The Stolen Village: Baltimore and the Barbary Pirates

by Des Ekin

  At a nod from their captain, the 230 musketeers began to fan out along The Cove, dividing themselves into twenty-six attack squads: one for each homestead.

  The villagers were extraordinarily unlucky. Even at this late stage, a warning would have enabled some of them to scramble out of their beds and dash for safety in the darkness of the surrounding woodland. All that was needed was one barking dog, one fisherman glancing out to check his boat moorings, one nursing mother hearing a footstep in the night. But Baltimore was lost in sleep, and no-one stirred.

  The Janissaries took up their positions and drew their weapons. Expert hands applied flame to twists of oiled rope-yarn and passed them around. As the torches flared into life, Morat gave the signal and all hell broke loose.

  The people of Baltimore didn’t have a chance. They woke up screaming as their flimsy doors smashed and splintered to pieces under syncopated, expert blows from the iron bars. The incendiaries were thrust into the thatched roofs of the homesteads. Flames leapt high into the June night. Within minutes, Baltimore was ablaze.

  As the villagers poured out into the street, coughing, eyes streaming, they were confronted by attackers who seemed more like demons than men – the Janissaries screaming and slashing the air with their curved sabres; the Barbary pirates terrifying their Christian victims with the most vicious threats and obscenities they could think of. The tactics were mainly psychological. Like modern-day commandos storming a siege building, they were aiming for ‘the two Cs’: confusion in their victims and control for themselves. The razor-sharp yatagans rarely touched human flesh. Panic and terror were the real weapons here – the objective was to capture live, healthy slaves and keep casualties to a minimum.

  But where they encountered resistance, the Janissaries were utterly ruthless. At one household, a villager called Timothy Curlew put up a brave fight. He was hacked to death on the spot, and his screaming widow was dragged into the street to take her place among the captives who were bound for the slave markets of Algiers.

  A second man, John Davis, also made a bold but foolhardy attempt to fight off the invaders. Like Curlew, he was slaughtered instantly as a warning to others.

  The nightmare went on and on. At another house, Stephen Broadbrook’s heavily pregnant wife and two children were dragged out of bed and herded through the streets like cattle being driven to market.

  No-one was spared, not even the elderly and frail. Three old folk were shoved into the stunned, disbelieving line of captives and shunted down to the beach like all the others. At the Gunter home, seven sons were stolen away.

  The raid on The Cove was completed with ruthless efficiency. Within a short space of time, a hundred villagers – men, women, old folk, servants, toddlers – were being pushed and shoved down the dirt road towards the beach and manhandled on to the waiting boats.

  Morat Rais made sure the first batch of captives was secured, then turned his attention towards the main village of Baltimore.

  In his hillside home, William Harris stirred in his sleep. He had an advantage over his fellow villagers in Baltimore – noises from The Cove were hard to hear in the main part of town, but they would drift up clearly to Harris’s eyrie.

  Like most of the settlers in Baltimore, Harris would have planned to rise early, at around five or six in the morning. Right now, at just after two, he was in the deepest part of his sleep cycle. We don’t know how long he lay there, slipping in and out of consciousness, until he realised that the faint shouts and screams drifting up from The Cove were real and not just a nightmare.

  Harris jumped up from his bed and stared out into the night. He probably couldn’t believe his eyes: flames were leaping high over the houses of The Cove, and the air was acrid with the smoke from the smouldering thatch.

  Looking down the road towards the lower part of town, he could see the exotic red uniforms of the invaders. Harris must have blinked and rubbed his eyes at the sight of the turbans, the plumes, the baggy pants and the curved slippers. Incredible as it seemed, there could be no doubt about it – the soldiers were Turks.

  William Harris grabbed his musket and fumbled in the darkness to prepare his powder. He was under no illusions about the gun’s ability to fight off an army of Janissaries. But if the town were really facing attack, this could be the only warning system they had.

  Down at The Cove, Morat Rais played it safe before moving on to the next phase of the attack. He didn’t expect serious resistance, but, like every good general, he made a priority of safeguarding his retreat. Sixty of his musketeers – more than a quarter of his entire force – were stationed in ambush at a strategic high point along the path leading back to the beach. If everything went wrong, at least their escape route would be kept open.

  Taking 120 to 140 men, he marched up the track to the main village of Baltimore. It wasn’t much bigger than The Cove: there were around thirty houses laid out in rows in a neat square formation outside the walls of a sixteenth-century castle, and a further ten homes arranged in an ‘L’ shape inside the perimeter.

  The raiders fanned out around the streets as before, but this time it was different. Forty houses were smashed open, but only ten captives were found. Something, or someone, had alerted the villagers to the danger. Furious, the pirates began ransacking the houses and looting anything of value.

  Then Morat Rais heard something that made him stop short and call a halt to the attack. From the hillside above him, he could hear gunfire. Several musket shots were fired, and then the captain heard one of the most unnerving sounds in his world – the tattoo of a military drum.

  Morat Rais paused to take stock of the situation. He had been assured that there was no military presence anywhere near the area – the nearest British soldier was in Kinsale, fifty-four miles away. But the pragmatic pirate chieftain had survived in this hazardous trade long enough to know that you never took anything for granted. If there really were soldiers on the hillside, they would have the advantage of altitude as well as familiarity with the territory. Morat assessed the risk, glanced around the deserted houses, and decided they weren’t worth the gamble.

  Shoving their ten dejected captives ahead of them, the pirates and Janissaries marched back down to the beach to conduct an organised withdrawal.

  The Barbary captain had been fooled by one of the oldest tricks in the book. There was no army on the hillside above him: just a few pathetic escapees, dashing upward through the scrub and undergrowth, barely noticing the brambles tearing at their exposed flesh, or their bare toes stubbing on the sharp rocks. They were the lucky ones – at least they were free.

  Nearby, William Harris loaded up his gun for another shot into the night sky. A neighbour, alerted by the quick-thinking Harris, stolidly continued to batter out a military tattoo on his drum. With his single musket and a few balls of shot, Harris had succeeded in turning back one of the most formidable fighting forces in the world.

  Three days later, his achievement would be recognised with a mention in despatches to the Privy Council in London. But despite his resourceful actions, he had succeeded in saving only a small proportion of the villagers.

  Backlit by the hellish orange glow of their blazing homes, the captives must have felt like abandoning all hope as they were ferried out of their friendly harbour towards the silhouetted hulks of the pirate ships.

  The corsairs had seized a pitiable cargo of victims: nearly four-fifths of their captives were women and children. They were forced into two stinking fishing boats that Morat Rais had captured earlier, and, in this almost Stygian atmosphere, there would have been a deafening cacophony of noise: children screaming for their fathers, wives crying for their husbands, old people praying hopelessly for a deliverance that would not come.

  But as the journey continued and the panic subsided, there would have been a more muted sound – the eerie keening of dozens of voices whimpering in abject terror.

  For nearly everyone in Christian Europe, the worst fate imaginable was to be captur
ed by the Islamic pirates and sold into slavery on the Barbary Coast of North Africa. They had heard all the stories a dozen times: stories of hideously inventive tortures and scientifically concentrated beatings; stories of living deaths at the galley oars; stories of malicious random cruelties and horrific sexual assaults. All these images had been implanted in their heads and for many years had disturbed their sleep. Now, in an almost literal sense, they were living through their worst nightmares.

  Nothing like this had ever happened before. In these parts, capture by Barbary slave traders had been a risk faced mainly by those at sea. Never before had such a concentrated force of Turkish troops and North African corsairs had the audacity to stage an actual invasion of the King’s territory.

  With this in mind, some of the captives would have whispered words of comfort to each other. The authorities would never allow this outrage to happen. And wasn’t there a Royal Navy man of war – The Fifth Whelp – patrolling the coast and ready to pursue the pirates at a moment’s notice?

  If someone could have told them, as their blazing homes disappeared from view behind the headland, that a mixture of corruption and bungling would keep the Navy warship idle in harbour for several days, they wouldn’t have believed it possible.

  If they’d been told that 107 of them would be taken all the way to the notorious slave city of Algiers, and abandoned there for more than a decade by the indifferent authorities in London, they would have been thrown into the depths of despair.

  However, it’s safe to say that not one of those captives could ever have imagined the astonishing way in which their lives were to be changed under the crescent moon.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Last Day

  Baltimore, the previous morning

  THE iron bells of Tullagh Parish Church rang out to herald Baltimore’s last day of freedom. They rang out across the village, over the castle walls and the grand houses, and far beyond to the humble fishing cabins at The Cove. Each Sunday, these same bells summoned the people of Baltimore to prayer. Today, although they did not yet know it, more than a hundred parishioners would be hearing them for the very last time.

  In her thatched cottage overlooking the beached fishing boats on the strand, mother-of-two Joane Broadbrook awoke to the shrieking of roosters and the impatient lowing of cows heavy with milk. As she emerged from the stupor of sleep, it must gradually have dawned on her that June 19 was no ordinary day. For a start, it was Sunday – and the Sabbath Day was always special in this God-fearing community. It was a day of rest: the only day in the week when they could down tools and relax with family and friends.

  Secondly, it was almost Fair Day. Baltimore had the right to hold a village fair on 24 June, the following Friday, and for the entertainment-starved villagers this was a major occasion. The entire place would soon be en fête, with brightly-painted stalls and huckster stands, musicians and showmen turning the town into a riot of noise and colour. Like all the children in the village, Joane’s own youngsters would already be in a fever of excitement and anticipation.

  There was a third reason why 19 June was no ordinary day. It was nearly midsummer. Midsummer meant a lot to people like the Baltimore fishing folk, who lived their lives in harmony with the changing seasons. Despite the name, it actually signified the start of the real summer: two precious months of reasonably good weather when crops would ripen and days would be long and pleasant. On a typical June night, there might be only a few hours of true darkness, and this extra light was a wonderful gift to people whose winters were so long, bleak and gloomy.

  There were deeper, more primitive reasons why midsummer was important. It was originally a pagan festival, which the church had rechristened the Feast of St John. But many still believed in the old superstitions. On Midsummer Night, it was widely believed, the mischievous faeries and sprites of the woodlands would emerge from their hiding-places and play tricks on bumbling mortals. Heads would be turned by love or madness, milk cows turned dry, babes stolen away from their mothers.

  But none of this would happen until later in the week. Today, on this peaceful June Sunday, they were safe from dark forces who might come in the middle of the night and steal away their children. They could relax.

  Joane rose from the bed she shared with her husband Stephen and prepared to face the world. Perhaps her exit was more of a frantic dash for the door, for Joane was already ‘great with child’ (as the locals would have said) and she and Stephen were looking forward to the arrival of their third baby.

  Throwing on their clothes, Joane and her sleepy, protesting children would have carried out the chores that every household needed to perform. Sunday or no Sunday, cows still needed to be milked and livestock had to be fed. Few people escaped these tasks, for most settler families had to augment their meagre income with a vegetable plot and a few farm animals.

  All over The Cove, the same scenes were being played out. Not far away, in the Curlew household, Tim Curlew and his wife rose together, unaware that their happy life was to be shattered forever and that this would be the last dawn they would awaken in each other’s arms. Before the morning sun would rise again, Tim would be dead – cut down by a Janissary scimitar – and Mrs Curlew would be dragged off to Africa as a widow as well as a slave.

  Other couples yawned and stretched: the more affluent ones had beds, but poorer people and servants slept on straw mattresses on the floor. Fires were poked into life and pots put on the range. Although the houses at The Cove were simple one-or two-roomed cottages, it was a source of pride that each had a stone chimney. To the settlers in Ireland, this was what separated civilised people from barbarians.

  Doors were flung open and dim, windowless cabins were flooded with the bright, fragile, liquid light of an early summer morning in the southwest of Ireland. The grass was damp with dew. The fresh, salty air was full of rich, organic odours, from the fishy stench of the processing plant and the tang of rotting seaweed, to the earthy smells of the goats and sheep.

  Down at the strand, the fishing boats were bobbing happily at their moorings, the nets drying out on the shingle beach.

  After milking the cows and raiding the henhouses for eggs, the villagers snatched a quick breakfast of bread, salted fish or porridge before getting ready for church.

  At the house John Ryder shared with his wife and two children, Sunday morning scenes were taking place that would have been totally familiar to us today. The two parents would be frantically racing against time to get ready for service, squeezing their reluctant children into stiff and unfamiliar clothes, rummaging around desperately for missing hats or shoes, putting the final touches to the family dinner preparations before putting on their Sunday best.

  Nearby at Dermot Meregey’s home, the maidservant had her own reasons for anticipation and excitement as she performed her chores and prepared Dermot’s two young children for church. It was almost midsummer, and that was the date when servants traditionally received their quarterly pay.

  We know little about the Meregeys’ maid. The archives don’t even give her the dignity of a name, so for the purposes of this book I will call her Anna. She would have been a young girl in her teens or early twenties whose family had hired her out to domestic service out of necessity. Such servants were reunited with their families only a few times a year, and midsummer was one such occasion.

  At Corent Croffine’s house, there would have been the same electric sense of anticipation. Corent and his wife – who seemed to be unusually prosperous by the standards of the Baltimore settlers – employed three menservants who would have been savouring the imminent prospect of pay and time off.

  Corent’s grown-up daughter would also have been looking forward to the rituals and traditions of midsummer. On the shortest night, girls like Miss Croffine would gather with the boys of the village around bonfires that would burn late into the night. It was important to jump over the guttering fire at least once, to ensure good fortune and keep evil spirits at bay. Then the single g
irls would pick flowers and hide them under their pillows in the hope of dreaming about their future life partners. Perhaps it was just as well that these were just superstitions, for the last thing Miss Croffine would have expected to see was a North African husband wearing a bournous.

  Who were all these people, and what were they doing in the remote Irish port of Baltimore? Let’s start by dispelling three common misconceptions about them.

  The first is that they were aggressive colonists, usurpers who had stolen the village from the local Irish by force or underhand means. There were many cases in which the English had grabbed Irish land at swordpoint, but this was not one of them. In fact, the settlers were there on a long-term lease, after paying a substantial rental to the local Gaelic chieftain. Legally and morally, they had every right to be there.

  The second myth is that they were all recent arrivals – ‘blow-ins’, to use the Irish term – and as such had no permanent ties here. They had actually been there for nearly three decades and were well into their second generation. They had built homes, cleared stony land and raised families. Most of the victims of the corsair raid were young parents and children who had never known any other home but Baltimore.

  The third canard is that they were members of the English Protestant establishment, sent there to impose the State religion upon the area. (It has been claimed that they were kept in place by London because of their ‘solid Anglican values’.) In fact, almost the opposite was the case. The Baltimore villagers would never have seen themselves as pillars of the Church establishment: they viewed themselves as radicals and dissenters. Far from being oppressors, the founders of this community saw themselves as the oppressed – as refugees who had come here to escape the stranglehold of State religion and to find freedom of worship.