(This post is a continuation of The Affair of the Vliegende Hert – Parts 1, 2, & 3. If you haven’t done so already, it’s best to read those posts before continuing on here.)
Remember what Moulay Zaydan wrote in his letter to the States General regarding the Vliegende Hert:
“The Caïd saw fit to ask Our High Lordship’s authorization to sail the ship under command of some raïs which was granted. The raïs so authorized proceeded to repair the ship and to provision it with all that was necessary. The costs of these repairs reached the approximate figure of twenty thousand ounces, as you can see by examining the enclosed receipt written by the raïs himself.”
That “receipt written by the raïs himself” is a unique document, for it lists the complete, itemized cost of equipping a ship for a corsair expedition in the 1620s.
The receipt is reproduced (in translation) below. In order to make sense of it, though, we first need a little background.
The costs listed in the receipt are in the local currency of Salé: blanquilles, ounces, and ducats. Blanquilles are abbreviated as “bos” (for “blanquillos”); ducats are abbreviated as “dos” (for “ducatos”). There was also a small copper coin used in Salé, known as a flux, but this coin doesn’t appear anywhere in the bill, no doubt because it was worth too little to be relevant.
The relative values of these coins were as follows: 16 fluxes equaled 1 blanquille; 4 blanquilles equaled 1 ounce; 10 ounces equaled 1 silver ducat. There was also a gold ducat, but its value apparently varied considerably depending on its relative scarcity or plenty. The ducats mentioned in the receipt are the silver ducat.
Quantities are measured in quintals. A quintal was a hundredweight. It is difficult to pin down exactly what base unit of weight was being used, but in all likelihood it was roughly the same as a standard pound (4.53 kilograms) today. So the quintals in his bill can be thought of as being roughly 100 pounds (about 45.3 kilograms).
Here is the bill in English translation (the original is in fractured Spanish, interspersed with what appear to be Portuguese words):
_________________________________________________________________________
Copy of expenses incurred by me, Morat Reis, in refitting the ship
______________________________
– For 209 boards I bought to repair the ship,
at 9 Bos each dos 47
– For 90 beams that cost 2 ounces each,
amount dos 18
– For 10 large planks to make the doors for the
ship’s cabins, amount dos 05
– For 5 quintal of nails [with which to] to nail the ship
amount dos 25
– For 20 quintals of iron that I bought for the ship’s works
and for ballast dos 90
– For canvas I bought for sails for the ship
that [is] dos 50
– For 15 quintals of powder, which cost 15 dos
per quintal dos 225
– For 10 quintals of bullets, at 3½ ducats each
per quintal, amount dos 35
– For 3 pieces of cloth for shields and for canvas
for the aforementioned [shields] and to make them dos 79
– For tar to tar the ship dos 20
– For 10 quintals of rope for the ship, at 3 ducats per
quintal dos 30
– For 44 new pipes [barrels for wine, water, etc.] to replace
the old ones and for sheathing for the ship dos 75
– For pots for cooking on the ship dos 15
– For a ship’s boat that I bought for the ship dos 25
– For loading the ballast aboard the ship dos 20
– For 8 quintals of tallow to grease the ship, at
3 ½ ducats per quintal dos 28
– For charcoal to burn aboard the ship dos 14
– For firewood for the ship dos 08
– For carpenters who worked 3 months to refit
the ship dos 120
– For 140 quintals of biscuits for the voyage dos 154
– For oil and for vinegar for the crew of the ship dos 65
– For butter for the crew dos 30
– For olives for the said crew dos 18
– For 16 quintals of rice at 20 ounces dos 32
– For ground wheat dos 16
– For maintenance expenses for the people involved in
repairing the ship dos 120
– For small expenses like cartridge paper
compass, candle wicks, band keys, wax candles
and other ordinary expenses dos 110
_______
dos 1474
As well as the above, I have given 395 ducats as a loan
to the soldiers so that they can ship with me,
as is customary dos 395
_______
Dos 1869
Signed: Moeraetteres
_________________________________________________________________________
The items listed in this bill fit into four different categories:
- the cost of materials for repairing the ship
- the cost of labor for repairing the ship
- the cost of materials for refitting the ship for the upcoming corsair cruise
- the cost of provisions for the crew
There is also the coast of giving the “soldiers”—crewmembers who would do the fighting if a prize had to be attacked and boarded—an advance.
Below is a table showing the various subtotals and the final total for all this, plus the approximate percentages of the total cost that each area of expense represents.
| TYPE OF EXPENSE | COST | PERCENTAGE |
| Materials for repair | dos 313 | 17% |
| Labor for repair | dos 260 | 14% |
| Materials for refitting | dos 586 | 31% |
| Provisions | dos 315 | 17% |
| Loan to soldiers | dos 395 | 21% |
| TOTAL COST | dos 1869 | 100% |
As you can see, the cost of repairing the ship—including both materials and labor—represented almost a third (31%) of the total expense. From the items listed—209 boards, 90 beams, 10 large planks, 500 pounds of nails, 2,000 pounds of ironmongery, 1,000 pounds of rope, an unspecified amount of tar, 800 pounds of tallow, plus sails—it looks like the Vliegende Hert was actually in fairly poor shape.
It took a team of carpenters three months to complete the repairs. They would have done this work over the winter, at the Salé shipyards, hauling the ship up out of the river and working on it on dry land. The tar would have been smeared over the planks of the hull—at least some of which, presumably, were new—to seal them and preserve them against the corrosive effects of seawater. The tallow would have gone on over the tar to increase the slickness of the hull and thus reduce drag in the water and make the ship faster.
They would have first finished repairs on the hull and then returned the ship back to the water and restored the decks and superstructure and rigged her.
The most expensive single aspect (31% of the total) was the materials needed to refit the ship for the corsair cruise. Cooking supplies (charcoal, firewood, pots) seem an obvious necessity. “Shields” are not so obvious, and it is unclear exactly what these might have been. It is interesting to note here that the raïs bought a compass—which, of course, he would have needed for navigating.
The most costly item among the refitting supplies was gunpowder—no less than 1,500 pounds of it. It is significant that while the raïs bought this large quantity of gunpowder, plus 1,000 pounds of cannon balls, he did not buy any cannon. The Vliegende Hert, remember, was originally outfitted as a privateer ship and so would have carried a number of cannon—exactly how many is impossible to determine, though. There is also no mention of the caliber of the cannon balls, so we cannot know what sort of cannon the Vliegende Hert was armed with either.
Foodstuffs accounted for 17% of the total cost. The list gives us a pretty good idea of what Salé corsairs lived on while on a cruise. The basic staple was hardtack biscuit. These were eaten along with rice (cooked aboard ship), ground wheat (it is not clear what exactly this would have been used for, but it was likely couscous), and oil, butter, vinegar, and olives. It is also not clear why there is no animal protein in the list. This omission does not mean the crew would not have eaten meat or fish. They would have: salted meat and fresh-caught fish were common sailors’ fare.
One of the more intriguing aspects of this receipt is the inclusion of a loan—an advance—to the “soldiers.” Such soldiers made up the majority of the crews aboard Salé corsair ships. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to work out how many soldiers might be represented here by the figure of 395 ducats and therefore no straightforward way to figure out crew size.
__________
So there you have it: the cost of equipping a ship for a corsair expedition the 1620s.
There’s one question that still remains, though: How much did 1,869 ducats represent? That is, what did 1,869 ducats buy in the 1620s? Are we talking the equivalent in modern-day monetary terms of thousands of dollars? Hundreds of thousands? Millions?
For a consideration of the relative value and buying power of Salé ducats (and of seventeenth century currency in general) see the next (and final) post in this series: The Affair of the Vliegende Hert – Part 5.
For those who may be interested, the receipt for the refitting of the Vliegende Hert can be found in Les sources inédites de l’histoire du Maroc, première séries, dynastie Saadienne: archives et bibliothèques des Pays-Bas, tome IV (The Unpublished Sources of Moroccan History, First Series, Saadian Dynasty, Archives and Libraries of the Netherlands, Volume 4), pp. 130-131. As mentioned above, though, the original is in fractured Spanish, interspersed with what appear to be Portuguese words, so it isn’t all that easy to make detailed sense of unless you can cope with the seventeenth century Spanish/Portuguese.
The Travels of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson
The story of the Barbary corsair raid on Iceland in 1627
Amazon listing