THE BARBARY CORSAIR RAID ON GRINDAVÍK IN 1627 – PART 5

(This post is a continuation of The Barbary Corsair Raid on Grindavík in 1627 – Parts 1 – 4. If you haven’t done so already, it’s best to read those posts before continuing on here.)

Last week’s post covered the sea voyage to Salé. This week’s describes the arrival in Salé.

After a couple of days, the sea calmed enough, and the tide was high enough, for some boats from the town to row out across the sandbar to Murad Reis’s ship, bringing letters, some supplies, and likely a pilot.

The state of the sandbar at the mouth of the harbor depended on a series of variables: rainfall or the lack of it (which raised or lowered the level of the river), storms, the ever-changing flow of the river itself, the tides. The bar’s shape and location were constantly shifting, so crossing it could be a tricky proposition.

Ships entering the harbor often made use of the services of a local pilot who knew the bar intimately and was familiar with any recent changes in its position. Murad Reis, having been gone for well over two months, would have had no clear idea of the bar’s present state, so he likely employed such a pilot.

Attempting to cross the bar when the conditions were not right could be disastrous. A young Englishman who was captured by Salé corsairs experienced just how bad it could be. He and his fellow captives were aboard one of two Salé corsair ships that formed a little flotilla with the prizes—the ships—they had captured. After a successful cruise, this flotilla returned to Salé, with the prize ships arriving first:

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The corsairs followed their prizes in and found them safe at anchor on the outside of the bar at Salé. On a signal from the shore of there being water enough on the bar to carry them over, the prizes were ordered to weigh anchor, and got well in. The corsairs cast anchors without, having decided to wait for the next day.

However, about noon, the infidels, being in their jollity, were all on the sudden in an extreme hurry on account of their discovery of a sail standing right in from sea upon them. They cried out in great confusion, “Garnoe ! Garnoe!”—meaning thereby Captain Delgardenoor, who they knew then commanded a British man-of-war of 20 guns. And as they feared, so it proved, for it was Garnoe indeed.

But, alas! Too late for our assistance. Medune [one of the corsair captains] weighed his anchor, and Ali Hacam [the other corsair captain] slipped his cable, and they both attempted to flee, but ran their ships aground on the bar. Delgardenoor followed so near to them as in safety he might, his cannon shot flying about them.

In no little time, through means of a great sea, the corsairs’ ships were soon beat to pieces, and everyone that could had to swim for his life. For my part, I could swim but very little, and I committed myself to the mast, from which I was taken by some people in a boat from the shore. As for the Moors, they were under no apprehension of danger from the sea, leaping into it and swimming to shore like so many dogs.

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Murad Reis’s ship had no such problems crossing the bar. Before beginning the process, though, he ordered any captives on deck to be put back in the hold, where they were all chained up securely and watched over by guards—to ensure that nobody tried to leap overboard in a desperate attempt to swim to shore and escape.

Murad Reis gave the necessary commands to ensure that everything aboard his ship was in order, and then stood alertly on the bridge, working with the pilot to guide his ship safely across the bar and upstream to the docks on the river’s south bank.

As the ship approached the quays, Murad Reis ordered twelve cannons to be fired in a celebratory salvo (the cannons loaded with powder only, no shot) and had men among his crew play trumpets and bagpipes jubilantly—all to announce to those on shore that they were returning from a successful trip.

This was standard practice in all the North African corsair ports. The noisy, triumphant fanfare would have drawn a crowd of excited people to the docks to watch the ship’s arrival.

Stepping ashore on the docks of Salé would have been a severely unnerving and disorienting experience for the members of the Járngerðarstaðir farm family.

There were no cities in Iceland at this time, hardly any towns even; most everybody lived in scattered farmsteads like the one the Járngerðarstaðir farm family came from. Unless they had travelled outside Iceland, which few of them were likely to have done, they would never have seen so many buildings crammed together.

Also, the population of Salé was about 15,000. That may not sound like much by today’s standards, but it was fully a third of the entire population of Iceland at the time. So the members of the Járngerðarstaðir farm family would likely never have seen so many people in one place at the same time—nor so many different sorts of people.

The Salé population was a diverse one: Hornacheros and Andalusians from the Iberian Peninsula, native Berbers and Arabs, Turks, European renegades of all sorts, European slaves, and black Africans, both enslaved and not. Not only would the members of the Járngerðarstaðir farm family have seen a mass of strange faces staring at them—light, dark, round, narrow, bearded, bald, turbaned, black-eyed, blue-eyed, scarred, tattooed… They would also have been buffeted by a cacophony of strange and incomprehensible languages.

As the captives were driven ashore, the variegated crowd would have parted to let them through and then followed as they were led onwards. An English captive in Salé described the experience like this: “We were forced like a drove of sheep through the several streets, the people crowding about to gaze upon us.”

The Grindavík captives— the Járngerðarstaðir farm family folk amongst them—would have stumbled along in shock as Murad Reis paraded them triumphantly through the town.

Though some of them must have feared it, they were not taken directly to the slave market, and they were not put up for sale immediately. They first had to be housed while the “paperwork” was completed on them.

So for several days they waited, incarcerated together. Local people came to gawk at them, for the captives—especially the Icelanders—would have been an exotic novelty, pale skinned and fair haired as many of them likely were. Some of the gawkers mocked them cruelly; some offered what comfort and advice they could. The captives must have found it all most strange and unnerving.

Guðrún Jónsdóttir, the matriarch of the Járngerðarstaðir farm family had a different experience from the rest. She, along with her youngest son and a young girl, was kept in a different house, separate from the rest of the captives.

To see what happened to Guðrún Jónsdóttir and the young children with her, go to the next post in this blog.

For those who may be interested…

The description of how dangerous the Salé bar could be comes from Thomas Pellow, The History of the Long Captivity and Adventures of Thomas Pellow in South-Barbary, pp. 6-9. This excerpt is a slightly edited and abridged version of the original.

The brief description of coming ashore in Salé comes from Adam Elliot, A Modest Vindication of Titus Oates, p. 7.