You may read dozens of English histories, and even histories of the British Navy, and find little or no mention of the subject of this chapter. And yet during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and part of the eighteenth centuries the Algerine pirates, or "Turks" as they were generally called, were a real menace to our trade, our fishermen, and even to the dwellers on our coasts. The story is not at all a creditable one to us as a nation, nor did the Navy itself gain any particular distinction in fighting with these pests; but this was not so much the fault of our sea-commanders and their men as of the Government, which rarely gave them any real opportunity of exterminating the Turkish pirates that infested even our home waters.
The most discreditable part of all was that played by the British renegades, who were, more than anyone else, responsible for the Turkish efficiency at sea. Left to themselves, the corsairs from Algiers, Tunis, and Salee would never have become formidable. In mediæval times, as has already been noted, the English had the reputation of being "good seamen, but better pirates", and piracy (including English piracy), though scotched, was not killed till some time after the days of "Good Queen Bess". Why, in the youth of Edward VI, when the country was ruled by the Regent Somerset, the Regent's own brother—Sir Thomas Seymour, the Lord High Admiral of England—did not disdain to "do a bit in that line" himself!
The story is this. He had been married to the Queen Dowager. When she died, he found himself rather "hard up". From his position he knew all about the Channel pirates; he had dealt with lots of them, and "executed justice" on them for their misdeeds. Now, however, he entered into a surreptitious partnership with them, "winked the other eye" at complaints, and pocketed half-profits. He did so well that he tried to start a special mint of his own at Bristol. He still pretended to the Regent and the Council to be very poor, and eventually succeeded in getting an addition of 1500 ducats a year to his salary. He was allowed, moreover, to draw this in a lump sum in advance. But it was not very long before the Council began to "smell a rat". The pirates naturally got bolder and bolder, knowing that they could work with impunity, and Sir Thomas Seymour was asked "why he did not look after these matters?" "Oh," said he, "I am just sending three ships after these fellows! I'll soon make things all right." His ships sailed, but only to become the worst and most successful freebooters in British waters. Their depredations and his great wealth, which, it seems, he spent openly and extravagantly, could not long remain a secret, and he was again summoned before the Council. He still asserted that he was poverty-stricken, but he could no longer get anyone to believe him, and a piratical captain who was captured about this time admitted, under examination, that the admiral had "gone halves" with him. "Brother or no brother, he must be executed for this," said the Protector Somerset—and he was.
When a man in Sir Thomas Seymour's exalted position could behave in this manner, one can hardly be surprised that lesser "gentlemen" were not ashamed to follow in his footsteps—even some years later.
The first appearance of Mohammedan pirates in Northern waters was at a time very remote from that of which I am now writing, but I think it is of sufficient interest to deserve a passing reference. It was in the year 1048—just eighteen years before the Conquest—that news came to William of Normandy that a band of Moorish or Saracen pirates had established themselves in a castle which they had built on an eminence right in the middle of the Island of Guernsey, from which they harassed and terrorized the inhabitants. A knight, Samson d'Anville, was sent to destroy "Le Château du Grand Sarrasin", as it was called, and he apparently succeeded in rooting out the wasps' nest; and when in 1203 a church was built on the site, the salvation of the islanders was commemorated by its consecration as "Notre Dame de la Deliverance du Castel". Catel Church still stands on this historic spot. We hear no more of Saracen pirates in Northern seas till the sixteenth century, unless the mysterious ships which were driven ashore near Berwick in 1254 were in any way connected with them. Certainly the ships of any Northern nation would have been recognizable on our north-east coast. The ships in question "were large handsome vessels, but unlike anything ever before seen in this country: well provided with naval stores and provisions, and laden with coats of mail, shields and weapons of all kinds, sufficient for an army".[25] Their crews were arrested "as barbarians, or spies, or even enemies", but as no one understood their language, nothing whatever could be made of them, and so they were eventually allowed to depart in peace. Who they were, whence they came, and whither they went has never been discovered. The incident remains one of the most impenetrable of the many mysteries of the sea.
The foundation of the piratical States on the north coast of Africa, which were to be the source of untold misery to European nations, may be traced to the final expulsion of the Moors from Spain in 1509. Pursued by the Spaniards to Algiers—or Argier, as it was then usually called—the Moors called in the assistance of Arouji Barbarossa, a noted Mediterranean corsair. He succeeded in beating off the invaders and established himself as first Dey. Tunis, Sallee, and other rover communities soon sprang up along the African coast, and, beginning by retaliating on the Spaniards, the "Turks" gradually extended their sphere of operations till they became a terror to Christendom.
Christendom had itself to blame in a very great measure, since the Christian nations could never agree long enough between themselves to stamp out effectively these nests of pirates. Ceasing to be content with the spoils and slaves they could capture in the Mediterranean, they set themselves to—
"Keeping in awe the Bay of Portingale
And all the ocean by the British Shore".[26]
The churchwardens' accounts of the parish of St. Helen's, Abingdon, bear curious witness to the pitch at which Turkish piracy had arrived by the year 1565. An entry in this year runs as follows: "Payde for two bokes of Common Prayer agaynst invading of the Turke 0s. 6d." The special prayer was probably the one that ran thus: