a few months earlier, he had received word of a corsair plot to kidnap his son and future son-in-law as they sailed from Wales. The earl despatched a sailboat manned by a single expert mariner who was able to warn his relatives with only hours to spare.

  Now the Earl had received another tip-off – and he was convinced that a small harbour town in West Cork could hold the key to protecting the entire coastline.

  Boyle was so convinced of this port’s strategic value that he had a special map drawn up. ‘[Y]our Lordship may observe,’ he wrote to Dorchester, ‘how the town and harbour lyeth, and how narrow the entry of the harbour mouth is, and how easily and fit it is to be fortified and secured … for I have received new intelligence that the Turks are preparing to land infest those maritime ports of Munster …’. Dorchester’s failure to act on the warning, and to fortify this harbour, effectively sealed the fate of 107 innocent people.

  For, by a cruel irony of history, the harbour Boyle had selected to save the nation from Islamist invasion was Baltimore.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘All Was Terror And Dismay’

  Atlantic Ocean, early June 1631

  SOMEWHERE between Gibraltar and the British Isles, Morat seized his first prize ship, and the raw bulls among his Janissary troops had their first taste of action.

  The admiral spotted a French vessel – just one of hundreds of merchantmen who plied these waters – and moved in for the kill.

  From contemporary accounts of similar attacks, we can build up a reasonably accurate picture of what happened that day. The predators would have kept a low profile, waiting for a suitable victim to sail past. ‘A little before day, they take in all their sails and lie a-hull until they can make out what ships are about them,’ explained the reformed corsair Henry Mainwaring.

  A typical tactic, he said, was to convince the victim that the corsair ship was just another plodding merchantman. The corsairs would drag empty casks to slow themselves and would often fly a false flag.

  An English merchant who wrote his memoirs under the initials of ‘T.S.’ told in 1670 how two mystery ships began tailing his vessel. ‘We became jealous of their intentions and to prepare for our defence,’ T.S. wrote, ‘The guns
were charged and everyone had his place appointed to him. We were caught between hope and fear.’

  The pursuers displayed a friendly French flag, but T.S.’s captain stuck to his course. As the two sleek craft closed in, they revealed the ‘bloody colours’ of Algerine corsairs. The victims tried to flee, but were overtaken and enslaved.

  In 1793, an American sailor named John Foss spotted a vessel flying an English flag. The deck was empty but for one man in English clothing. But suddenly:

  ‘[W]e heard a most terrible shouting, clapping of hands, huzza-ing, et cetera, and saw a great number of men rise with their heads above the gunwhale, dressed in the Turkish habit … about 100 of the pirates jumped on board, all armed, some with scimitars and pistols, others with pikes, spears, lances [and] knives.’

  Morat would have remained wary and vigilant as he closed in on his French prey. He knew only too well that two could play at the false flag game.

  Only five years beforehand, Morat had been on a routine expedition off the coast of Holland when his fleet of three ships had chanced upon an easy target: a Dutch merchantman with only a few men on deck. Fifty of Morat’s men swarmed on board to take her over.

  Then it happened, right out of the blue. The Dutch flag disappeared from the mast and was replaced by Spanish colours. Dozens of armed troops sprang out of their hideouts and leaped into action.

  Too late, the truth dawned on the corsairs. They had fallen into a trap: suckered by rival privateers who’d used the same tired old trick Morat himself had used so many times in the past.