"O Almighty and Everlasting God, our Heavenly Father, we Thy disobedient and rebellious children, now by Thy just judgement sore afflicted, and in great danger to be oppressed, by Thine and our sworn and most deadly enemies, the Turks, &c."
The danger was evidently felt to be imminent. By 1576 the "Turks" of Argier had no less than 25,000 Christian captives in their cruel clutches. Most, certainly, came from the southern European countries, but our turn was to come, and half a dozen years later the miscreants were boasting as much to their English captives. We still had our own as well as Flemish, Irish, and French piratical gentlemen in the Channel at this time, for in 1580 the Council called the attention of the Cinque Ports to the fact that such robbers were "daily received and harboured by the inhabitants of the said places, making open sale of their spoils without interruption".
A Turkish Pirate Ship of 1579
(From a print of Algiers of that year)
Observe the sharp ram, the tower-like forecastle, and the curiously perched cabin aft. Also the tail-like ornaments at the stern, possibly reminiscent of the sterns of the old "Dragon-ships" and "Long Serpents". The big and somewhat triangular openings are probably gun-ports, but no guns are visible.
It is probable that the attempts at the suppression of our own sea-robbers drove some of them into the ranks of the Barbary corsairs. And among them, it is shameful to relate, were not a few men of good family. Captain John Smith, who wrote about 1630, explains that at the accession of James I the "Gentlemen Adventurers" and other seaman who had long carried on a sort of licensed piracy against the Spanish possessions and ships on the Spanish Main, found themselves, like Othello, with their "occupation gone". James wanted to live at peace with everybody. As an epigram of the time put it:
"When Elizabeth was England's King,
That dreadful name thro' Spain did ring;
How altered is the case ad sa'me,
These juggling days of good Queen Jamie".
So that, to quote John Smith on the Gentlemen Adventurers, "those that were rich, rested with what they had; those that were poor, and had nothing but from hand to mouth, turned pirates; some because they were slighted of those for whom they had got much wealth; some for that they could not get their due; some that had lived bravely would not abase themselves to poverty. . . . Now because they grew hateful to all Christian Princes, they retired to Barbary, where altho' there be not many good harbours, but Tunis, Algier, Sally, Marmora and Tituane, there are many convenient roads. . . . Ward, a poor English sailor, and Dansker, a Dutchman made first here their marts when the Moors scarce knew how to sail a ship. Bishop was ancient and did little hurt; but Easton got so much as made himself a Marquess in Savoy, and Ward lived like a Bashaw in Barbary; those were the first taught the Moors to be men of war." He gives the names of several other noted English pirates of the time: some were hung, others were "mercifully pardoned" by King James. Other villains acted as agents and contrived to give the "Turks" wind of the sailing of any punitive expedition.
"For there being several Englishmen," writes Sir William Monson, the celebrated Admiral, "who have been too long in trading with pirates, and furnishing them with powder and other necessaries, it is to be feared those same Englishmen will endeavour to give the pirates intelligence, lest their being taken, their wicked practices should be discovered." Thanks to such scoundrels as these the "Turks" were able to attack us in our own waters. By 1616 they had no less than thirty ships north of the Mediterranean, and in that year a Salee rover was actually captured in the River Thames. By the year following so many British ships had been taken by the "Turks" that the merchants of London established a fund of £40,000—the Trinity House contributing £1068—"for the merchants and ships of the Port of London as a fund against the Turks". Four hundred and sixty British ships had already fallen into their hands.
When in 1619 Sir John Killigrew asked permission to erect a lighthouse on the Lizard the Trinity House refused, on the ground "that it is not necessary or convenient to erect a lighthouse there, but per contra, inconvenient, having regard to pirates and enemies whom it would conduct to a safe place of landing". In 1620 James I was at last persuaded to send an expedition against "Argier". The £40,000 collected in London, and other sums subscribed, went towards its equipment. It consisted of six men-of-war and twelve hired merchantmen under Sir Robert Mansell; but as during the previous sixteen years of the King's reign, "never a nail had been knocked into any of the Royal ships", and as their captains "were of little repute", the whole affair turned out such a dismal failure that the Algerines were encouraged to attack us with greater determination than ever.