THE COSTS OF OUTFITTING A SHIP FOR A PIRATE CRUISE

Have you ever wondered how much it cost to outfit a ship for a pirate cruise in the seventeenth century?

Wouldn’t it be nice if somebody had left us a complete list of all the expenses required to prepare a ship for a pirate expedition at sea, with all the various requirements itemized, with the cost of each laid out in detail?

Well… actually, somebody did.

The story of how this itemized list—an itemized bill, actually—came into existence will be the subject of another post here in this blog at some point. In this post, we’re just going to focus on the bill itself.

To make sense of it, there’s a few things you need to know first.

The bill was created in the 1620s in Salé, a city (actually twin cities) located on the Atlantic coast of Morocco at the mouth of the Bû-Regreg river, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) south of the Strait of Gibraltar. In the 1620s, Salé was an important Barbary corsair port.

The ship being outfitted had to be repaired first, so some of the items listed have to do with those repairs, others with the actual outfitting itself.

The costs in the bill are given in the local currency of Salé: blanquilles, ounces, and ducats. Blanquilles are abbreviated in the bill as “b^os” (for “blanquillos”); ducats are abbreviated as “d^os” (for “ducatos”). There was also a small copper coin used in Salé, known as a flux, but this coin does not 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.

Quantities are measured in quintals. A quintal was a hundredweight. It is difficult to pin down exactly what base unit of weight is being used, but in all likelihood it was roughly the same as a standard pound (4.53 kilos) today. So the quintals in his bill can be thought of as being roughly 100 pounds (about 45.3 kilos).  Here is the bill:

_________________________________________________________________________

Bill for expenses for the ship

______________________________

– For 209 boards I bought to repair the ship,

at 9 b^os each…………………………………………………………d^os   47

– For 90 beams that cost 2 ounces each,

amount.………………………………………………………………d^os   18

– For 10 large planks to make the doors for the

ship’s cabins, amount……………………………………………….d^os   05

– For 5 quintal of nails [with which] to nail the ship

amount..……………………..………………………………..….….d^os   25

– For 20 quintals of iron that I bought for the ship’s works

and for ballast……………………………………………………….d^os   90

– For canvas I bought for sails for the ship

that is..………………………………………………………………d^os   50

– For 15 quintals of gunpowder, which cost 15 d^os

per quintal……………………………………………………………d^os  225

– For 10 quintals of shot [cannon balls], at 3½ ducats

per quintal, amount………………………………………………….d^os   35

– For 3 pieces of cloth for shields, and for canvas

for the aforementioned [shields], and to make them…..……….d^os   79

– For tar to tar the ship………………………………………………d^os   20

– For 10 quintals of rope for the ship, at 3 ducats per

quintal..………………………………………………………………..d^os  30

– For 44 new pipes [barrels for wine, water, etc.] to replace

the old ones and for sheathing for the  ship……………………..d^os   75

– For pots for cooking on the ship…………………………………d^os   15

– For a ship’s boat that I bought for the ship……………………..d^os   25

– For loading the ballast aboard the ship………………………….d^os   20

– For 8 quintals of tallow to grease the ship, at

3 ½ ducats per quintal……………………………………………….d^os   28

– For charcoal to burn aboard the ship……………………………d^os   14

– For firewood for the ship………………………………………….d^os   08

– For carpenters who worked 3 months to repair

the ship………………………………………………………………d^os  120

– For 140 quintals of biscuits for the voyage…………………….d^os  154

– For oil and for vinegar for the crew of the ship……………….d^os    65

– For butter for the crew……………………………………………d^os   30

– For olives for the said crew……………………………………….d^os   18

– For 16 quintals of rice at 20 ounces……………………………..d^os   32

– For ground wheat………………………………………………….d^os   16

– For grocery expenses for the people involved in

repairing the ship……………………………………………………d^os  120

– For small expenses like cartridge paper

compass, candle wicks, band keys, wax candles

and other ordinary expenses………………………………………d^os  110

……………………………………………………………………… _______

…………………………………………………………………………d^os 1,474

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………………………………………………………d^os  395

………………………………………………………………………_______

…………………………………………………………………………d^os 1,869

_________________________________________________________________________

The items listed in this bill fit into four different categories:

1. the cost of materials for repairing the ship
2. the cost of labor for repairing the ship
3. the cost of materials for refitting the ship for the upcoming cruise
4. the cost of provisions for the crew

There is also the coast of giving the “soldiers”—the crew members who would do the fighting if a prize had to be attacked and boarded—an advance.

Here is the breakdown of expenses divided up into these categories:

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%
Advance 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. The most expensive single aspect (31% of the total) was the materials needed to refit the ship for the corso cruise. These materials included everything from cooking supplies (charcoal, firewood, pots) to food (biscuits, ground wheat, rice, olives, vinegar, butter, oil) to a new compass (needed for navigating) to gunpowder (1,500 pounds/680 kilos of it) and cannon balls (1,000 pounds/450 kilos of them) to an advance for the “soldiers” who would serve aboard the upcoming expedition.

If we subtract the cost of repairing the ship, we end up with the cost of outfitting it to be ready for the upcoming pirate cruise: 1,296 ducats.

So how much did the sum of 1,269 ducats actually represent in the 1620s?

To answer this question, we first need to establish an exchange rate between Salé ducats and English pounds (for reasons that will be clear in a moment). One Salé ducat equaled eight English shillings. ¹ There were twenty shillings in an English pound, so 1,296 ducats equaled ₤518.

Converting Salé ducats into English pounds is helpful in figuring out how much 1,269 Salé ducats were worth because wages in early seventeenth century England are fairly well documented. Farm laborers earned about £8 to £10 a year, city laborers £10 to £14, skilled craftsmen £12 to £20. London wages were higher, £18 for laborers and £30 for skilled craftsmen.

These are approximate estimates, based on idealized 5-day, 50-week years (people didn’t actually work that way in the seventeenth century), but they nevertheless provide a rough gauge with which to assess how much 1,269 Salé ducats were worth.

The cost of outfitting this ship represented roughly 50 years’ wages for a farm laborer (a lifetime’s worth of work, essentially), and a little over seventeen year’s wages for a skilled London craftsman.

Equipping a ship for a pirate cruise was expensive.

We tend to think of seventeenth century piracy—whether the Caribbean buccaneer type or the Barbary corsair type—as a rough and ready, seat-of-the pants sort of enterprise: you pile a bunch of guys into a ship and set off in search of prey. As this bill makes clear, though, piracy was, in fact, a complicated business enterprise that required careful preparation and serious investment capital.

In order to be successful, Barbary corsairs—like privateers everywhere—needed financial backers with deep pockets. They found them because a successful corso expedition could turn a very large profit for all concerned.

Just recall the story told in the Of Piracy, Profit, and Prudence posts here in this blog (published in June 2018) in which a Turkish soldier stationed in Algiers named Mustaffa took the risk, embarked on a small-scale corso expedition, and parlayed an initial investment of 200 pieces of eight, worth the equivalent of about ₤40 (about 16 months’ of wages for a skilled London craftsman) into a fortune worth thirty thousand pieces of eight—roughly ₤6,000, a sum equalling 200 years’ worth of wages for a skilled London craftsman.

With those sorts of potential gains dangled before them, it was little wonder that backers were willing to pony up.

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1. For those who may be interested, the exchange rate between Salé ducats and English pounds comes from the following: “At the request of his brother Robert Mathew, the bearer, they certify their knowledge that Peter Mathew, merchant of London, was homeward bound from Aveiro in Portugal in the Hope for Grace of Preston in Scotland (about 80 tons), Thomas Short of Preston, master, which was laden with salt and oil, when on 6 June last, having sailed not above 15 leagues, the ship was surprised by a Turkish man-of-war. Mathew lost his whole estate, and was taken to Sallee in Barbary where the captain of the Turkish ship sold him for 350 Barbary ducats which at 8s a ducat amounts to £140. He lives in misery in iron chains, is forced to grind in the mill like a horse all day long, is fed on bread and water, and insufficient of that, and is tortured to make him turn Turk.” (213. 7 Jan. 1624, in Transactions – vol. 1: 1624-5, in G. G. Harris, ed., Trinity House of Deptford Transactions, 1609-35).