The most discreditable part of all was that played by the British renegades, who were, more than anyone else, responsible for the Turkish efficiency at sea. Left to themselves, the corsairs from Algiers, Tunis, and Salee would never have become formidable. In mediÆval times, as has already been noted, the English had the reputation of being "good seamen, but better pirates", and piracy (including English piracy), though scotched, was not killed till some time after the days of "Good Queen Bess". Why, in the youth of Edward VI, when the country was ruled by the Regent Somerset, the Regent's own brother—Sir Thomas Seymour, the Lord High Admiral of England—did not disdain to "do a bit in that line" himself!

The story is this. He had been married to the Queen Dowager. When she died, he found himself rather "hard up". From his position he knew all about the Channel pirates; he had dealt with lots of them, and "executed justice" on them for their misdeeds. Now, however, he entered into a surreptitious partnership with them, "winked the other eye" at complaints, and pocketed half-profits. He did so well that he tried to start a special mint of his own at Bristol. He still pretended to the Regent and the Council to be very poor, and eventually succeeded in getting an addition of 1500 ducats a year to his salary. He was allowed, moreover, to draw this in a lump sum in advance. But it was not very long before the Council began to "smell a rat". The pirates naturally got bolder and bolder, knowing that they could work with impunity, and Sir Thomas Seymour was asked "why he did not look after these matters?" "Oh," said he, "I am just sending three ships after these fellows! I'll soon make things all right." His ships sailed, but only to become the worst and most successful freebooters in British waters. Their depredations and his great wealth, which, it seems, he spent openly and extravagantly, could not long remain a secret, and he was again summoned before the Council. He still asserted that he was poverty-stricken, but he could no longer get anyone to believe him, and a piratical captain who was captured about this time admitted, under examination, that the admiral had "gone halves" with him. "Brother or no brother, he must be executed for this," said the Protector Somerset—and he was.

When a man in Sir Thomas Seymour's exalted position could behave in this manner, one can hardly be surprised that lesser "gentlemen" were not ashamed to follow in his footsteps—even some years later.

The first appearance of Mohammedan pirates in Northern waters was at a time very remote from that of which I am now writing, but I think it is of sufficient interest to deserve a passing reference. It was in the year 1048—just eighteen years before the Conquest—that news came to William of Normandy that a band of Moorish or Saracen pirates had established themselves in a castle which they had built on an eminence right in the middle of the Island of Guernsey, from which they harassed and terrorized the inhabitants. A knight, Samson d'Anville, was sent to destroy "Le ChÂteau du Grand Sarrasin", as it was called, and he apparently succeeded in rooting out the wasps' nest; and when in 1203 a church was built on the site, the salvation of the islanders was commemorated by its consecration as "Notre Dame de la Deliverance du Castel". Catel Church still stands on this historic spot. We hear no more of Saracen pirates in Northern seas till the sixteenth century, unless the mysterious ships which were driven ashore near Berwick in 1254 were in any way connected with them. Certainly the ships of any Northern nation would have been recognizable on our north-east coast. The ships in question "were large handsome vessels, but unlike anything ever before seen in this country: well provided with naval stores and provisions, and laden with coats of mail, shields and weapons of all kinds, sufficient for an army".[25] Their crews were arrested "as barbarians, or spies, or even enemies", but as no one understood their language, nothing whatever could be made of them, and so they were eventually allowed to depart in peace. Who they were, whence they came, and whither they went has never been discovered. The incident remains one of the most impenetrable of the many mysteries of the sea.

The foundation of the piratical States on the north coast of Africa, which were to be the source of untold misery to European nations, may be traced to the final expulsion of the Moors from Spain in 1509. Pursued by the Spaniards to Algiers—or Argier, as it was then usually called—the Moors called in the assistance of Arouji Barbarossa, a noted Mediterranean corsair. He succeeded in beating off the invaders and established himself as first Dey. Tunis, Sallee, and other rover communities soon sprang up along the African coast, and, beginning by retaliating on the Spaniards, the "Turks" gradually extended their sphere of operations till they became a terror to Christendom.

Christendom had itself to blame in a very great measure, since the Christian nations could never agree long enough between themselves to stamp out effectively these nests of pirates. Ceasing to be content with the spoils and slaves they could capture in the Mediterranean, they set themselves to—

The churchwardens' accounts of the parish of St. Helen's, Abingdon, bear curious witness to the pitch at which Turkish piracy had arrived by the year 1565. An entry in this year runs as follows: "Payde for two bokes of Common Prayer agaynst invading of the Turke 0s. 6d." The special prayer was probably the one that ran thus:

The danger was evidently felt to be imminent. By 1576 the "Turks" of Argier had no less than 25,000 Christian captives in their cruel clutches. Most, certainly, came from the southern European countries, but our turn was to come, and half a dozen years later the miscreants were boasting as much to their English captives. We still had our own as well as Flemish, Irish, and French piratical gentlemen in the Channel at this time, for in 1580 the Council called the attention of the Cinque Ports to the fact that such robbers were "daily received and harboured by the inhabitants of the said places, making open sale of their spoils without interruption".

It is probable that the attempts at the suppression of our own sea-robbers drove some of them into the ranks of the Barbary corsairs. And among them, it is shameful to relate, were not a few men of good family. Captain John Smith, who wrote about 1630, explains that at the accession of James I the "Gentlemen Adventurers" and other seaman who had long carried on a sort of licensed piracy against the Spanish possessions and ships on the Spanish Main, found themselves, like Othello, with their "occupation gone". James wanted to live at peace with everybody. As an epigram of the time put it:

"For there being several Englishmen," writes Sir William Monson, the celebrated Admiral, "who have been too long in trading with pirates, and furnishing them with powder and other necessaries, it is to be feared those same Englishmen will endeavour to give the pirates intelligence, lest their being taken, their wicked practices should be discovered." Thanks to such scoundrels as these the "Turks" were able to attack us in our own waters. By 1616 they had no less than thirty ships north of the Mediterranean, and in that year a Salee rover was actually captured in the River Thames. By the year following so many British ships had been taken by the "Turks" that the merchants of London established a fund of £40,000—the Trinity House contributing £1068—"for the merchants and ships of the Port of London as a fund against the Turks". Four hundred and sixty British ships had already fallen into their hands.

When in 1619 Sir John Killigrew asked permission to erect a lighthouse on the Lizard the Trinity House refused, on the ground "that it is not necessary or convenient to erect a lighthouse there, but per contra, inconvenient, having regard to pirates and enemies whom it would conduct to a safe place of landing". In 1620 James I was at last persuaded to send an expedition against "Argier". The £40,000 collected in London, and other sums subscribed, went towards its equipment. It consisted of six men-of-war and twelve hired merchantmen under Sir Robert Mansell; but as during the previous sixteen years of the King's reign, "never a nail had been knocked into any of the Royal ships", and as their captains "were of little repute", the whole affair turned out such a dismal failure that the Algerines were encouraged to attack us with greater determination than ever.

"But too true it is," wrote Monson, "that since that time our poor English, and especially the people of the West country, who trade that way daily, fall into the hands of those pirates. It is too lamentable to hear their complaints, and too intolerable to suffer the misery that has befallen them."[27]

By 1625 the Turkish pirate ship was "a common object of the seashore" in the West. There were at least a score of them in the Channel. They captured the Island of Lundy, and, "Hun-like", threatened to burn Ilfracombe unless a large sum was paid as indemnity. They landed in Cornwall one Sunday, surrounded a church while divine service was proceeding, and carried off sixty men from the congregation into slavery. Some months earlier it had been officially reported that there were nearly 1400 Englishmen captive in Salee alone, "all, or greatest part, taken within 20 or 30 miles of Dartmouth, Plymouth, or Falmouth. When the winter takes, then the Sally men-of-war go to Flushing and Holland, where, having supplied all wants, and the winter past, they go to sea again. If they want men in the places with the Dutch, they are furnished."

Perhaps the most celebrated coastal raid was that made by Murad Reis upon the village of Baltimore, on the Munster coast, on 31st June, 1631. Piloted by a traitor from Dungarvon—one Flachet by name, who, it is consoling to learn, expiated his crime on the scaffold—the "Turks" sailed into the little harbour in the dead of night and descended on the sleeping village like a "bolt from the blue". Completely surprised, the Irishmen could oppose no resistance to the dark-skinned demons and their blacker-hearted renegade comrades. Those who were not fortunate enough to be slain on their own doorsteps were herded on board the corsairs with all the weeping women and children of the village, even babies in arms, and carried off into a captivity worse than death itself. The total "bag" amounted to 237 men, women, and children. Baltimore was then a thriving fishing centre, but it has never recovered from this raid. The south coast of Ireland and the Bristol Channel seem to have been a favourite hunting-ground at this period. Murad had already been harrying the English coast before he carried out his coup at Baltimore. The year before the "Turks" had taken six ships near Bristol, and had something like forty ships operating in English waters. But the Government of King Charles was so feeble and so incompetent that even the Sack of Baltimore failed to rouse it to the necessary action.

The navy was willing enough to deal with the pirates, but it was in a very poor way itself, its men robbed, starved, and stinted, its ships and many of their commanders anything but efficient. It is even stated that two of the King's ships lying at Kinsale had word of Murad Reis's attack, but did not attempt to intercept it. Apparently all that was done was to set up additional alarm-beacons on the coast. Captain Richard Plumleigh wrote from Waterford in October of the year following, reporting an engagement he had had with "the arch-pirate Nutt", and adds, "Nutt has 2 Turks with him and his consort.... I never saw people in whom one disaster had settled so deep an impression as the Turks' last descent hath done in these Irish: every small fleet they see on the coast puts them into arms, or at least to their heels."

There would appear to have been something like a permanent, though inefficient, watch in St. George's Channel about this time, for in 1634 Sir John Plumleigh, another naval officer, writes from the Isle of Man, after "scouring" those waters, "Of the Turks as yet we hear nothing, though the general bruit runs that they intend hither this year, as some prisoners from Algiers have written over to their friends". So enterprising had the pirates become that not long before this it was represented very strongly to the Mayor of Barnstaple that "unless vigorous steps are taken for the suppression of these marauders" there was great danger that "they will fall upon our fishing shippes both at Newfoundland and Virginea, for they desire both our shippes and men".

The "Turks" were, in fact, insatiable. At this time it was reported that they had 25,000 Christian slaves in Algiers alone, besides 8000 renegades, among whom were over 1000 women. The petitions to the Government from coastal towns, from merchants, from the friends and relations of the unhappy captives, were legion—but nothing practical was done. The celebrated Robert Boyle writes of his passage from Youghal to Bristol in 1635, that he accomplished it safely, "though the Irish coasts were infested with Turkish galleys".

Two years later a squadron under Captain William Rainsborow was actually dispatched against Salee. This port was blockaded by four ships, which were reinforced by four more, and after destroying every Turkish ship which attempted to break the blockade, the squadron closed in to the city, and so battered its fortifications that the pirates were glad to make terms by giving up 400 English slaves. The success of Captain Rainsborow shows what might have been done had the same process been applied to other pirate cities on the African coast, but, strange to say, our forefathers were content merely to "scotch the snake", without making an end of it once and for all.

By 1640 the Turks were as bold and aggressive as ever. Three Turkish men-of-war attacked the Elizabeth off the Lizard and burned her, and shortly afterwards landed at Penzance and carried off sixty men, women, and children. The Deputy-Lieutenant of Cornwall reported that there were about sixty Turkish pirates off the coast at this time. In 1645 it is stated that they landed again at Fowey, and made slaves of 240 persons, including some ladies.

Occasionally some of our merchant-ships were able to put up a successful defence against the "Turks".

There were several instances of this in the Mediterranean, and here is a shipmaster's report of how he did the like in the Channel in 1638: "W. Nurry, of this town and county of Poole, Mariner and Master under God of the good ship called the Concord of Poole, burthen, 80 tons, with 6 guns, 12 men, and 2 boys, being about 6 or 7 leagues off Ushant, coming from Rochelle laden with salt, was set upon by a man-of-war of Algiers having 15 pieces of ordnance and full of men with the colour of Holland displayed ... and then put out her Turkey colours and bade him 'amain'[28] for the King of Algiers, whereupon this examinant refusing to strike their sails at his command, the Turk boarded his ship in his quarter with great store of men, whereby they continued to fight board by board together by the space of 3 hours, and the Turk being weary of the battery took occasion to cut away this examinant's sprit-sail-yard to clear himself away, and then stood to the northward ... that he killed a great many of the Turks and beat them out of his top into the sea with his muskets, and then surprised and brought into this harbour of Poole, one Turk and three Christians, viz.: a Dutchman, a Frenchman and a Biscayner." These three men made statements to the effect that the Turkish ship was of 240 tons displacement, carried 15 guns and 124 men, of whom 19 were Christians, 6 of them English, and 3 of them renegades, and that thirty men-of-war from Algiers were "on the war-path" against Spain, France, and England. The "Dutchman" was one Oliver Megy of LÜbeck, who admitted that he had been acting as pilot. Dutchman was apparently then used indiscriminately for Dutch or German, as I believe is still to a great extent the case at sea.

Then Sir John Pennington, in his Journal on board H.M.S. Vauntguard, in 1633, reports falling in with a "fly-boat", which informed him that he had been "clapt aboard" by two Turks, one of eleven, the other of seven guns, "betwixt the Gulfe and the Land's End, and hurt 9 or 10 of his men very dangerously, but at last—God bee praysed—they got from them and slew 4 of the Turkes—that entered them—outright and drove the rest overboard". Again, when anchored in the Swiftsure, in Stokes Bay, Pennington notes on 24th September, 1635: "There came in a freebooter, and in his company a barke of Dartmouth laden with Poore John (dried fish) which he tooke in the Channel from a Turks man-of-warr".[109]
[110] In 1652, just after the Republican form of government had been established in England, the Speaker frigate was dispatched to "Argier in Turkey" with £30,000 to ransom English captives from slavery. But when the strong hand of the Protector Cromwell had seized the helm of state there was no more question of ransoms or presents to the barbarians of Algiers. He dispatched the celebrated Admiral Blake with a dozen men-of-war to deal with the Turks in the only effective way. Blake stood into the harbour of Tunis, burned all the shipping there, and knocked their fortifications to pieces, with the loss of only twenty-five killed and forty wounded. He then appeared before Algiers, whither the story of his victory at Tunis had preceded him, and had no difficulty in arranging for the release of the whole of the British captives. More than this, the "Turks" gave British waters a wide berth, and there were no more complaints of their performances in the Narrow Seas during the Protectorate.

But with the re-appearance of the Stuart kings at the Restoration the old story of outrage and piracy began all over again. The Turks led off with the sensational capture of Lord Inchiquin, the British Ambassador to Portugal, who with his whole suite was captured off the Tagus and publicly sold by auction in the market-place of Algiers. They would never have dared to act in this manner in the days of Cromwell and Blake; but they knew well enough that there was mighty little patriotism about the "Merry Monarch" and his Court and Government. But even Charles could not stomach the degrading arrangement which was made by the Earl of Winchelsea, the British Ambassador to Turkey, who had been ordered to call at Algiers on his way out to negotiate a new treaty with the Dey. This nobleman actually granted the pirates liberty to search British vessels and remove all foreigners and their goods. The Earl of Sandwich and Sir John Lawson were sent with a fleet to Algiers to enforce the removal of the obnoxious clause from the treaty. They bombarded the town, but apparently not very effectively. The point was conceded by the Dey, but as the Algerines, like the modern Huns, regarded all treaties as "scraps of paper", to be torn up when opportunity offered, the expedition was practically fruitless.

The Earl of Inchiquin and his son were eventually ransomed for £1500, and Charles showed his weakness by indulging in the unfortunately widespread habit of trying to conciliate the "Turks" by presents of arms and ammunition, which everyone knew would be used against our own ships and men.

From about this time forward the Turkish pirates seem to have generally kept farther out in the Atlantic. They were especially on the look-out for our Newfoundland ships. In 1677 six corsairs destroyed seventeen of these, but one of the Turks was terribly mauled by a small English frigate, and only escaped by the aid of a dark and stormy night. Our watch-dogs were settling down to their work at last. The Concord merchantman bound for America had a stiff fight with a Turkish squadron in 1678, 120 leagues from the Land's End. One night they fell in with "The Admiral of Algiers, a new Frigate of 48 guns, called the Rose, and commanded by Canary, a Spanish renegade; the other two Virginiamen, the one of Plymouth, the one of Dartmouth", evidently captured ships. There was also a "barque of Ireland". "The Algerian hailed us in English," says Thomas Grantham, master of the Concord, "'From whence?' We answered, 'From London.' He told us he was the Rupert, frigate, and commanded our boat on board, which our Captain refused, knowing it could not be the Rupert. The Turk kept company with us all night, which gave us some time to fit our ship, and get our boats out: when it was light he put abroad his bloody flag[29] at main-topmast head, fires a gun, and commands us to strike to the King of Algiers and to Admiral Canary.

"We gave him a 'What cheer ho', he comes up with us and passes his broadside upon us, having 13 guns of a side of his lower tier; we returned him as good a salute as we could; he steered from us, falls astern, loaded his guns with double head and round partridge,[30] and then came up again with us, claps us on board, grapples with us on the quarter, and made fast his spritsail topmast to our main-bowline, our main-topsail being furled. After 2 or 3 hours dispute, finding he could not master us, he cut away our boats, and fires us on the quarter, and our mizzen-yard being shot down, fired our sail which burnt very vehemently, and immediately set all the after-part of our ship on fire. Our captain kept the round-house and cuddy, till the fire forced him to retreat, all that were with him being killed or wounded and being got down into the great cabin steerage, he sallied out with those that were there with a resolution rather to be burnt than taken.

"In the interim, the Turk's foresail hanging in the brails over our poop took fire; then he would fain have got clear of us, but we endeavoured to keep him fast, and as many as run up to cut him clear, we fetched down with our small shot, until his sails, masts, shrouds, and yards, were all in a blaze; then we cut loose, and immediately his mast to the deck went by the board, with many men in his top and his bloody flag; several of the men betook themselves to their boats, but at last they overcame the fire, as, thanks be to God, we did likewise on board our ship, having our mizzen-mast burnt by the board and all the after-part of our ship burnt; there was little or no wind. The Turk got his oars, and rowed till he was out of fear of us.... We had killed or wounded on board of us in the action with Canary 21 men, but of Turks, according to the account from aboard them, at least 70 or 80 are killed." If every merchantman had put up as good a fight as Captain Thomas Grantham, the Turks would soon have had to retire from their piratical business. As it was, they were able to continue their depredations for some years longer, but not in quite the same wholesale way. The British Navy became more and more active, and in 1681-2 made prizes of a number of Turkish vessels, among them the Admiral of Sally, the Two Lyons and Crown of Argiers, the Three Half Moons, the Golden Lyon, and—what a name for a man-of-war!—the Flowerpott. These captures had an immediate effect. The Algerines became "very inclinable to peace" and offered to release many English captives "gratis". Their last notable exploit in British waters was the attempt to capture a transport in which the Royal Irish Regiment was sailing from Ostend to Cork in 1695.

The "Turk" in this case was a Salee rover, like the one that attacked Robinson Crusoe's ship. She gave chase to the transport and overhauled her, but when she got near enough to see her decks crowded with redcoats she considered discretion to be the better part of valour and hauled off. It is probable that occasional forays were made on our shipping by such marauders in the early part of the eighteenth century, and we have a very detailed account of the wreck of the White Horse, an Algerine frigate, near Penzance, in September, 1740. The return of the greater part of her survivors to Algiers on board the Blonde frigate is an early instance of our national weakness for too tenderly dealing with alien enemies. Slavery had not been abolished; we could easily and legitimately have sold them for slaves to the West Indian planters or to the Knights of Malta, or exchanged them for some of the hundreds of our fellow-countrymen the pirate cities of North Africa still held in bondage. But no, we preferred to set them free and to put them in a position to murder, rob, and enslave yet more Englishmen.

The very last appearance of the Turkish pirate in our waters I have been able to find is of so recent a date as 18th May, 1817, when a couple of Moorish vessels captured a ship coming from Oldenburgh, off the Galloper Shoal, which is not far from the Goodwin Sands. This must have been a very exceptional case, though up to the time Lord Exmouth subjected Algiers to a severe bombardment the "Turks" were still a danger to merchantmen in southern waters. The pest was not stamped out until the capture of the famous pirate city by the French in 1830. So confident and so truculent were the Deys of Algiers as late as the early part of the nineteenth century that, in 1804, even Nelson, in command of a powerful fleet, was unable to make the Dey give an interview to Captain Keats of the Superb, whom he had sent as bearer of a letter setting forth certain British claims. Incredible to relate, no further steps were taken, and the fleet put to sea and resumed the blockade of Toulon. We can hardly, therefore, be surprised to read that in the same year the "Turks" should have had the hardihood to attack the United States frigate Philadelphia, which took the ground off Tripoli when in pursuit of a pirate. The Americans fought for four hours, but, the ship being by that time almost on her beam ends, had eventually to strike their colours, and both officers and men were carried ashore into slavery.