Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean: The grand period of the Moslem corsairs

SEA-WOLVES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
KHEYR-ED-DIN BARBAROSSA—CORSAIR, ADMIRAL, AND KING.
THE GRAND PERIOD OF THE MOSLEM CORSAIRS BY COMMANDER E. HAMILTON CURREY, R.N. WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
“Ships are but boards, sailors but men:
There be land rats and water rats, land thieves and water thieves,
I mean pirates.”
Merchant of Venice .
LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W 1910
TO THAT GRACIOUS LADY TO WHOSE COUNSEL AND ENCOURAGEMENT I OWE SO MUCH MORE THAN ANY ONE—SAVE I—CAN IMAGINE... TO MY WIFE I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
The quality which Napoleon is said to have ascribed to the British Infantry, “of never knowing when they were beaten,” seems to have also characterised the Sea-wolves; as witness the marvellous recuperation of Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa when expelled from Tunis by Charles V.; and the escape of Dragut from the island of Jerba when apparently hopelessly trapped by the Genoese admiral, Andrea Doria. All through their history the leaders of the Sea-wolves show the resourcefulness of the real seamen that they had become by force of circumstances, and it was they who in the age in which they dwelt showed what sea power really meant. Sailing through the Mediterranean on my way to Malta in the spring of this year, as the good ship fared onwards I passed in succession all those lurking-places from which the Moslem Corsairs were wont to burst out upon their prey. Truly it seemed as if
“The spirits of their fathers might start from every wave,”
and in imagination one pictured the rush of the pirate galley, with its naked slaves straining at the oar of their taskmasters, its fierce, reckless, beturbaned crew clustered on the “rambades” at the bow and stern. It might be that they would capture some hapless “round-ship,” a merchantman lumbering slowly along the coast; or again they might meet with a galley of the terrible Knights of St. John or of the ever-redoubtable Doria. In either case the Sea-wolves were equal to their fortune, to plunder or to fight in the name of Allah and his prophet.