The Stolen Village: Baltimore and the Barbary Pirates

by Des Ekin

  It had not been a good year for Roman Catholics in Ireland. Religious persecution had resumed after a short period of tolerance that had followed the coronation of Charles I six years previously. Charles, who was strongly influenced by his French Catholic wife, Henrietta Maria, had promised the Catholic aristocrats in Ireland a series of relaxations in the law (‘The Graces’) in return for a payment of £120,000.

  Although these reforms were never actually implemented, there was a honeymoon period during which the repressed Irish Catholics began openly celebrating Mass and setting up religious houses – seventeen within four months in Dublin alone.

  For the Protestants, it was all too much too soon. When an influential report warned that the reforms would destroy the Plantation, the authorities slapped a ban on the new Catholic institutions.

  On the day after Christmas, 1629, English soldiers stormed a Franciscan church in Dublin during Mass. Fighting their way through a 3000-strong mob, they arrested the friars and razed the church to the ground.

  Now, in 1631, tension was mounting once more. That spring, sixteen nuns were evicted from their convent in Dublin’s College Green. In Cork, communities of friars were rooted out and expelled.

  By the summer of 1631, a cloud of bitterness and mistrust hung heavily in the air, with Catholics feeling betrayed and Protestants feeling besieged. The loyalty of the Catholic aristocrats was strained to breaking point. There were whisperings forecasting yet another rebellion.

  And it was against this turbulent backdrop that John Hackett, a Catholic, guided the fighting forces of Islam towards the Protestant English community at Baltimore.

  Just a few sea-leagues away in Roaring Water Bay, the villagers were still enjoying their lazy Sunday. For children like the Broadbrook and Meregey youngsters, Sunday had its own special attractions. Younger children were free to play games such as bladder football or handball, or to practise archery. The older boys, like the Gunter lads, did what teenage boys have always done: tried to get girls. Despite the best efforts of strict parents, pregnancy among unmarried girls was frequent enough to be a cause for concern. In a similar Co. Cork town (Youghal) the authorities had actually passed a by-law against sex:

  ‘Lewd and incontinent persons do … through their flatteries and wicked practices, labour and endeavour to abuse and overthrow young and silly virgin maids, to the great grief and discontent of the parents, and to the said maid’s often utter undoing … whosoever from henceforth so abuses and deflowers any such maiden virgin shall forfeit: … Mayor’s daughter, £40; Alderman’s daughter, £30; Bailiff’s daughter, £20; Freeman’s daughter, £10.’

  And so it went on, this languid June Sunday, as afternoon turned to evening. In his 1844 poem The Sack Of Baltimore, Thomas Davis conjures up a poignant picture of the village settling innocently into twilight in the shadow of nearby Mount Gabriel, with the fishing boats (‘hookers’) lying safely on the shore:

  The summer’s sun is falling soft on Carbery’s hundred isles

  The summer’s sun is gleaming still through Gabriel’s rough defiles

  Old Innisherkin’s crumbled fane looks like a moulting bird

  And in a calm and sleepy swell the ocean tide is heard.

  The hookers lie upon the beach; the children cease their play

  The gossips leave the little inn; the households kneel to pray

  And full of love, and peace, and rest – its daily labour o’er –

  Upon that cosy creek there lay the town of Baltimore.

  Sunsets in the Carbery area could indeed be spectacular, as the Victorian writer Daniel Donovan describes: ‘At sunset the scene is one which can never be forgotten – the sun sinking to rest in a flood of aureate light – a monarch decked in all the regalia of royalty, encircled by golden-fringed clouds, brilliantly coloured …’

  The Broadbrooks and the Ryders were probably too busy to notice. At this stage in the day, they would be settling the livestock and getting ready for evening prayer and bed. With a working day beginning at five or six, most people wanted to be asleep by ten.

  And so, long after sunset, when the dark silhouettes of two strange vessels bristling with a total of thirty-six guns were spotted sailing past the neighbouring port of Castlehaven, nobody even gave them a second glance.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Dreadful Hour

  AN extraordinary combination of good fortune and fair winds brought Morat the final few miles to Baltimore. His two ships were spotted sailing past the nearby port of Castlehaven just after sunset. ‘They were seen but not known [to be pirates],’ says the official account of the raid, somewhat despondently. Had they been identified, a rider could easily have reached Baltimore in time to warn the village.

  Even the weather was on Morat’s side. He must have sailed the five miles from Castlehaven (modern day Castletownsend) to Baltimore in just about an hour, which meant a brisk and favourable wind. By ten o’clock that night, the craggy silhouette of Sherkin Island was looming ahead of his bowsprit. He had reached the very mouth of Baltimore harbour.

  Even with today’s technology, it takes a practised seaman to negotiate these difficult waters at night. John Hackett proved his skills by guiding them safely to a good mooring point ‘about a musket shot from the shore’.

  The official account pinpoints their anchorage as ‘the eastern end of the north of the harbour’. Sailors have identified this point as the entrance to the Eastern Hole, east of the Whale Rock: a cautious choice, since it was concealed by a rocky outcrop and out of view of the main port.

  Morat’s anchorage was at the seaward base of a narrow triangular inlet with its two sides bounded by treacherous rocks and cliffs.

  The corsair admiral decided to carry out a full reconnaissance before committing himself to an attack. He volunteered to lead this dangerous mission himself, with the aid of Captain Fawlett and ten hand-picked musketeers.

  Morat selected a small boat and, with typical attention to detail, instructed his men to wrap oakum – a heavy caulking material – around their oars to deaden the sound of splashes.

  Fawlett proved his worth. He seems to have had an intimate knowledge of the village, right down to the occupancy of individual homes.

  ‘Fawlett piloted them along the shore,’ says the official account, ‘and showed them how the town did stand, relating unto them where the most able men had their abode.’

  There are differing accounts of this reconnaissance trip. One version of the document says they conducted surveillance from a small boat just off the shore. Another version claims that the spies ‘walked around the town’.

  This would have been an act of breathtaking audacity, but would be no surprise with a man like Morat. And what an image – the great corsair admiral walking around the very streets of the town he was about to despoil, perhaps pulling a cloak around him to hide his Moorish garb, perhaps ducking into a darkened doorway at the sound of the approaching footsteps of some late-night revellers.

  The reconnaissance took quite a long time – five glasses in seafaring terms, or more than two hours. Eventually the anxious watchers on board the flagship heard the muted splash of oars and saw Morat’s little boat re-emerge from the gloom. Climbing back on board, the corsair admiral seemed remarkably upbeat and optimistic.

  ‘We are in a good place,’ he told his crew using Sabir, the peculiar dialect of the Barbary corsairs, ‘and shall make a boon viaggio.’

  Having decided to raid, they began discussing tactics:

  ‘Then they consulted what time of night was fittest for their intended exploit, and concluded a little before day to be the most convenient season.’

  During midsummer, ‘a little before day’ means three o’clock at the latest. In selecting this time, the corsairs were displaying a remarkable awareness of circadian rhythms. The human body is at its lowest point around two hours before waking, a period known as ‘the zombie zone’. Many modern interrogators choose 5 am to question their victims: senses are dulled and
resistance is least likely. The fisherfolk of Baltimore, who were due to rise around five, would have been in this same weakened state at 3 am.

  It was customary for a corsair captain to give a short speech of exhortation to his troops before an attack. We know that Morat did this – he is said to have ‘cheered up the company’ – but of his speech, only the fragment quoted above has survived.

  Traditionally, these speeches combined two elements – religious duty and personal gain.

  ‘Dread not death,’ a corsair captain would typically exhort his warriors, ‘since you left your homes in search of wealth and renown, and to render service to our beautiful Prophet.’

  Meanwhile, the Janissary commander would be steeling his own troops for conflict.

  ‘My falcons!’ he might shout. ‘Keep at it boldly! If the most High God wishes it and gives us his help, we will not come home empty-handed.’

  And with that, or something quite like that, the raid on Baltimore began.

  At exactly 0200 hours, the ship’s boats were lowered into the water alongside the two captured fishing boats. Two hundred and thirty musketeers were crammed into these few small craft, and – leaving a skeleton crew to guard the two ships – the oarsmen began their long, gruelling row around the two headlands that separated them from The Cove.

  Their adrenalin was pumping as they emerged from the cover of the outcrop. It was at this stage that they were at their most vulnerable. They were hidden from the view of their comrades manning the big iron guns on the ships. And crammed tightly into the small boats, they were in no position to return fire effectively should a cannon open fire from the shore.

  But the sleeping village was as silent as the grave. With nothing more than the occasional muffled splash to betray their presence, the corsair convoy crept stealthily along the surface of the bay. Hackett, in the foremost boat, guided them through the tricky harbour entrance, with its infamous hidden rock that was to bring disaster to a merchant ship many years later. They steered starboard around a second craggy outcrop and entered the tiny, sheltered bay.

  The Cove was dense with fishing craft, either bobbing at anchor or moored directly to the beach. The invaders had to be careful to avoid getting entangled in mooring ropes or – much worse – colliding with an empty boat and creating the sort of loud, hollow thud that would have roused everyone in the vicinity. However, they made it safely through this treacherous maze and, with a dull scrape of wood against gravel, finally made landfall on the shingle beach.

  The Janissaries crept ashore and filed into position. At last these warriors were in their element. For weeks they had languished on board ship, battling nothing stronger than boredom. Now their hour had come. They grasped their muskets firmly, lit their torches of tarred oakum, and sent up a prayer to heaven before leaping into action with a yell that would have awakened the dead.

  A stifled gasp! A dreamy noise, ‘The roof is in a flame!’

  From out their beds, and to their doors, rush maid and sire and dame.

  And meet, upon the threshold stone, the gleaming sabres fall,

  And over each black and bearded face the white and crimson shawl.

  The yell of ‘Allah’ breaks above the prayer and shriek and roar

  Oh, blessed God! The Algerine is Lord of Baltimore.

  Allowing for some creative licence, those lines from poet Thomas Davis accurately convey the panic and terror of the raid.

  We know from other accounts that the Janissaries always used noise to psych out their victims – and this was centuries before the Americans spooked the Vietcong with Wagner, or used deafening rock music to soften up Noriega in Panama. Deprived of amplification, the Janissaries used percussion – clapping their hands, banging on drums or striking the hulls of boats – while roaring fearsome threats and exhortations.

  Joane and Stephen Broadbrook were startled out of their sleep by the hellish racket and the ominous background crackle of burning thatch. Black smoke drifted through their door and the dark interior of their cabin was alight with the baleful orange glare of a village in flames. Grabbing their frightened children, they burst outside to be confronted by a scene straight out of Dante’s Inferno.

  All around them, their neighbours were screaming in sheer terror at the sight of the Janissaries on full war footing. None of these untravelled fisherfolk would ever have seen anything like the Turkish warriors with their flashing scimitars; their swirling, flowing robes with distinctive cowls; the torchlight glistening on the sweat of bare arms which they contemptuously left unprotected by armour. ‘Storm them, my brave ones!’ some of the Janissaries would have been yelling, while others responded with shouts of ‘Allah! Allah!’

  The European pirates were more conventionally dressed, but they countered their ‘Christian’ appearance with colourful blasphemies and invocations to the Devil – a powerful psychological weapon against devout churchgoing folk.

  All around The Cove, doors were flung open and the villagers emerged, coughing, eyes streaming. Through the dense smoke, Joane could see all the people who’d prayed with her in church only a few hours beforehand: John Ryder, Tom Paine, the Croffines, the Meregeys and Anna their maid, all in varying states of panic and disarray, and each facing an instant decision: to fight, to flee, or to surrender.

  It is a cruel irony that the best time to escape a hostage-taking raid is in the confusion of the first few moments (after that, the chances of a successful escape reduce progressively) yet it is precisely in those first few adrenalin-fuelled seconds that the mind is least able to judge the risks involved. At this same volatile stage, the raiders are equally unpredictable and liable to overreact.

  Any hostage raid creates a searing crucible of psychological emotions, and there is a basic pattern of human response that has not altered in the last four centuries.

  The modern US Marine Corps has produced a book called An Individual’s Guide For Understanding And Surviving Terrorism which provides an invaluable insight into the pattern of Morat’s 1631 raid.

  ‘During the initial moment of capture,’ says the Guide, ‘you must make an instant decision – escape or surrender. Even though it is the most dangerous time of a hostage ordeal, you must remain calm.

  ‘Do not make any sudden movement that may rattle an already anxious gunman. Abductors are tense: adrenaline is flowing. Terrorists themselves feel vulnerable until they are convinced they have established firm control over their hostages. Unintentional violence can be committed with the slightest provocation …

  ‘Escape attempts should be made only after careful consideration of the risk of violence, chance of success, and possible detrimental effects on hostages remaining behind.’

  In The Cove, some of the villagers opted to flee in a desperate attempt to summon help from the main town of Baltimore. Joane’s husband Stephen must have been among them. He can’t be blamed for this, since Joane herself was incapable of running, and this was his best chance to save her.

  Brave Tim Curlew and John Davys opted to fight, despite the overwhelming odds. Both men were ruthlessly cut down in front of their horrified families.

  But the vast majority of the villagers had little choice. With an average of nine musketeers outside each house, it was suicide to fight back.

  ‘If you eliminate escape as an option,’ advises the Marine Corps document, ‘avoid physical resistance. Assure your captors of your intention to co-operate fully. Remember, hostage takers usually want you alive.’

  This was equally true in 1631. Morat’s basic aim was to keep as many people alive as possible. Every corpse on the ground meant less pay for everyone.

  It is interesting, incidentally, to compare the tactics of Morat’s troops with those used by modern siege-busting forces such as the SAS. The desired effect is to put people in fear of their lives without actually killing them. Whether this end is achieved by the monstrous yells and flaming torches of the Janissaries, or by the smoke bombs and flash detonators of the modern SAS, the result is
the same.

  We’ll never know the precise thoughts that ran through the minds of the terrified Baltimore captives. If any of the victims ever wrote a first-person account of the raid, it has long since disappeared.

  However, throughout history, many others have gone through similar ordeals. And in this brief section, I’d like to examine some parallel experiences that could give us some insight into the emotions that raced through the heads of the Baltimore women that dreadful night.

  Mary Rowlandson was a clergyman’s wife whose village in Massachussetts was raided just thirty-five years after Baltimore. Although the two raids obviously differed in many ways, the traumatic experience was the same.

  ‘Now is the dreadful hour come,’ wrote Rowlandson, describing how their houses were set ablaze in exactly the same way. ‘Now might we hear mothers and children crying out for themselves, and to one another, “Lord, what shall we do?” …

  ‘But out we must go, the fire increasing, and coming along behind us, roaring…’

  Confronted by sudden violence, human reactions can fly wildly across the emotional spectrum, from fight and flight to pointless self-sacrifice. Rowlandson’s sister, for instance, screamed at the intruders to let her die, and was immediately granted her wish.