CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH ON PIRATES AND RENEGADES

This week—the last of 2024—we continue the series of posts drawn from Corsairs & Captives, my new book.

This week’s excerpt comes from Captain John Snith—the same John Smith who was involvement with the Jamestown colony and with the Indian maiden Pocahontas.

Though Captain John Smith’s involvement with the Jamestown colony and with Pocahontas is what makes him a recognizable name, there was another side to his life. As a young man, he adventured in Eastern Europe. On his way there, he was shipwrecked and ended up for a time as a crewmember aboard a French pirate ship in the Mediterranean. After that, while fighting against Ottoman Turkish forces in Hungary, he was captured, enslaved, and taken to Istanbul. He escaped by killing his owner and then travelled through Germany, France, Spain, and Morocco before eventually making his way back to England.

All of this means that he could speak with some authority regarding European pirates and their connections with Barbary corsairs. In the excerpt below, he explains why English (and other European) pirates became renegades and Barbary corsairs.

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After the death of our most gracious Queen Elizabeth, of blessed memory, our royal King James, who from his Infancy had reigned in peace with all nations, considered he had no further employment for men of war [King James I concluded a peace treaty with Spain in 1604 and so put English privateers out of work].

Those [privateers] who were rich rested with that they had; those who were poor, and had nothing but from hand to mouth, turned pirate: some because they felt slighted by those for whom they had got much wealth; some because they could not get their due; some that had lived bravely would not abase themselves to poverty; some vainly, only to get a name; others for revenge, covetousness, or other ill motives.

As they found themselves more and more oppressed, their passions increasing with discontent. This made them turn pirates.

Because they grew hateful to all Christian princes, they retired to Barbary, where although there be not many good harbours but Tunis, Algiers, Salé, Marmora, and Tetouan, there are many convenient roads, or the open sea, which is their chief lordship. For the best harbours within the Straits of Gibraltar—Alcazarquivir, Oran, Melilla, Tangier, and Ceuta—are all possessed by the Spaniards. Beyond the Straits, they have also Arzilla and Mazagan. Marmora they have likewise lately taken and fortified.

Captain Ward, an Englishman, and Captain Dansker, a Dutchman, first made their markets in North Africa to sell booty when the Moors knew scarce how to sail a ship. Captain Bishop was ancient and did little hurt, but Captain Easton got so much he made himself a Marquis in Savoy, and Ward lived like a Pasha in Barbary. Those were the first that taught the Moors to be men of war.

Many times the English pirates had very good ships, and well manned, but they were commonly so fractious amongst themselves, and so riotous, quarrelsome, treacherous, blasphemous and villainous that it is more than a wonder that they could so long continue to do so much mischief. And everything they got, they basely consumed amongst Jews, Turks, Moors, and whores.

They would seldom go to sea, as long as they could possibly live on shore.

Being mixed in with the French and the Dutch (but with very few Spaniards or Italians), commonly running one from another, they became so disjointed, disordered, debauched, and miserable that the Turks and Moors began to command them as slaves and force them to instruct them in their best skill, which many an accursed renegado, or Christian turned Turk, did, till they made those Sallymen [the corsairs of Salé] or Moors of Barbary as powerful as they be, to the terror of all the Straits. Many times they take purchase in the Atlantic and, yes, sometimes even in the English Channel. They are the most cruel villains in Turkey or Barbary.

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So there you have it.

According to John Smith, it was King James’ peace treaty with the Spanish that drove the English pirates to North Africa and debauchery that allowed the North Africans to eventually gain the upper hand. More than this, it was expat English (and other European) pirates who taught the North African corsairs how to use European style square-rigged sailing ships and so enabled them to abandon their oared galleys and burst out of the confines of the Mediterranean and launch a new era of Atlantic raiding.

A fine example indeed of the law of unintended consequences.

For those who may be interested…

This description of how European pirates became Barbary corsairs is taken from Chapter XXVIII, “The bad Life, Qualities and Conditions of Pirates; and how they taught the Turks and Moors to become men of War,” in John Smith, The True travels, Adventures and Observations of Captain John Smith into Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, from Ann. Dom. 1593 to 1629, originally published in 1629.

I have lightly abridge the original, modernized the spelling, and replaced some of the archaic phraseology to make the text more accessible.