The Barbary Pirates & England's White Slaves

at 3 15 pm on the 27th of August 1816 the 110 gun Royal Navy ship of the line HMS Charlotte opened fire on the port of Algiers in North Africa it's brought to a close one of Britain's little-known stories as HMS Charlotte delivered her broadside you could be excused for thinking that this was another piece of Britannia rules the waves but for nearly 200 years the fisherman merchantment and Coastal communities of England and Ireland felt that Britannia ruling the waves was far from the truth Looking Over the Horizon was a terrifying Menace a menace that seized Cruz and left their deserted boats bobbing on the seas around Britain hundreds and hundreds of these empty boats fishermen were so scared that they refused to put to Sea preferring economic hardship to the Terrors Out on the Ocean a menace that in the dark of the night would break down doors in coastal Villages and take men women and children away together with those vanished Sailors they would be carried across the seas to the slave markets of North Africa thousands upon thousands of them this is the often forgotten story of the Barbary Pirates and England's white slaves the Barbary Coast was the area of North Africa ranging from Morocco to modern-day Libya and for nearly 300 years was the home to bands of pirates or corsairs who plundered their way through the Mediterranean and the Western Seaboard of Europe in popular English-speaking culture we tend to think of pirates as swashbuckling white Sailors who enjoyed their rum and sailed around the Caribbean the Barbary Pirates deviate from that popular representation for a start there were mainly Arabs from North Africa although not totally and furthermore as Muslims they certainly were not drunk on rum nor did they plunder ships in the Caribbean and when they did see ships it wasn't the cargo they were particularly after their eyes were fixed on something more valuable the crews themselves who they sold in the slave markets in North Africa the Pirates not only sold their slaves in the ports along the Barbary Coast but enjoyed the protection of the local rulers too normally part of the Ottoman Empire the local rulers in what's now Libya Tunisia Algeria held considerable autonomy whilst Morocco had never been under ottoman control in the first place these local rulers provided the Barbary pirates with protection and in return the Pirates made them rich with slaves the rulers received a proportion of the prisoners for their own slave Collections and they'd also earn valuable hard currency by ransoming some of the captives back to their homelands the rulers and the Pirates couldn't get enough of this lucrative human treasure ships were seized and even Coastal communities were raided to fuel the Barbary slave markets the European Shoreline on the Mediterranean from Venice to Spain was regularly attacked by these Pirates the island of Gozo in Malta was totally emptied by them whole regions were left sparse as surviving populations desperately moved inland but the Barbary Pirates didn't limit their attention solely to the med during the 17th and 18th centuries they widened their activities into the Atlantic which brought them to the very shores of Ireland and England at the very time that British slave ships were starting to transport cargos of black Africans across the Atlantic Arab Pirates were taking English white slaves to North Africa for a period of 200 years English Merchant and fishing vessels were regularly attacked by the Barbary Pirates and thousands of sailors sold into the slave markets of North Africa most never to return exactly how many well poor record keeping means we cannot be sure but here's one example in 1616 the admiralty reported that 466 vessels with their Crews had been seized in the previous seven years in 1625 a petition was presented to Parliament from 2 000 wives of captured Sailors requesting assistance to pay ransoms for the return of their loved ones meanwhile the mayor of Poole in Dorset reported that 27 ships and 200 Sailors have been seized off the Dorset Coast in a 10-day period there are reports of deserted boats drifting off the Sussex coast and raids on King's Lynn in Norfolk but it was the Southwest Peninsula that bore the brunt of these pirate activities in 1625 fishing vessels from Liu Penzance and malzel were found floating abandoned in August 1625 the Barbary course is boldly landed in Saint Michael's Bay in Cornwall raiding local settlements and carrying off 60 men women and children into slavery a few days later they landed at the Port of Lou but by then the jungle drums have been beating and many of the townsfolk had fledged to the surrounding Fields nevertheless the Pirates managed to capture 80 people mainly sailors let's be clear the English were not the only white slaves to be found in the North African slave markets in fact they're actually in the minority the lands closer to the Barbary Coast were raided far more frequently a French priest a father Dan visiting Algiers in 1634 estimated that there were 25 000 Christian slaves in this port alone and don't forget that these slave markets also contained many non-muslims from sub-Saharan Africa too in the late 1620s the Barbary Pirates audaciously seized the island of Lundy in the Bristol Channel and used it as a base for their operations for the next seven years now this is mind-boggling you can see Lundy from the North Coast of Devon and yet here were the Barbary Pirates operating without a care in the world they would return to use Lundy as a base time and time again during this period it was from londy that they raided Iceland in the summer of 1647 carrying off 400 inhabitants and it was also from the island that the Barbary Pirates under a Dutch Muslim convert swept into the Irish Settlement of Baltimore in County Cork capturing 103 villages only three of them which are returned home from slavery estimates put the number of English Sailors and civilians abducted during a 20-year period between 1622 and 1644 as high as 7 000. in October 1640 a petition to King Charles the first claimed that five thousand of his subjects were being held in bondage in North Africa it's specifically named 957 who'd been captured in the preceding 17 months as the English turned in on themselves fighting the Civil War during the 1640s the Barbary Pirates were given almost free reign around the coast of Britain it was reported at one stage during this decade that there were 60 pirate ships or What official counts called Turkish men of War operating off the Southwest coast alone 60. the victory of the parliamentarians in the Civil War brought Oliver Cromwell to power a man who had no truck with either Pirates attacking England or Muslims enslaving Christians he ordered that any captured Barbary Pirates should be taken to the port of Bristol not far from Lundy and slowly drowned nice he also ordered two of his most talented Admirals Robert Blake and William Penn to clear the pirates from londi Island and then take the war to them in North Africa in 1655 Blake took 15 ships to Tunis and demanded compensation from the ruler called The Bay when the latter refused Blake attacked Porto Farina destroying two short batteries and nine of the Bay's ships as an aside by the way William Penn's son also William Penn was the founder of Pennsylvania in America despite Cromwell Blake and Penn's best efforts the Menace of the Barbary Pirates didn't go away a list published in London in 1682 claimed 160 ships have been captured by pirates in a three-year period furthermore the list estimated that seven to nine thousand crew members have been taken into slavery whilst these figures might appear small don't forget that the population of England at this time was somewhere between just four and five million and likewise the population of Cornwall was less than one hundred thousand so the psychological impact of these raids was huge the conditions that many white slaves in North Africa lived under were as harsh as anything their black counterparts suffered in the Americas at least an eighth of every cargo of slaves was presented to the rulers of the various Barbary ports this Kickback ensured that the Pirates had both safe ports access to the slave markets and the military protection of the rulers these so-called public slaves were housed in large prisons where they were either put to work in quarries and on building projects or were forced to row on galleys these Galley slaves would be chained to their ships and never set foot on land for years many would die at their oars the basic diet was bread and water and these public slaves received one change of clothing a year beatings like the flight of slaves throughout the world and throughout history were regular occurrence women at least didn't have to work on these hard labor projects but were instead housed in the harims either as servants or as part of the harim itself those captives sold at the public slave markets endured a variety of outcomes depending upon their new owner's whims rather like slaves the world over some Rose to positions of authority within the households others regularly assaulted their families back in England were often left without their Chief breadwinner if families had the means they could Ransom back their loved ones the Barbary rulers quite like that little money-making scam however being families of fishermen and sailors few in England were in a financial position to pay any ransoms without some sort of government assistance the problem in England was that throughout this period governments were not keen unlike their counterparts in France and Spain to foot the bill one notable exception was in 1646 when Edmund qasim was sent by Parliament with funds to purchase as many English captives as he could find in Algiers he managed to barter the release of 244 men women and children before his money ran out with governments refusing or unable to take a lead in rescuing their captured countrymen and women it was left to the Church of England to remedy the situation for the church there was a moral Dimension sort of like Modern Day Disaster appeals in other words simply helping your fellow countrymen in times of need like any good Christian should but more importantly they felt it was their duty to save good Christian folk being held captives by the Muslims the problem for the church was it wasn't always a clear-cut decision as to who to actually save firstly they deemed that some slaves had had gone to use this phrase at the time took or native in other words they had converted to Islam and even if these slaves then claimed it was for expediency the church were wary of spending their money on them indeed many former slaves were treated with suspicion when they did return to England in 1620 at least three returning slaves were recorded to have been impaled by mobs you'll hear how hard it was for traumatized former slaves to readjust in a tale from Cornwall in a little while stay tuned the women who had ended up in the harems were seen by the church as harlots who did not deserve Redemption likewise some English white slaves had married and had children and actually preferred to stay with their new families in North Africa than return alone to England the other problem facing the Church of England was Cash they simply didn't have enough money to Ransom back all of those English captives even discounting those who refused to come back and those who the church refused to help in 1660 the raiding and resulting enslavement had risen to such a level that a committee was established by the church focused on raising funds to buy the captives Freedom the committee included both the Archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of London this gives an indication of how pressing the situation had become led by the two senior churchmen this became a national fundraising initiative with contributions recorded in for instance churches in Cheshire a long way from the English Channel collections were held during special sermons and church wardens visited homes in their parishes to gain further contributions records indicate that 21 000 pounds in those days money was raised now back in 1646 Edmund Kasson had paid on average 30 pounds per head in ransoms so this sum of money could have probably bought 700 captives their freedom yet even this was to coin a phrase a drop in the ocean in the 1670s a petition to Parliament for further financial assistance was signed by the parents and wives of over 1 000 English slaves being held in Algiers alone but it wasn't just those who were captured or whose relatives were captured that suffered in 1636 justices of the peace sitting at bodmin in Cornwall reported that fishermen in lieu were refusing to put to Sea fearing that they'd be abducted in fact these fishermen told the JPS that they would rather face starvation than risk being captured at Sea by the Barbary Pirates as the 18th century progressed attacks on the English Coast became rarer and with the strengthening of the royal Navy the Barbary corsiers kept away from the coastal Waters on the Open Sea however they remained very much a threat in 1715 a young 11 year old lad from Penryn in Cornwall by the name of Thomas pellow boarded his uncle's Merchant vessel somewhere out in the Bay of Biscay they were attacked by the Barbary Pirates Thomas along with his uncle and five crewmen were taken to Morocco after a few years during which he was subjected to regular beatings the young teenager was placed in the Sultan's slave Army the Abid al-bukhari isolated both from England and the society around him and indoctrinated both religiously and militarily he became what we would now recognize as a psychopathic or sociopathic Boy Soldier during his career in the Sultan's Army he fought in at least three battles and Rose to become an officer in the slave Army he even played a leading role in a slave raid in sub-Saharan Africa finally in the late 1730s he managed to abscond on a ship heading across the narrow strait from Morocco to Gibraltar if he thought that he would receive a warm welcome in British territory he was in for a shock 22 years living in Morocco had made him look a lot more like an Arab than a cornishman with this tan skin thick black beard and Arab clothing the authorities refused to let him disembark fearing he was actually an undercover Barbary pirate eventually convincing them that he was a genuine white slave from England he was allowed to travel home he hadn't been there for over 20 years when he finally arrived in Penryn his parents didn't even recognize him people were suspicious as to exactly how Muslim or Arab he'd become and with his brutal life in the slave Army Thomas pillow found it hard to adjust back to his home Society this struggle to reintegrate was not unique many would try to ingratiate themselves by becoming very loudly what we would Now call born-again Christians others would tell stories to both gain sympathy support as well as some sort of justification for their life Journey Thomas pillow effectively fell into this storytelling Camp when in 1740 he published a book about his well Journeys or Adventures the Barbary Pirates remained active throughout the 18th century by now European governments had found a new way of controlling the threats to their ships and Coastal communities they paid the Barbary State's tributes to be left alone not everyone joined in with this protection racket but it certainly made sense to the Spanish and the French after all they were in the front line and their Sailors breathed a sigh of relief also breathing aside relief were the sailors from Britain's rebelling American colonies the colonies had now risen in a war of Independence against Britain during which they'd allied with France and as part of that Alliance the French included American ships and sailors in their tribute treaty with the Barbary States very nice of them however with the achievement of Independence the new United States was on our own no longer covered by her alliance with France they were suddenly prey to the North African Pirates 130 American Sailors were swiftly seized in the Atlantic and Mediterranean a year after the first American Sailors have been abducted Thomas Jefferson and John Smith journeyed to London to negotiate their release with an Envoy from Algiers Jefferson inquired by what right his fellow citizens were being enslaved and the envoy responded that according to the Holy Quran they had a duty to plunder and enslave non-believers or Sinners as he told Jefferson eventually in 1794 the Americans against Jefferson's better judgment agreed to pay a tribute of eight hundred thousand dollars which brought the release of all their enslaved sailors when Jefferson himself became president in 1801 he canceled the tributes the ruler of the Barbary state of Tripoli the Pasha was enraged at this sudden move and promptly declared war on the United States what is referred to as the first Barbary War saw the USA and Sweden of all nations in a four-year conflict with the state of tripolitania now you might be wondering what the heck the swedes were doing there good question basically uh tripolitania had declared war on them as well believing that tributes had not been paid on time they then proceeded to hold over 100 Swedish Sailors hostage and hence before the Americans arrived on the scene three Swedish Naval frigates had already arrived off the coast of Tripoli in 1803 16 American warships arrived off the coast of North Africa there was no sign of the swedes they'd paid a tribute the Pasha had released his captives and the Swedish frigates were now back in the Baltic the Americans meanwhile proceeded to blockade Tripoli and then disaster struck USS Philadelphia went too close to the shore and ran aground the captain and all of his men were captured and held hostage to rub salt in the wound the Philadelphia was then moored in the harbor by the tripolitanians and her guns turned on the American Fleet ultimately a party of American Sailors and Marines boarded her set her on fire denying the pasha's forces and American Guns to fire on American ships the turning point in this first Barbary war came on land in 1805 at the Battle of Demar a small force of U.S Marines

together with Greek and Arab mercenaries defeated the army of Tripoli it was the first time the U.S Marines submitted a very small number of them had fought and raised the U.S flag on foreign soil indeed the battle is recorded in the line the shores of Tripoli in the Marine hymn anyway the battle brought the Pasha to the negotiating table all captive American slaves and crew from the USS Philadelphia were freed and the Americans sailed home having made their first impact on the world stage the next 10 years saw the Americans more interested in fighting the British the worrying about Barbary Pirates a diversion that the Barbary Pirates spotted and took full advantage of and they went back to business as usual by 1815 they were once more capturing American vessels and their Crews along with any other nations that didn't pay them a tribute and once more the USA decided to take a stand this time against Algiers an American Fleet entered the med and proceeded towards Algiers capturing several of the ruler or days boats on route arriving off the coastal city they threatened to bombard it unless the day returned the 10 American citizens he was holding captive fearing the worst the day agreed to the American demands which also included paying ten thousand dollars in compensation for the American ships at the Pirates operating under the day's protection had seized the day must have given a big sigh of relief to see the Americans clear off over the horizon and the Barbary Pirates once more went back to their normal tricks you have to hand it to them they were tenacious but the world was changing the Napoleonic wars were over and the European navies could now turn their attentions elsewhere such as keeping the oceans safe for free trade added to that back in 1807 the British had finally taken a stand against slavery when they had abolished the slave trade although not the owning of slaves in her Empire the natural extension of that Japan of the slave trade was to convince others to adopt a similar policy by persuasion if possible by force if necessary and no one needed to be persuaded more than the Barbary pirates and their protectors along the coast of North Africa admittedly the Pirates were less of a threat off the coast of Britain but now thanks to her new naval base in Malta Britain was starting to see the Mediterranean as a strategic sphere of influence one in which freedom of trade was key and the Barbary Pirates were a block on that free trade and undermined Britain's aspirations to me the main power in the med and let's not forget they were still a direct threat to British Nationals sailing in the region indeed there were still English slaves in North Africa although as records were not kept by the different states it's hard to know exactly how many in 1816 Admiral Edward pellu was sent on a diplomatic mission to North Africa to persuade the states to either stop the slave trade or at least not to capture British ships the rulers in Tunis and Tripoli agreed the response from Algiers was less enthusiastic maybe still smarting from the American appearance the year before but whatever the reason the day gave his answer by massacring 200 Mediterranean Christians who are nominally under British protection outraged by the day's Behavior London sent Admiral pelu back to Algiers this time however he was accompanied by five ships of the line including his Flagship the 100 gun HMS Charlotte four frigates and four bomb boats these were ships that rather than armed with an array of Cannon were instead armed with heavy duty mortars there are also five sloops armed with the newfangled con greave Rockets all in all that was some Firepower as if that wasn't enough they were joined by five Dutch frigates whose governments were also sick and tired of their merchant ships being hijacked and their Crews enslaved facing this Firepower the day really had two choices agreed to British demands to release 3 000 Christian slaves in his City from all over Europe or fight he decided to fight and it wasn't in a bad position in the harbor where nearly 50 fighting vessels and along the shoreline were batteries of Canon the key was to maneuver his boats and guns into position whilst pretending to negotiate unfortunately there's always someone who lets the side down one of his ships decided to fire on the British before the allotted time the response was immediate and devastating at 3 15 pm on the 27th August 1816 the 110 gun raw Navy ship of the line HMS Charlotte opened fire on the port of Algiers the ensuing devastating barrage from both sides saw thousands of casualties HMS impregnable commanded by rear Admiral David Milne was hit 268 times 50 of her crew were killed and a further 160 wounded whilst Norman of Admiral pelu's ships were destroyed it was a fierce Cannon Jewel that cost his Fleet 900 men killed or wounded despite giving the British police a morning the day of Algiers slowly found himself outgunned pelu's Royal naval fleet and their Dutch allies fired 50 000 rounds of shot and used over 100 tons of gunpowder that afternoon the day's fleet was destroyed 37 ships sunk the rest run aground his short batteries were destroyed his losses whilst vague are estimated at anything up to five thousand in the ensuing treaty the day accepted the original terms offered by pelu over 3 000 European slaves were released and he was also forced to return a tribute paid previously by The Americans it was the beginning of the end of the Barbary pirates and their slave trade we will never know exactly how many English white slaves were carried off by the Barbary Pirates what we do know is that due to geography the numbers from the Mediterranean countries were larger historian Robert Davis from the University of Ohio estimates that over a 200-year period the Barbary Pirates probably seized up to 1.2 million captives from Europe other academics have challenged that figure but haven't come up with an alternative one whilst the 12th of the estimated figure of slaves transported from West Africa to the Americas one million is still a huge figure the Barbary Pirates and slave trades rapidly declined in the face of European technological advances at Sea and they were finally to die out with the French occupation of North Africa later in the 19th century and so ended a 200-year reign of terror around Europe's coastlines it also ended the story that apart from communities in Cornwall is pretty much forgotten in Britain a period for over 200 years when Merchant and fishing vessels were left drifting all around the coast of Britain as their Crews were taken in bondage to the slave markets of North Africa a period two where communities close to the coast lived in fears of pirates storming their homes in the dead of night and carrying them away as slaves a period when the picturesque island of Lundy in the Bristol Channel became a pirate Haven just 90 miles from the major port of Bristol there is a delicious irony about their presence on Lundy as ships from Bristol set out to take slaves from West Africa to the Americas they would sail past an island where the Barbary Pirates were setting out to capture English slaves to take to North Africa eventually it came to a head in those Barbary Wars and rather like this slave trade in general these wars are little known in modern Britain but maybe this whole story should be better known not to try and point score but to remind us that slavery can exist for many reasons and affect many different peoples the misery and suffering is the same at the world over and it affects the lives of many Ordinary People possibly some of those ordinary people were their own ancestors who knows well thanks for watching and I hope you enjoyed this video maybe you found a few small details you hadn't heard before or you'd forgotten about and if you enjoy my work then please consider becoming a patron so I can research and produce more stories for you there's a link at the end loads more planned so until next time thanks for your support keep well and I'll see you very soon foreign [Music]

2023-03-01 10:38

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