CORSAIR METHODS OF ATTACK – PART 2

(This post is a continuation of Corsair Methods of Attack – Part 1. If you haven’t done so already, it’s best to read that post before continuing on here.)

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the various European powers were involved in a bewildering round of wars with each other, followed by truces, peace treaties, alliances, betrayals, renewed conflicts, renewed truces. During all this, they were also negotiating individually with the Barbary States.

The Barbary States should, more accurately, be referred to as the Barbary City States, for they consisted essentially of Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, and Salé. The first three were nominally under Ottoman control, but in reality they were largely independent. Salé was never absorbed by the Ottomans and remained an genuinely independent entity. So it wasn’t enough for European powers to enter into treaty relations with the Ottoman Sultan; they had to negotiate with each Barbary city state separately.

At various times, individual European nations managed to negotiate treaties with different Barbary city states. These treaties were supposed to guarantee the safety of the European signatory’s shipping. The standard arrangement required ships of the European nation to carry special passes. Corsairs were permitted to stop and board the European ships to inspect the passes. If the European ship could present the right pass, the corsairs were obliged to let the ship go.

There were complications to these arrangements, though.

If, for example, England concluded a treaty with Algiers, this meant that English ships, English nationals, and English goods were inviolable. It did not, however, guarantee the safety of non-English nationals or merchandise aboard English ships. If an English ship was carrying, say, Spanish wine, or had Spanish passengers aboard, Algerian corsairs could board the ship, abduct the Spaniards, confiscate the Spanish merchandise, and depart—all while abiding by the dictates of the treaty.

Some corsairs took this legal nicety a step further and forced the captains of captured vessels to state that they were transporting goods not covered by the treaty. In 1624, the States-General of the Republic of the Netherlands sent a formal letter of complaint to the Sultan of Morocco, Moulay Zaydan, complaining of this very thing:

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On the 14^th of October last, near Cape Finisterre, fifteen leagues from the shore, Captain Eeuwout Henricxz. was attacked by a pirate from Salé, al-Hadj Ali, who seized his ship. And though the said captain Henricxz. declared and proved, by his bills of lading and other documents, that he had on board only Dutch goods destined for Amsterdam, the aforesaid al-Hadj Ali ignored these documents and, wishing to obtain from the captain a statement contrary to truth, by which he could justify his conduct, he had the said captain and a sailor named Jan Pietersz. tied together and brought on deck. He instructed them to declare that their cargo consisted of French goods. When they refused, he had them whipped most painfully. Eventually, the torments, the pain, and the threat of being thrown into the sea, still bound together, led the said captain to declare, in order to avoid further suffering and death, that the goods onboard belonged to the French. Thereupon al-Hadj Ali took possession of the said ship and cargo and brought them to Salé.

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This sort of skullduggery on the part of corsair captains was, but all accounts, quite common.

One of the clearest and most vivid descriptions of it can be found in the autobiography of Thomas Phelps, titled A True Account of the Captivity of Thomas Phelps, at Machaness in Barbary, and of his Strange Escape in Company of Edmund Baxter and others, as also of the Burning of Two of the greatest Pirate Ships belonging to that Kingdom, in the River of Mamora; upon the Thirteenth day of June 1685.

Thomas Phelps commanded the ship Success, out of London, when he was captured by Saletian corsairs off the coast of Portugal. After being taken to Salé, he wound up in Meknes, the capital of the Alaouite Sultan Moulay Ismail Ibn Shariff. Moulay Ismail had grandiose plans to construct an immense royal palace, dwarfing Versailles, using hordes of slaves to do so. Conditions for these slave workers were dire. Phelps and several companions managed to escape and make the arduous overland journey to Salé, where they were able to get aboard an English warship anchored there. Back in England, Phelps became an acquaintance of Samuel Pepys, the great (though at the time secret) diarist.

Perhaps it was Pepys’ influence. Perhaps not. In any case, Phelps published a detailed account of his experiences as a captive and a slave. His autobiography begins with a description of how his ship was captured by corsairs from Salé—who used deception rather than violence to seize their prey.

For an excerpt from Phelps’s autobiography, see the next post in this Corsair Methods of Attack series (Corsair Methods of Attack – Part 3).