Algerine pirates.
Sack of Baltimore, June 19, 1630.
Weakness of the Admiralty. Christian Turks.
The south-west coasts, both of England and Ireland, were infested with pirates from Sallee and Algiers. In June 1631 a rover of 300 tons with 24 guns and 200 men and another of 100 tons with 12 guns and 80 men lay between the Land’s End and the Irish coast. Their commander was Matthew Rice, who is called a Dutch renegade. Rice sunk two French ships and one from Dartmouth, taking the crews on board as well as everything that was worth keeping. Two days later he caught a Dungarvan fishing smack and ordered the skipper, John Hackett, to pilot them into Kinsale. Hackett said there was a fort and a man of war there, and offered to take them to Baltimore instead. The castle of the O’Driscolls still stands there, but the inhabitants at that time were English Protestants, which caused its selection as a parliamentary borough, and Hackett may not have disliked the service; but Fawlett, the Dartmouth captain, also helped the Algerines, and was not carried off by them finally. During the night of June 19, Rice having first explored the harbour in boats with muffled oars, attacked the town with the first morning light, plundered about sixty houses and took away 107 persons. The attack was so sudden that there was little fighting, and only two of the townsmen were killed. Rice had forty other prisoners of various nations. Captain Hook, who was at Kinsale with a King’s ship, which want of provisions kept generally in port, put to sea as soon as he heard the news, but the Algerines got clean away. Hackett, who was allowed to go ashore, was hanged at Cork for his share in the business, and his body exposed on the headland at the mouth of Baltimore harbour; but the little settlement never recovered its prosperity. The Sallee rovers long continued to infest the south-west coast, for the Crown was weak and the jealousy of the Admiralty officials prevented the maritime population from protecting themselves. The French, whom Wentworth called ‘most Christian Turks,’ allowed English prisoners to be led in chains across France and shipped from Marseilles to Algiers. Five years after the Baltimore disaster these pirates entered Cork harbour, and carried off prisoners in open day. Lord Conway, who was serving in the fleet a few months later, wrote to Wentworth: ‘When I come home, I will make a proposition to go with some ships to Sallee, the place whence the pirates come into Ireland; and I do firmly believe they may be brought to render all their prisoners, and never to trouble us more: the like peradventure might be done by Algier, but our King cannot do it alone.’ A successful expedition went to Sallee a year later under Captain Rainsborough, and some captives from Ireland were surrendered, after which the rovers ceased to be troublesome.[187]
Pirates of many nations.
The whole Irish coast infested by them.
Wentworth frees the Irish seas, 1637
After the defence of the Irish seas was entrusted to Plumleigh and James, the Algerines found the Welsh or Cornish coasts safer for their purpose. But English pirates were not wanting, and Edward Christian, governor of the Isle of Man under Lord Derby, seems to have had an understanding with some of them. Wentworth’s chief trouble was with privateers who issued from St. Sebastian with Spanish letters of marque or commissions against the Dutch, but who did not confine their depredations to them. Men were murdered in the Isle of Man, a French ship was boarded at sea, and honest traders of all nations were afraid to stir. There was always one squadron on the Irish coast, another returning, and another refitting. Dutch ships were seized in the Shannon, in the Liffey, and in Belfast Lough; a breach of the law of nations which the captains excused to their own crews by pretending a licence from the King of England to ‘pull the Hollanders by the ears out of every port.’ Wentworth, on the other hand, maintained that the whole of St. George’s Channel ‘being encompassed on every side with his Majesty’s dominions, hath ever been held the chief of his harbours.’ Nicolalde, the resident Spanish agent in London, not only gave commissions to buccaneers of English birth, but interceded for them when they became obnoxious to their own government. Wentworth had a bad opinion of Nicolalde, but he humoured him, and made proposals for trade between Ireland and Spain. The English Admiralty were induced to grant the Lord Deputy a vice-admiral’s commission for Munster, while Plumleigh and James continued to scour the narrow seas. Thus by a mixture of force and diplomacy, piracy was put down for the time, and on August 15, 1637, Wentworth was able to announce to Coke that there was ‘not so much as the rumour of Turk, St. Sebastian’s men, or Dunkirker—the merchant inward and outwards secured and assured in his trade.’[188]
FOOTNOTES:
[173] Welwood’s Memoirs of the most Material Transactions, etc., being short and well written, may have had a good deal to say to forming public opinion. There are a great many editions, and Lord Chatham praised the book. Wentworth to Conway, January 20, 1625-6 in State Papers, Domestic. Wentworth’s letter to Sir Robert Askwith, December 7, 1620, is in Camden Miscellany, vol. ix. Other electioneering letters are in the Strafford Letters, i. 8-13. Hobbes says it is hard to judge motives, but that Wentworth’s promotion was a sign of the King’s weakness, ‘for in a market where honour and power is to be bought with stubbornness, there will be a great many as able to buy as my Lord Strafford was’ (Behemoth, part ii.)