Pirates: A History
Page 25
Finally, if redemption, as described above, seemed an impossible dream for those slaves without family money, charity, or connections, then escape was another possibility. Few captives actually achieved successful escapes, but because only those who escaped were able to publish their memoirs, so escaping appeared to the public as a viable option. The case of Miguel Cervantes, as mentioned above, is fairly typical. He probably decided to escape because he realised there would be little money from his family for ransom, since they were poor. In fact, Cervantes tried to escape from Algiers three times. The first time, with a few companions, Cervantes overpowered a guard, but they were soon recaptured, and as punishment Cervantes was sent to work in a quarry, crushing stones and hauling them to the port’s fortifications. The second time, Cervantes tried to contact a ship via an intermediary, who was almost certainly a renegade. But the message was intercepted and Cervantes and his companions were found hiding in a cave. This time, the punishment was five months’ incarceration in a dungeon, while his companions were either hung or impaled – Cervantes was lucky here – and he probably survived because he was bought by the Dey of Algiers, Hassan Pasha, in 1577. The third escape attempt was equally futile, Cervantes tried for another ship, but now he was betrayed by a renegade, and his subsequent punishment was another five months in a dungeon. Again, Cervantes was very lucky not to be more severely punished, but Hassan Pasha was probably safeguarding his investment. Eventually, Cervantes was ransomed, as described previously.22
One of the best known escapees was Thomas Pellow, who published his memoirs in 1740. Pellow was unusual in being a renegade, trusted by the ruler of Morocco, Moulay Ismail, and given command of a large military company of renegades. After spending several years in Morocco, Pellow married a local woman, who bore him a child. But Pellow decided on escape, and it was near the town of Meknes where he made his first escape attempt. He was similar to Cervantes in that he made three attempts to escape, and, in his first attempt, relied on an outsider to help the escape as did Cervantes. In Morocco, these intermediaries were called metadores, and for a particular sum, would guide the escapee to the nearest Spanish enclave. Pellow aimed at reaching the Portuguese garrison of Mazagan, and actually reached the walls of the city, when he unfortunately stumbled upon four Moors who captured him and delivered him to the nearest jail. Here he was befriended by the officer in charge, one Mohammed, who was involved in a local power struggle, and wanted to use Pellow for his own ends. Pellow was slated for execution and taken in hand by the executioner on the morning of the supposed execution, ‘[He] now had his knife ready in his right hand, and with his left hand had taken fast hold of my beard, the better to hold back to cut my throat’, wrote Pellow later. But Mohammed was true to his word and spared Pellow, and even released him to return to the barracks where Pellow was supposed to have been living. It is not clear why Pellow was spared by Mohammed, nor why he did not receive any punishment subsequently for his escape attempt. Perhaps it was Pellow’s rank as an officer in Moulay’s army that saved him.
Some years later, in 1728 or 1729, Pellow made his second attempt, this time aiming at stealing a sloop in the port of Salé, and sailing to Gibraltar. Pellow’s fellow escapees were two other renegades, but the third renegade, William Johnston, changed his mind just as Pellow and his friend William Hussey were about to set forth to capture the sloop. Johnston apparently realised that his prospects as a soldier were much better in Salé than they would be as a penniless renegade in England, and so he threatened to betray the other two if they persisted. Angered by this, Pellow drew his sword and slashed Johnston in the face, at which point Johnston did report them to the governor of Salé. The governor brought the three renegades to a hearing, at which Pellow and Hussey turned the tables on Johnston by claiming that it was Johnston who was trying to escape, which was why they had slashed him in the face. Since it was two against one, the governor believed Pellow and Hussey and clapped Johnston in jail. However, Pellow was frightened by his narrow brush with the law, and did not try to escape again until 1737. By now he had spent 20 years in Morocco, having been captured very young, although his wife and daughter, both of whom he was fond of, had died earlier, perhaps of the plague. Perhaps because of their deaths, Pellow felt able to try to escape again, and he was also concerned that he would be killed in one of the various military expeditions in which he was forced to participate on behalf of the sultan.
Therefore, in 1737 Pellow set forth again from Meknes. He traveled by day, since, after twenty years in Morocco, he looked like an Arab, had a long beard, and spoke the language perfectly. The next few months were desperate times as Pellow walked south, trying to find a port where a European ship would take him onboard. At the outset Pellow joined a holy man and his group, but they were attacked by brigands almost immediately, and Pellow was robbed of all his possessions. Wearily he struggled on through the foothills of the Atlas Mountains, still heading south for the Atlantic Ocean. Then he met two Spanish renegades, who were earning a living as itinerant physicians. They gave Pellow some rusty instruments so that he could disguise himself as a similar physician. He was soon called upon to practice his craft, when a woman asked him to save her husband, who was in dire straits. Pellow decided to bleed him, the most common treatment for almost anything, but the lancet was too blunt to produce any blood. The patient cried out in pain, and so Pellow shifted to his red hot brand, a more radical treatment, and burned the man’s head, at which the patient understandably cried out in pain. Pellow criticised the man for being ‘a very faint hearted soldier’, but was happy to stay for supper with the man’s family. Leaving quickly the next morning before his mistreatment of the man could result in trouble, Pellow traveled for some six months more in the Atlas mountains before finally seeing the Atlantic Ocean. Unfortunately, the coastal path Pellow took was infested with brigands, and he was soon set upon by a group of robbers, who shot Pellow in the leg, beat him unconscious, and left him for dead. Roused by the cold of night, his clothes bathed in blood, and in very poor shape, Pellow noticed a building close to him and he struggled toward it. Luckily the inhabitant took pity on Pellow, gave him food, and dressed his wound. Next day, Pellow set forth, limping, but anxious to keep going. He met next a kindly community of Jews, who again dressed his wound, and gave him food and lodging. Finally, he reached the port of Willadia, and was able to arouse the sympathy of one Captain Toobin, from Dublin, and captain of a ship. Usually, Christian captains were reluctant to help escapees such as Pellow, for fear that, if the slave was discovered, the captain and his crew would be severely punished. Nevertheless, Toobin took Pellow onboard and hid him below decks, and sailed for Gibraltar. The date was July 1738.
Pellow had finally escaped. Arriving in Gibraltar, he soon became the object of much interest, but a ship was leaving for London shortly, and Pellow went aboard. In London, interest in Pellow was equally high, but he managed to avoid the possibility of a procession, and sailed for Penryn in Cornwall in October 1738. There he did not at first recognise his parents, nor they him, but he was delighted to be home. Within two years a writer helped Pellow publish his story, and so he joined a small but useful group of escaped slaves whose memoirs gave some understanding of the Barbary corsairs and their slave taking and slave keeping societies.23
Another escape story has been preserved in the archives, and tells of how fifteen Christian slaves escaped from Algiers in July 1640. The story is told by two of the men, George Penticost and John Butler. Their plan of escape was to raid a house where muskets and ammunition were stored, and with these fight their way to a row boat in the harbour. The house was duly seized, although three men were lost in the fight, and so only twelve men got into the boat. Then two forts fired at them as they cleared Algiers harbour, but they were not hit. They were pursued by two boats and three frigates, which they fought off for five hours, resulting in three men wounded in their boat, but at five in the afternoon the pursuers left them and returned to Algiers. Then the remaining
crew:
…rowed for Mayorka [Majorca] having no food meat nor drink. 3 days we rowed and found no land, and so dismayed us that we gave over for dead men. We prayed the Lord to deliver us, and in this our great distress the Lord sent us a Turtle, who put his head to the boat, and we took him in to our great joy, which saved our lives. We ate the turtle raw and rowed hard that night and next day to port, the fifth morning from Algiers – greetings of great comfort and God’s great Glory for our deliverance…24
There must have been many such escape attempts, a few successful, but most would be failures. Yet the nature of their slavery made the slaves willing to try.
The Knights of Malta
Surprisingly enough, the Barbary corsairs faced an enemy that was a mirror image of their own activity, namely the Knights of Malta. From the 1530s to the 1740s these knights and their licensed privateers also captured ships, slaves and cargo under a religious duty, but these were Muslim ships, slaves and cargo that the knights took. The Knights of St John were officially titled the Knights of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, better known as the Knights Hospitaller, which had been originally founded in the 1120s to look after the medical needs of crusaders and pilgrims to the Holy Land. The Hospitallers maintained their medical role but grew into a strong military order, and with the Knights of the Temple (the Templars), became the main Christian military religious orders in the Middle East. After the final failure of the crusades to the Holy Land by the early 1300s, the Hospitallers retired to the island of Rhodes. However, a prolonged siege by the Ottoman Turks in 1522 forced the Order to leave Rhodes, and they finally settled on Malta, given to them by the Emperor Charles V. The Knights of Malta were an order that attracted the junior sons of the nobility of Europe, especially France, where their families were happy to know that the Order asked for celibacy. On the other hand, another requirement, that the noble candidates were supposed to be able to swim, allowed some junior nobility to escape their parents’ plans by claiming inability in the water. The Knights of Malta also possessed a considerable hierarchy of lesser knights and servants at arms, and an order of Sisters, which required the same noble origins as the men.25
Malta was well located geographically to intercept Barbary corsair ships, and the Knights of Malta did so with considerable success, especially because the Hospitallers also licensed independent corsairs to search for Muslim ships. Among these licensed corsairs in the sixteenth century was the famous captain Leone Strozzi, who had once belonged to the Order but later operated his own small fleet as ‘the friend of God alone’. Another well known sailor was Mathurin Romegas, who often attacked several Muslim ships at the same time, and was undefeated and almost indestructible. One story has it that Romegas was submerged in his galley after a storm in the harbor of Malta in 1555, yet the next day knocking was heard and Romegas was rescued from under his galley, together with his pet monkey. However, it was Romegas’ capture of a large Muslim ship in 1564, on its way from Venice to Istanbul with a valuable cargo worth 80,000 Spanish ducats, that precipitated the very destructive but ultimately unsuccessful Ottoman siege of Malta in 1565. The defense of Malta was led by de la Valette, aged seventy-one, the Grand Master of the Order, who had served on many voyages. De la Valette was previously captured by the Barbary corsairs in 1541 and survived a year at the oars in a corsair galley. Suffice to say that in the siege 600 Knights plus another 5,000 soldiers and local Maltese men faced 30,000 Ottoman warriors, including the renegade corsair Uluc Ali. After heroics on both sides, the problems of logistics, plague, and the strength of the Order’s castles, defensive musketry and artillery, plus very tough defenders, carried the day against the Ottomans in a long lasting siege.26
Turning to the question of the ships of the Knights of Malta, the Order possessed galleys – eight in number in 1685 – plus one very large carrack, and this fleet increased into the middle of the eighteenth century. Each galley of the Hospitallers required thirty knights for a voyage, and each Knight Hospitaller had to serve four Caravans – a Caravan being a tour of six months. Later, sailing ships were deemed to be both more comfortable and effective, and so Caravans in a sailing ship lasted one year. However, if the Knight had completed his Caravans, and had also served three years on Malta, then he could retire to a sister house in Europe and recuperate. Also serving on the Knight Hospitaller galley were some 180 Christian soldiers, plus the rowers, who were a mixture of Muslim slaves, debtors from European prisons, and free Christians who were financially desperate enough to sign up for a voyage. The Knights of Malta continued to be very successful and still used the galley even after the sailing ship was introduced to Malta in the seventeenth century. The activity of the ships of the Knights of Malta declined in the late eighteenth century, because of changing political and economic circumstances, while the Barbary corsairs similarly declined in number and also became more reluctant to face the Knights at sea.
In the matter of administration, the Knights Hospitaller set up a tribunal in 1605 to regulate the independent corsairs they licensed, and this tribunal sought to keep a strict eye on these corsairs, especially which ships the corsairs were allowed to attack. This was not easy, since these licensed corsairs tended to attack not only Muslim ships, but also any ships that might be carrying Muslim goods, or indeed any ship that by some stretch of the imagination might be construed as a contraband ship – and these often turned out to be Greek ships. In the 1660s there were some thirty licensed ships operating out of Malta – quite apart from the Hospitaller’s ships. These licensed ships were bound to pay out ten per cent of their gains to the Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller. Then five shares went to the five Lances – essentially a spiritual and management bureaucracy in Malta. Then the captain was awarded eleven per cent, which also paid for the pilot and officers, and the remainder was divided between the investors in the voyage, and the crew itself. Meanwhile, the risky nature of these voyages is illustrated by marine insurance rates of around twenty-four per cent to thirty per cent interest, while the cost of borrowing to finance a voyage could be as high as forty to fifty per cent. It is also worth noting that most voyages took place in the summer months, while the winter months were spent refitting and relaxing among the Greek islands, where the licensed but idle captain and crew played cards and drank.27
The corsairs of Malta tended to rely more on their ship borne artillery than the Barbary corsairs, but like the Barbary corsairs, wanted to capture their victims with as little fighting and damage as possible. Obviously, the Maltese corsairs wanted to preserve the ship, cargo, crew and passengers of their victims in order to maximize their profits. This normally did happen without fighting since the Maltese corsair usually had the heavier armament and the larger numbers of crew and soldiers. Most valuable of all to the Maltese corsairs were the crew and passengers of the captured ship, who could be ransomed or sold locally in the Mediterranean, or back in Malta. Of course, captured Christian crew and passengers were theoretically useless to the Maltese corsairs, because they could not be sold or ransomed. As might be expected, the Maltese corsairs approached the captured crew and passengers in much the same way as the Barbary corsairs, stripping their captives, and choosing one of the officers or passengers to threaten with torture to reveal any cash hoards onboard. One example comes from a certain Jean Thevenot, a French passenger on a ship approaching Acre in the eastern Mediterranean in 1657. The ship was taken by a Maltese corsair who came aboard ‘calling on God and devils alike to make themselves more frightening…’, wrote Thevenot, who then found himself surrounded by these corsairs:
…who, for most of the time, kept a pistol at my throat and a sword on my stomach, and desired me at first to undress myself, but, one pulling from in front, one from behind, one on top and one below, stripped me stark naked in a flash. I thought I was finished with them, when they began to jab their swords at me. And seeing that it was for a cheap ring that I had on my finger, I took it off quickly and threw it to them…
Later, onshore
at Acre, Thevenot was rescued by the French consul, yet the actions of these licensed Maltese corsairs closely resembled those of the Barbary corsairs. And the system of slavery on Malta in terms of work, rowing on galleys, leg irons, slave prisons at night, the ability to run a business and make money in leisure hours, clothes and hair cuts to differentiate slaves from the local population, slave ransoms and slave exchanges – all these were not much different from slave life on the Barbary Coast.28
Ultimately, by the 1740s fewer licenses were being issued to the Maltese corsairs due to economic and political changes and the growth of European navies. As well, by the 1730s there were fewer Muslim ships to raid, since the Muslims of North Africa were largely shipping their goods with Christian merchants. Legal issues also undermined the freedom of operation of the Maltese corsairs, though in the early 1750s the corsairs thought up a new twist, and sailed under the flag of Monaco, and then under a series of other flags, including Russia. Nevertheless, the final decline of the Knights of Malta and their still active licensed corsairs occurred with the occupation of Malta by Napoleon in 1798. Napoleon did not like the religious orders, criticised the Knights of Malta as an ‘institution to support in idleness the younger sons of privileged families’, and also foresaw that Malta would prove a useful British base unless taken by the French. So in June 1798 Napoleon attacked Malta, and while some of the knights defended Malta, others deserted or refused to fight. Malta was taken, and Napoleon freed some 2,000 Muslim and North African slaves, thus putting an end to the Maltese corsairs.29
In North Africa, the end of the Barbary corsairs was a more complicated affair. The first blow was struck by American ships under Commodore Decatur, who in 1815 compelled the Algerian Dey to free all Americans held as captives, plus other concessions. The next year, in August 1816, a large Anglo-Dutch fleet of some twenty-six ships under Lord Exmouth made its way to Algiers and opened a massive bombardment of 50,000 cannon balls, and assorted fire bombs and shells, which reduced Algiers and its shipping to ruins. The defensive cannonade from Algiers was also severe, as one British lieutenant observed, ‘Legs, arms, blood, brains and mangled bodies were strewn about in all directions. You could scarcely keep your feet from the slipperiness of the decks, wet with blood.’30 Still, the Dey of Algiers recognised the futility of continuing, and agreed to release all slaves who had not already released themselves. Tunis, Tripoli and Morocco followed suit. But the Barbary corsairs would not give up their traditions so easily, and failed to openly renounce slavery. Only the occupation of Algiers by French forces in 1830 finally ended the Algerian slave trade, and persuaded Tunis and Tripoli to agree to terms as well.