ALGIERS — THE CAPTIVES’ EXPERIENCE 9

This week we continue the series of posts about Algiers, describing what the experience would have been like for European captives who were brought into that city. Last week, we began looking at what a slave’s life was like. This week we take up the story of a particular slave.

Last week’s post contained some extracts from a letter penned by Guttormur Hallson, one of nearly 400 Icelanders who were captured in a raid by Algerine corsairs on Iceland in the summer of 1627.

The tone of Guttormur’s letter made clear one of the hard realities of life in Algiers for those enslaved there: though people did manage to physically survive the rigors of their servitude, the stresses of life as a slave—Guttormur had been enslaved for nearly four years when he wrote his letter—could be quite overwhelming.

In that same letter, Guttormur wrote the following

“Oh, my good friends! This is no child’s game here. It is a terrible distress upon us, and a heavy burden…. There is no news here from other countries other than disturbance and the tidings of war, each nation against another, each realm against another, and even within each country only fighting and conflict and betrayal. Oh, God! How great a plague it is to be here. May the Lord come soon and make an end to this sinful world. We are in a storm, and the waves break across this world. Oh, Lord, help us cross this perilous ocean, and let us reach to the further land, that eternal land beyond the distress and misery of this wretched and uncertain life.”[1]

There was, however, a way for slaves in Algiers to better their situation.

All they had to do was convert to Islam.

Conversion did not necessarily mean that they would instantly be freed, but at the very least it ameliorated the conditions of their lives and gave them new options—and in some cases did provide them with freedom.

Algiers was a surprisingly meritocratic society that offered opportunities for advancement entirely lacking in the more rigidly stratified societies of Europe at this time. Smart, ambitious slaves who converted could fashion new and successful lives for themselves. More than that: circumstances could sometimes lead then into lives they could never have imagined for themselves.

One such man was Jón Jónsson, also known as Jón Vestmann.

Like Guttormur, Jón was one of the Icelandic captives taken during the Algerine corsair raid.

Jón had been about fifteen when captured. His father, a Lutheran pastor named Jón Þorsteinsson, had been murdered during the raid. Reverend Jón was an educated man. So too was his son. According to the Icelandic documents, in the summer of 1627, Jón had just graduated from Skálholtsskóli (one of the two institutions of learning in Iceland at the time) and was on his way to Denmark to attend the University of Copenhagen.

After completing his studies, Jón would have returned to Iceland a highly educated young man, ready to take up an important position in the church or the Icelandic government. None of this happened. Instead, his life was violently upended and he ended up on the auction block at the Badestan in Algiers.

We do not know who bought Jón, but his new owner put him in charge of his other slaves. This promotion no doubt spared Jón some of the worst aspects of enslavement, but he was still a slave nonetheless and subject to the whims of his owner.

Jón’s life of servitude remained unchanged for three or four years. Bu then, sometime after 1630, things began to change. His natural intelligence and drive, and his obvious education, clearly impressed the right people. More importantly, though, he converted to Islam. At some point—when exactly is unclear—he become a free man. And a successful man, too. He began to move in the highest circles of Algiers, where he acquired powerful patrons.

These men “dressed him in a dignified robe of red silk, with gold-embroidery. He wore a gold chain necklace around his neck, gold bracelets on his hands and feet, and gold earrings with precious stones.”[2] Such dress denotes genuine wealth. In Algiers, the best way to gain such wealth was by corsairing.

Indeed, Jón became a corsair. More than that, he rose to the rank of corsair captain.

There is some uncertainty about his corsair career, though.

One version of his life claims that he served aboard a ship that was part of a protective escort to a fleet of Algerine merchant ships carrying cargo such as wine, silk, precious stones, gold, and silver. After five years of this escort duty, Jón’s ship, along with several others, was part of a fleet of ten vessels that were hit by a storm in the night and scattered.

The next morning, only two ships were to be seen. As the weather cleared, those aboard these ships spied land in the distance and sailed closer. Having no clear idea of where they were, they dropped anchor outside the harbor. From this vantage point, they could clearly see the distinctive spires of church steeples, and so they knew it was a Christian country.

It is not clear what role exactly Jón played aboard these ships, but it was an important one, for, according to the story, it was he who called the captains together for a meeting to decide what to do. He asked them what course of action they thought best, but they insisted on hearing his opinion first. Jón was, after all, a renegade—an ex-Christian—and this was obviously a test of his loyalties. Without hesitation, he said they should attack the city before them. The ships’ captains agreed this was a good idea and began to map out a plan of action.

At this point, Jón suggested they break out some of the wine the ship was carrying and drink a toast to their upcoming success. Nobody objected, and soon the wine was flowing freely—too freely. Everybody got staggering, passed-out drunk. Soon the decks of both ships were littered with snoring, comatose corsairs. Jón, who had been careful not to drink too much, then began to chuck the passed-out men overboard into the sea, one by one. One other person managed to stay sober enough to stay on his feet: the Admiral (the overall commander) of the flotilla. But when this man saw what had happened, rather than face Jón, he threw himself upon his sword and killed himself.

The locals, meanwhile, seeing two corsair ships moored outside their harbour, gathered together as many men as possible and rowed out, intending to attack the corsairs and slay them all if they could. Jón saw them approaching and waved a red flag with a white cross (a Christian symbol) which had been taken from a European ship. Seeing this, the locals risked going aboard the ship. Jón asked what country this was. They replied that it was Germany (“Saxland” in the Icelandic text). He then explained what he had done and went ashore with them to meet the Governors of the town.

He told them about his family, his background, how he had been captured and enslaved, and that he now wanted to be a Christian again and deny Islam. The locals accepted his story—it was not that unusual for the time—and they allowed him to retain ownership of a significant portion of the cargo the ships had been transporting, and so Jón became a wealthy—and free—man.

Or so the story goes.

The details of this story are actually not very credible. It is most unlikely that the flotilla of Algerine ships Jón was on would have ended up in Germany, of all places. And the notion that he could have gotten the entire crews of two ships drunk enough for all of them to pass out is risible—as is the notion that the local notables would have willingly given up their claim to any part of the booty aboard the corsair ships.

This story also goes against the general outline of Jón’s life that emerges from other sources. Some elements of it, however, do connect with another story that is far more credible.

For the continuation of Jón’s story, see the next post here in this blog.

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[1] The Travels of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson, pp. 116-117.

[2] Jón Þorkelsson, ed., Tyrkjaránið á Íslandi 1627 (The Turkish Raid on Iceland 1627), p. 318. As the quoted description makes clear, Algerine corsairs liked bling (the image at the top of this post depicts one such “blinged-up” Algerine corsair captain striking a pose).