George Davis and William Watts stood shivering on the gallows at Execution Dock. Crime and punishment had led them both to the other side of the world and back. Now they were about to leave that world forever.
Watts had been transported to Tasmania in 1817 for stealing the bedding from a lodging house in Islington. Davis followed him three years later, after being convicted at the Old Bailey of grand larceny. (He stole a spoon worth ten shillings from the kitchen of a house.) The harsh conditions of the penal settlement at Hobart (on the southern coast of the island) didn’t persuade either man to the paths of righteousness, and in 1829, after reoffending several times, they were put aboard the brig Cyprus with sixteen other convicts and dispatched to the remote penal station of Macquarie Harbor on the west coast of Tasmania, where the worst of the worst ended up. En route to Macquarie the convicts overpowered their guards and seized control of the ship, which they sailed, via Tahiti and Japan, to China. From there Davis and Watts made their way back to England—only to be recognized, arrested, and brought before the Admiralty Sessions in London on a charge of “piratically and feloniously carrying away by force of arms” the Cyprus.
There was little doubt as to their guilt, and when the verdict was announced, Sir Christopher Robinson, judge of the High Court of Admiralty, duly put on his black cap, informed the unfortunate pair that piracy was “considered by the law of the land as a crime of the greatest magnitude,” 35 and sentenced them to hang. On the morning of Thursday, December 16, 1830, they were taken from their cells at Newgate Prison, put in a carriage, and driven the three miles to Execution Dock, where, as the Times of London reported succinctly the next day, they “underwent the awful sentence of the law.”36
The deaths of George Davis and William Watts were less barbaric than those of the seventeen men who sought the fellowship of the angels at Execution Dock back in 1609: the gallows was now equipped with a trap, making death by slow strangulation less likely; and the practice of leaving corpses until three tides washed over them had been discontinued at the end of the eighteenth century. But an Admiralty official still led the procession on horseback, carrying his silver oar; the crowds still jeered; the prison chaplain still led prayers; and the men still died. What made these particular executions noteworthy was that Davis and Watts were the last pirates to hang by British law at Wapping.
Piracy was on the decline in the nineteenth century, not only among British subjects but everywhere, as well-armed professional navies grew more effective at enforcing the rule of law on the high seas and the immensely powerful British navy pursued a vigorous antislavery policy. In 1856 the majority of maritime nations, including the Ottoman Empire, signed the Declaration of Paris, which outlawed privateering and the issuing of letters of marque and which brought to an end 350 years of quasi-legal Mediterranean piracy.
As the naval power of Algiers and the other Barbary states weakened and their ability to play off one European nation against another declined, the history of North Africa entered a new phase. On June 14, 1830, six months before Davis and Watts died at Execution Dock, a French force of 34,000 soldiers under the command of Marshal Louis-Auguste-Victor, Count de Ghaisnes de Bourmont, landed at Sidi Ferruch, on the Algerian coast, fifteen miles west of Algiers. The pretext for the French invasion was the famous affaire de l’éventail (“the fan affair”) of 1827, in which Hasan, the dey of Algiers, lost his temper with the arrogant French consul, Pierre Deval, and hit him across the face with his fly-whisk in front of dozens of dignitaries and diplomats at a public feast to mark the end of Ramadan. The real reason for the invasion was to prop up the unpopular government of the French king, Charles X—a vain effort, since news of the French victory had scarcely reached Paris when Charles was deposed in the July Revolution. But by then it was too late for Algiers. French withdrawal would have meant an embarrassing loss of face, and the invasion force stayed. Within twenty years the whole of Algeria was under French control.
In 1881, as a newly unified Italy cast a longing gaze at Tunis, the French used raids into Algiers by Tunisian tribesmen as an excuse to extend their influence eastward. An army of 30,000 crossed the border into Tunisia on April 8, 1881, entering the capital sixteen days later without meeting any real resistance, and Tunis was formally declared a French protectorate in June 1883. Morocco and Tripoli held on to their independence for a little longer, but by 1914, Morocco had been split between France and Spain, and Tripoli had been ceded to Italy by the Ottoman Empire, along with the rest of what is now Libya.
There’s an obvious irony here. Fear of European conquest had turned the Barbary states into pirate kingdoms in the first place, motivating the Barbarossa brothers and their sixteenth-century corsairs to set out on their sea-jihad. Without that fear of conquest, Barbary’s socialized piracy would never have grown into the scourge of Christendom; its followers would not have become the shock troops on the front line of the defense of the Islamic world. And ultimately the only way Europe could find to deal with the scourge was to conquer Barbary, sweeping away the corsairs in a tidal wave of colonialism.
At the end of Byron’s problematic poem The Corsair (1814), Conrad, the hero corsair of the title, disappears into the night after he loses the love of his life. His crew scours caves and grottoes, searches shore and sea, calling his name “till echo waxeth weak,” but they never find him. He has vanished into the air, leaving nothing behind but Byron’s epigram:He left a Corsair’s name to other times,
Link’d with one virtue, and a thousand crimes.
The equally problematic pirates of Barbary left a thousand crimes behind them. Their one virtue, whether they were renegade Christian fugitives or devout Muslim warriors for God, was courage. Deplore the crimes, by all means.
But remember the courage.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people and institutions have helped me with this book. I would like to thank the staff of the various libraries and institutions I’ve haunted in the course of my research, including those at the British Library, Bristol University Library, the London Library, and the National Archives at Kew. Thanks also to the Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford for permission to quote from the journal of Thomas Baker, and to the Duke of Devonshire and the Chatsworth Trust for permission to quote from the letter-book of the first Earl of Cork. I am particularly grateful to Andrew Peppitt, archivist to the Devonshire Collection, for his assistance and kindness.
I owe a personal debt of gratitude to Felicity Bryan, Jake Morrissey, and Tricia Lankester for their comments, suggestions, and sound advice; and to Fraser and Alfie Gill for their enthusiastic encouragement and support.
Last, first, always, my thanks to Helen.
NOTES
ONE. PROSPERITY AT SEA
1 Anon., The Lives, Apprehensions, Arraignments, and Executions, of the 19 Late Pirates. The executions of the eighteenth and nineteenth pirates were delayed until the following day amidst rumors of a pardon from the king, which, in the event, did not materialize.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Sir Arthur Chichester to Lord Salisbury, Calendar of State Papers, Ireland, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office (1860-1912), April 13, 1608 (hereafter cited as CSP Ireland ).
6 Sir Henry Mainwaring, “Discourse on Pirates,” in G. E. Manwaring (ed.), The Life and Works of Sir Henry Mainwaring, vol. 2, 15-16.
7 Lords of the Council to President of Munster (Sir Henry Danvers), CSP Ireland, September 27, 1608.
8 Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, vol. 1, 231.
9 Johannes Brenz, Booklet on the Turk; Veit Dietrich, How Preachers Should Exhort the People to Repentance and Earnest Prayer Against the Turk; both quoted in John W. Bohnstedt, “The Infidel Scourge of God,” 50, 51.
10 Preface to Newton’s translation of Agostino Curione’s A Notable Historie of the Saracens (1575); quoted in Daniel J. Vitkus (ed.), Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England, 7.
12 William Shakespeare, Richard II, IV, i, 2076-78.
13 J. Morgan, A Complete History of Algiers, 257.
14 D. Haëdo, Topographia e historia general de Argel, Valladolid (1612); quoted in Charles-André Julien, History of North Africa, 280.
15 Morgan, A Complete History of Algiers, 259.
16 Ibid., 263.
17 In his lifetime, and especially after the death of Oruç, Hızır was usually known in the West simply as “Barbarossa.” Later writers added an attempt at his honorary name, calling him “Hayreddin Barbarossa.”
18 Morgan, A Complete History of Algiers, 293.
19 Lewis Roberts, The Merchants Mappe of Commerce, 192.
20 Ibid., 118.
21 Article 37, The Capitulations and Articles of Peace Between the Majesty of the King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland &c. and the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, 11.
22 Ibid., Article 19, 5.
TWO. WHERE ARE THE DAYS?
1 Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs in the Archives of Venice, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office (1864-1947), June 23, 1608 (hereafter cited as CSP Venice).
2 Anon., The Seamans Song of Captain Ward . . . .
3 Strictly speaking, letters of reprisal were something different. They allowed a merchant or shipowner who had been robbed by foreigners to recoup his losses by taking goods belonging to the robbers’ fellow countrymen. In practice, the terms were used interchangeably until well into the seventeenth century.
4 “A Proclamation Ordained by the King’s Highness . . . ,” Harleian MSS 442, 170; reprinted in R. G. Marsden, Law and Custom of the Sea, vol. 1, Navy Records Society (1915), 156-7.
5 Piero Contarini, Venetian Ambassador, “Relation of England,” December 1618; in CSP Venice, 1617-19.
6 James I, A Proclamation to Represse All Piracies and Depredations upon the Sea (1603).
7 James I, A Proclamation for Revocation of Mariners from Foreign Services (March 1, 1605).
8 “Report on England Presented to the Government of Venice in the Year 1607, by the Illustrious Gentleman Nicolo Molin, Ambassador There,” CSP Venice, May 30, 1607.
9 Anon., The Lives, Apprehensions, Arraignments, and Executions, of the 19 Late Pirates.
10 Andrew Barker, A True and Certaine Report . . . , 5.
11 Ibid., 5-6.
12 Quoted in Michael Oppenheim, “The Royal Navy under James I,” 494.
13 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office (1856-1972), June 23, 1597 (hereafter cited as CSPD).
14 Nathaniel Boteler, Six Dialogues about Sea-Services . . . , 26.
15 Michael Oppenheim (ed.), The Naval Tracts of Sir William Monson, Navy Records Society (1902-13), vol. 2, 237.
16 Barker, A True and Certaine Report . . . , 7.
17 Ibid., 8.
18 Ibid., 9.
19 Ibid., 10.
20 Ibid., 10.
21 Ibid., 11.
22 Anthony Nixon, Newes from Sea of Two Notorious Pyrats, 2.
23 Leo Africanus, A Geographical Historie of Africa, 251.
24 Quoted in Godfrey Fisher, Barbary Legend, 159.
25 Quoted in Charles-André Julien, History of North Africa, 307.
26 Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations . . . , vol. 2, 1.128.
27 Myles Davies, Athenæ Britannicæ, 97.
28 Pascual de Gayangos (trans.), The History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain, vol. 2 (1843), 394.
29 Quoted in David James, “The ‘Manual de artillería,’” 251.
30 CSP Venice, May 17, 1603.
31 John Ogilby, Africa, Being an Accurate Description . . . , 253.
32 Leo Africanus, A Geographical Historie of Africa, 247.
33 Ibid., 249.
34 Ibid., 248.
35 Ibid., 249.
36 Ogilby, Africa, Being an Accurate Description . . . , 251.
37 Nixon, Newes from Sea . . . , 4.
38 Barker, A True and Certaine Report . . . , 12.
39 The pinnace never arrived. For reasons which aren’t altogether clear, its crew kept sailing westward until they reached the Atlantic, stopping only when they were shipwrecked off the Balearic Islands. The survivors were picked up by a Dutchman and taken back to Tunis.
40 R. G. Marsden, Documents Relating to Law and Custom of the Sea, vol. 1, 379.
41 By way of comparison, Henry VIII’s great Mary Rose was rated at 700 tons, and the Golden Hind, in which Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the world, was a vessel of just 120 tons.
42 Sean Jennett (trans.), Journal of a Young Brother: The Life of Thomas Platter, 117.
43 Marc’Antonio Correr to the Doge and Senate, CSP Venice, August 6, 1609.
44 Barker, A True and Certaine Report . . . , 13.
45 Ibid., 14.
46 Ibid., 13-14.
THREE. HELLFIRE IS PREPARED
1 Andrew Barker, A True and Certaine Report . . . , 16.
2 CSP Venice, March 24, 1608.
3 Barker, A True and Certaine Report . . . , 17.
4 CSP Venice, November 5, 1607.
5 Ibid., November 15, 1607.
6 Ibid., October 2, 1608.
7 Ibid., October 2, 1608.
8 James I, A Proclamation Against Pirats [sic], January 8, 1609.
9 Barker, A True and Certaine Report . . . , 18.
10 Ibid., 18.
11 Ibid., 24.
12 Anthony Nixon, Newes from Sea . . . , 15-16.
13 Barker, A True and Certaine Report . . . , 15.
14 Ibid., 1.
15 I owe this reference, and the wording, to Marc David Baer, Honored by the Glory of Islam, 197.
16 CSP Venice, December 23, 1610.
17 Samuel Rowlands, “To a Reprobate Pirate that Hath Renounced Christ and Is Turn’d Turk,” in More Knaves Yet.
18 Thomas Dekker, If It Be Not Good, the Divel Is in It.
19 Robert Daborn, A Christian Turn’d Turk, in Daniel J. Vitkus (ed.), Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England, 198.
20 Ibid., 230-31.
21 Rowland White to Sir Robert Sidney, quoted in Bernard Harris, “A Portrait of a Moor,” in Alexander and Wells, Shakespeare and Race, 29.
22 Stow, quoted in Harris, “A Portrait of a Moor,” 32.
23 Chamberlain, quoted in Harris, “A Portrait of a Moor,” 31.
24 Historical Manuscripts Commission, Downshire II, 160.
25 Ibid., 186.
26 CSP Venice, November 19, 1609.
27 William Lithgow, The Totall Discourse . . . , 359.
28 Ibid., 380.
FOUR. THE LAND HATH FAR TOO LITTLE GROUND
1 Anon., The Sea-mans Song of Dansekar the Dutch-man, His Robberies Done at Sea.
2 Anthony Nixon, Newes from Sea . . . , 20-21.
3 Ibid., 21.
4 Ibid., 22.
5 Ibid., 26.
6 Ibid., 27.
7 Ibid., 30.
8 Ibid., 31.
9 Ibid., 33.
10 Charles J. Sisson and Arthur Brown, “‘The Great Dansker’: Literary Significance of a Chancery Suit,” 341.
11 Nixon, Newes from Sea . . . , 34.
12 Ibid., 35.
13 Ibid., 34.
14 William Okeley, Eben-ezer: or, a Small Monument of Great Mercy, 5.
15 John Dryden, Limberham, 1, i.
16 Katharine Prescott Wormeley (trans.), The Plays of Molière, Little, Brown and Company (1909), vol. 1, 298.
17 Roberto Rossetti, “An Introduction to Lingua Franca,” see http://www.uwm.edu/-corre/franca/edition3/lingua5.html.
18 William Lithgow, The Totall Discourse . . . ,162.
19 Quoted as the epigraph to Kahane, Kahane, and Tietze, The Lingua Franca in the Levant.
20 Nixon, Newes from Sea . . . , 10.
21 CSP Venice, October 12, 1609.
22 Ibid., October 31, 1609.
23 Ibid., December 1, 1609.
24 Ibid., May 23, 1610.
25 Ibid., September 21, 1610.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid., January 6, 1611.
28 Lithgow, The Totall Discourse . . . , 381. Lithgow states that these events took place in 1616; but since he later buries Sir Francis Verney (who died in September 1615), he must have his dates wrong. He also says that Danseker negotiates with the “Bashaw” (i.e., the pasha of Tunis) rather than the dey. At this point in Tunisian history the role of the temporary and Istanbul-appointed pasha is largely ceremonial, and it is much more likely that Lithgow means Yusuf Dey, the de facto head of state.
29 Lithgow, The Totall Discourse . . . , 382.
30 Ibid.
31 Anon., The Sea-mans Song of Dansekar the Dutch-man, His Robberies Done at Sea.
FIVE. YOUR MAJESTY’S NEW CREATURE
1 CSP Ireland, November 18, 1612.
2 High Court of Admiralty, Public Record Office 13/41/59 (July 24, 1610) (hereafter cited as PRO).
3 Lords of the Council to Chichester, CSP Ireland, September 27, 1612.
4 Skipwith to the Lord Deputy, CSP Ireland, July 25, 1611.
5 Ibid.
6 T. Whitburn (ed.), Westward Hoe for Avalon in the New-found-land, 42.
7 CSP Venice, October 15, 1612.
8 Whitburn, Westward Hoe for Avalon, 42.
9 CSP Venice, February 4, 1612.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., March 3, 1613.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid., April 19, 1612.
14 Mary Breese Fuller, “Sir John Eliot and John Nutt, Pirate,” Smith College Studies in History, vol. 4, no. 2 (January 1919), 76.
15 Ibid., 82.
16 Quoted in ibid., 88.
17 Quoted in ibid., 91.
18 Thomas Fuller, The History of the Worthies of England (1662), “Herefordshire,” 40
19 Quoted in G. E. Manwaring (ed.), The Life and Works, vol. 1, 8.
20 Sir Henry Mainwaring, “Discourse on Pirates,” in G. E. Manwaring (ed.), The Life and Works, vol. 2, 11.
21 CSPD, July 5, 1611.
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