THE STORY OF THE HORNACHEROS AND THE FOUNDING OF THE CORSAIR REPUBLIC OF SALÉ – PART 5

(This post is a continuation of The Story of the Hornacheros and the Founding of the Corsair Republic of Salé – Part 4. If you haven’t done so already, it’s best to read Posts 1-4 in this series before continuing on here.)

With the port of al-Ma’mura closed to them, the English pirates who had been using it scattered, some to the Caribbean, some to the Mediterranean, some as far afield as Asia. But some resettled in Salé, bringing with them ships, crews, and expert knowledge of the pirate profession. More importantly, some of the merchants who had been doing a brisk trade in stolen pirate booty in al-Ma’mura resettled in Salé as well, bringing with them both their business acumen and their connections to far-flung commercial networks throughout Europe and the Maghreb.

English pirates were not the only ones looking for a new port on the Atlantic, though.

Just as English privateers had been put out of work by peace with Spain, so too were Dutch privateers. In 1609, a truce was declared between the Netherlands and Spain, putting a temporary stop to what is known as the Eighty Years’ War (the war for Dutch independence from Spain). The Dutch privateers who declined to return to life as merchant seamen went looking for new home bases. Like their English counterparts, they too descended upon Mediterranean ports.

Al-Araish and al-Ma’mum had been free ports, beyond the control of the Moroccan Sultan, who, remember, was desperately struggling to hold his dynasty together in the midst of a brutal civil war. There were no such free ports in the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean corsair capitals—places like Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers—were all Ottoman Regencies. In other words, they were all Muslim. They welcomed English and Dutch pirates alike, but they insisted these newcomers convert to Islam. Mostly, the pirates did that (the benefits were huge) and took up permanent residence.

Traditionally, Barbary corsairs sailed in galleys rowed by slaves chained to the oarbenches. These galleys were long, sleek, and fast, but they were designed for the relatively placid waters of the Mediterranean and were not suitable for voyages in the turbulent waters of the open Atlantic. The influx of English and Dutch pirates radically changed the North African corsairs’ mode of operating. Once they had converted and settled into place, the English and Dutch began sharing their expertise and taught the North African corsairs how to build, sail, and navigate European-style square-rigged sailing ships.  This allowed the North African corsairs to break out of the Mediterranean.

So renegade English and Dutch pirates, now sailing as Barbary corsairs, and North African corsairs newly liberated from the Mediterranean were all looking for a port on the Atlantic coast that they could make use of.

They, along with what were left of the English pirates from al-Ma’mum, ended up in Salé, for it was the only Atlantic port left

The Hornacheros of New Salé welcomed them all. Nursing a fervid desire for vengeance against the Spanish as they did, the Hornacheros saw piracy as a potential means of revenge—and as a way of enriching themselves in the process. With their background in armed robbery, counterfeiting, etc., it would have been a natural choice.

To prosper as a pirate capital, New Salé needed four crucial things: seed money to invest in corsair expeditions, knowledge of sailing and the sea, a fleet of ships, and the necessary international trading networks required to buy and profitably resell stolen pirate booty on a large scale.

The Hornacheros had the money. The influx of pirates and corsairs brought both the sailing know-how and the ships. The black-market merchants from al-Ma’mum provided the beginnings of the necessary trade networks (they were soon joined by other such merchants who flocked to Salé as the place grew).

Moreover, the timing of events was such that all the various elements came together to create a sort of ‘perfect storm.’ The Hornacheros had arrived at New Salé in 1610, followed not long after by the Andalusians. The influx of English pirates, al-Ma’mura black-market merchants, and Mediterranean-based corsairs followed about five years later. By that time, the expulsados were well established and had rebuilt the Qasba and the town and improved the port.

While all this was happening, the chaos of the Moroccan civil war continued to churn destructively. Moulay Zaydan was emerging as the winner of the fratricidal contest for the throne, but it was a Pyrrhic victory. By 1614, he had established control over Marrakesh and the area surrounding that city, but the rest of the country had devolved into violent disorder and confusion. Not only had he been unable to prevent English pirates from making free with the ports of al-Araish and al-Ma’mura; he hadn’t been able to prevent the Spanish from taking those same ports.

Thanks to the agreement between Moulay Zaydan and the Hornacheros, Salé was supposed to be loyal to him, but the Hornacheros had their own plans and exercised a de facto independence he could do little to curb.

Thanks to this confluence of events, New Salé now had everything it needed to become a pirate capital.

It did not happen overnight, but once sufficient momentum had built up, the Salé corsair fleet increased rapidly. By the middle 1620s, it numbered around thirty ships.

Thirty ships might not sound like all that much by modern standards, but a fleet of thirty-plus ships in fact represented a major enterprise. Corsair ships tended to have large crews—the better to overwhelm their prey should it prove necessary. Though the Salé ships were relatively small (there was a sand bar across the harbor, which limited the size of ship that could get in), each ship would still likely have had a crew of at least fifty or more. If we use that number (and it is probably an underestimate), a fleet of thirty ships would have required at minimum 1,500 men just to crew it.

This fleet was the economic engine of New Salé. Not only did it require crew; it also required support services, from black market merchants who bought booty to purveyors of gunpowder and shot to carpenters, sailmakers, bakers, and grocers—and, of course, tavern and brothel keepers. In total, as many as 5,000 people or more were likely involved, one way or another, directly or indirectly, with the Salé corsair enterprise. This represented a sizeable portion of the New Salé population, which at this time, remember, was something like 13,000 after the Hornacheros and Andalusians had settle in.

Salé declared total independence from Moulay Zaydan, became a republic, and, for the better part of forty years, served as the corsair capital on the Atlantic. Ships operating out of Salé cruised all along the Atlantic littoral of Europe from southern Spain up into the English Channel. They also hunted in the open waters between the Azores, the Canary Islands, and the European coast, raiding those islands and taking ships sailing to and from the new World whenever they could. Once, they even raided as far as Iceland.

In the 1660s, the Dynasty that Mulay Zaydan had struggled so hard to preserve was replaced by a new dynasty and a new Sultanate. The new Sultan rapidly reasserted control of Morocco, including Salé, crushing the town’s independent republic and ending its ‘wild west’ days. Gradually, the river Salé was situated on silted up, and, by the middle of the eighteenth century, the place was pretty much closed as a corsair port.

In its heyday, though, Salé was justly (in)famous.

And all thanks to the intractable Hornacheros, driven from their home, searching for a new place to settle, restless and angry and determined.

The right people—as the saying goes—in the right place at the right time.