#Barbary Corsairs

[blueiscoool]

17th-Century Pirate 'Corsair' Shipwreck Discovered off Morocco

Wreck-hunters have discovered the remains of a small 17th-century pirate ship, known as a Barbary corsair, in deep water between Spain and Morocco.

The wreck is "the first Algiers corsair found in the Barbary heartland," maritime archaeologist Sean Kingsley, the editor-in-chief of Wreckwatch magazine and a researcher on the find, told Live Science.

The vessel was heavily armed and may have been heading to the Spanish coast to capture and enslave people when it sank, its discoverers said.

But it was carrying a cargo of pots and pans made in the North African city of Algiers, probably so that it could masquerade as a trading vessel.

Florida-based company Odyssey Marine Exploration (OME) located the shipwreck in 2005 during a search for the remains of the 80-gun English warship HMS Sussex, which was lost in the area in 1694.

"As so often happens in searching for a specific shipwreck we found a lot of sites never seen before," Greg Stemm, the founder of OME and the expedition leader, saide in an email.

The 2005 expedition also found the wrecks of ancient Roman and Phoenician ships in the area, Stemm said.

News of the corsair wreck is only being released now, in a new article by Stemm in Wreckwatch, after extensive historical research.

Dread pirates

The Barbary corsair pirates were predominantly Muslims who began operating in the 15th century out of Algiers, which was then part of the Ottoman empire.

Much of the western coastline of North Africa, from modern-day Morocco to Libya, was known as the "Barbary Coast" at the time — a name derived from the Berber people who lived there; and its pirates were a major threat for more than 200 years, preying on ships and conducting slave raids along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts of Europe.

The people captured in the slave raids were held for ransom or sold into the North African slave trade that operated in some Muslim countries until the early 20th century.

But the piratical activities of the Barbary corsairs came to an end in the early 19th century, when the pirates were defeated in the Barbary Wars by the United States, Sweden and the Norman Kingdom of Sicily in southern Italy.

Sunken ship

The corsair wreck lies on the seafloor in the Strait of Gibraltar, at a depth of about 2,700 feet (830 meters).

The ship was about 45 feet (14 m) long, and research indicates it was a tartane — a small ship with triangular lateen sails on two masts that could also be propelled by oars.

Tartanes were used by Barbary pirates in the 17th and 18th centuries, in part because they were often mistaken for fishing vessels, meaning other ships wouldn't suspect pirates were onboard, Kingsley said.

"I've seen tartanes described as 'low-level pirate ships,' which I like,” Kingsley said.

The wreck hunters explored the sunken corsair using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), which revealed the vessel was armed with four large cannons, 10 swivel guns and many muskets for its crew of about 20 pirates.

"The wreck neatly fits the profile of a Barbary corsair in location and character," Kingsley said. "The seas around the Straits of Gibraltar were the pirates' favorite hunting grounds, where a third of all corsair prizes were taken."

Stemm added that the wrecked ship was also equipped with a very rare "spyglass" — an early type of telescope that was revolutionary at the time and had probably been captured from a European ship.

Other artifacts of the wreck support the notion this was a pirate ship laden with stolen goods.

"Throw into the sunken mix a collection of glass liquor bottles made in Belgium or Germany, and tea bowls made in Ottoman Turkey, and the wreck looks highly suspicious," he said. "This was no normal North African coastal trader."

By Tom Metcalfe.

[illustratus]

[theoutcastrogue]

Corsairs of Malta: Legitimate Targets

"There was a constant temptation for the corsairs to attack not only Moslem shipping, but also to attack Christians. Although this was in direct contradiction of their oath, the corsairs justified their activity on various grounds. The Christians were not really Christians, they were only pretending to be Christians. If they were Christians, the goods they were carrying belonged to Turks, and thus it was legitimate to seize them. Or even if they were Christians and the goods that they carried belonged to them, they were Greek Orthodox and therefore schismatic, and therefore heretics, and therefore enemies of the Faith, and thus liable to depredation.

During the seventeenth century these unfortunate Greeks and the representatives of the other minority Christian groups in the Levant, such as the Maronites, were on their own and their only hope of recompense was to come to Malta and sue the corsairs in the island’s courts. It is some measure of the justice of the courts in Malta at this time that many Greeks who sued for wrongful depredation actually won their case and recovered damages. In the eighteenth century, however, while Maltese attitudes hardened towards the Greeks, the latter found a powerful protector in the Pope."

— Peter Earle, Corsairs of Malta and Barbary (1970)

[ltwilliammowett]

The Barbary Corsairs --- Europe's Naval Nightmare

from SandRhoman History

[philipcluff]

Genova: Italy’s overlooked, rebellious metropolis and maritime capital.

Genova isn’t a primary destination for most visitors to Italy. On the road from Nice, it might usually be a detour on the way to Milan or Rome. So why mention this small, apparently crumbling and cramped port in any debate of Italy’s great cities? Its frescos are flaking away under the Summer Sun, and those flakes are swept away onto the Mediterranean by the cold Winter sea breeze. Genova hasn’t witnessed much renewal of late, and in many ways that’s the point. Between the splendour of Florence, and the chic of Milan, Genova is Italy’s martyr. In point of population she is the fifth city of Italy, but by a considerable margin its largest port. Genova disputes only with Marseille the primacy of the Mediterranean.

Over eight centuries, the city did more to tether the fractured Italian peninsula to the enriching trade routes of the Mediterranean and modern creative vanguards of Western Europe than any other maritime republic, even Venice. Moreover, Genova’s trading spirit, per the Belgian historian Henri Pirenne, created the antecedents of modern entrepreneurship. The small thallasocracy, crammed between a rough sea and crumbling outcrops of rock, dared to lose sight of the horizon, building early fortunes in African Coral, Byzantine Silk, and Spanish Gold.

Known as La Superba, Genova first grew to prosperity as Venice did, by ferrying knights from all over Europe to the Crusades. The Lanterna, Genova’s iconic lighthouse, has guided ships into its harbor since 1128, and above it stand the Apennine mountains. These peaks formed a fortress, barring medieval invasions from Burgundy and Savoy, shepherding the city close to the Mediterranean. Descending in steep rows, they made for the city’s majestic appearance when viewed from the sea. Flanked by forests of Cedars, Pines, and Olive trees, the French Historian and Statesman, Jules Michelet, found the terrain to be perfectly in sync with the city’s character. “These aerial terraces who strive to climb higher and higher, to see above their neighbours, are observatories from where the capitalist admires his ships.”

At closer quarters the charm admittedly dries up. The centre is noisy and crowded, flanked by abjectly unkempt suburbs. Genova would surely have expanded if not for the constraints of its harsh landscape. Named after the two-faced Roman God Janus, the misleading facade of the city derives from a period of apparent decline. The grandest palazzos are late-Renaissance and Baroque and they give the impression of a much more fortuitous history than the one Genova really enjoyed in this period. By then, the Genovese navy had enjoyed their real golden age, scoring victories against Barbary Pirates, French Corsairs, and even seizing the huge iron chains of the gates of Pisa as spoils of war in 1284.

Genova maintained its independence as a city state until 1815 (only a generation before Italy came to exist), navigating a complex political landscape dominated by larger powers and building a unique social structure centered around its merchants. Even after its incorporation into the Kingdom of Savoy, Genova retained a strong sense of regional pride and ubiquity.

Pre-eminent among its merchant families were the Dorias, who by the 16th century had become a dynasty; and it was largely due to their efforts that Genova protected its great artistic traditions into the Renaissance. The Doria Palace built in 1529 for Andrea Doria was a homage to the wealth and good taste of the republic. The city’s palaces produce a more triumphal, if less romantic, effect than the more fanciful façades of nearby Turin and Milan.

The overseer of all this grandeur was the 15th century architect Galeazzo Alessi, a disciple of Michelangelo and favourite of Andrea Doria. Most of his palaces were sadly damaged by Allied bombardments in the bid to displace Mussolini, but the peculiar Genovese building style of striped marble and pointed conical towers, are preserved in the nearby villages and towns of Liguria.

Pressed round the eastern shore of the harbour is the ancient quarter of narrow streets and lopsided houses. The numerous medieval churches; including the family church of the Dorias, San Matteo, with its exquisite cloister and Andrea Doria's tomb is adjacent to the house of Christopher Columbus, Genova’s most famous inhabitant and the personification of it’s pioneering naval spirit. Ironically, Columbus sealed the city’s fate. His discovery of the New World effectively crippled Mediterranean commerce until the opening of the Suez Canal. As Columbus set sail in 1492, the Pope banned women from entering the beautiful ivory church of Saint John (San Giovanni) on the grounds that Saint John The Baptist had been murdered by a woman, Salomé. There is no clearer proof of Italy’s devotion to the decree of Roman Catholicism than San Giovanni’s restriction of female visitors remaining in place until 1950.

This isn’t the city’s only instance of religious zeal. Like the Turin shroud, Genova hosts the relic alleged to be the cloth Joseph of Arimethea used to wipe away Jesus’s blood from the crucifix, which supposedly crystallised into an Emerald. According to Petrarch, who resided and befriended Geoffrey Chaucer in Genova, twelve knights were appointed to protect it, each for a month every year with permission to kill anyone who tried to touch it. The city is no stranger to such religious violence, Pope Urban V made the clearest statement of the Papal Schism when he had five Cardinals executed in the city for allegedly supporting the breakaway ‘Anti-Papacy’ in 12th Century Avignon.

Subsequently Genova became, like Venice, a strategic accessory of the great Imperial European powers. Its gradual decline was sharply accentuated in the eighteenth century when the once-proud city was annexed by Revolutionary France; and its fortunes reached an all time low in 1800 when Napoleon’s most dependable General, Andre Masséna, dug in for a siege against the Austrians, which enabled Napoleon to win the Marengo campaign but starved most of Genova’s inhabitants to death.

Not all the French treated Genova so contemptuously, with Gustave Flaubert writing favourably that “Genova is a beautiful town, truly beautiful. One walks on marble here, everything seems to be made of marble. The most beautiful thing I saw in Italy was Genova.” He was joined in his admiration by no less than Richard Wagner, who wrote in the 1870’s “I have never seen anything resembling Genova. It is indescribably beautiful.”

After centuries of resistance, in I814 the Genovese Republic was extinguished and the whole of Liguria was incorporated in the growing Piedmontese dominions at the Congress of Vienna. This facilitated the rejoinder of Sardinia to the House of Savoy across the Ligurian sea, and became the backbone of the Risorgimento. Yet the Genovese, like the Catalans and the Irish, never fully accepted monarchic imposition. The royal palace is ornate but uninspired compared with those in Turin and Rome. Instead Giuseppe Mazzini, the great Republican leader, garners more local reverence than the royal House of Savoy.

The old neighbourhoods have gradually been surrounded by a more modern city, with some of Europe’s oldest skyscrapers built in the 1950’s and 60’s, the direct consequence of competition from shipbuilders and industrialists who were among the wealthiest in Italy. Unlike many cities, the modern Genova does not stifle the city’s classic heart. There is no surer symbol of this juxtaposition of past and present, bound by commerce, than the Palazzo San Giorgio. With its light Austrian-inspired frescoes and crumbling roof tiles, it serves as the port headquarters and has housed Marco Polo and Napoleon as a prisoner and conqueror respectively. Even Charles V was entertained here by the Dorias on his way to sack Milan and Rome.

In a sense, Venice will always get the better of Genova, and this is Genova’s salvation. The Italian peninsula receives more than 50 million visitors a year, most of whom crowd into Venice to the horror of the locals. I have passed through Genova enough times to safely say that it bears none of the same scars of tourism. However, there is nowhere else quite like it. Nowhere else in Italy has done more to foster the Northern genius, through the settlement of Flemish Old Masters Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony Van Dyck, as well as English authors Geoffrey Chaucer and Charles Dickens. Nowhere else has exported Italian cultural so effectively through the development of capital markets. Nowhere in Italy, in my opinion, has decayed with the same dignity, retaining the reverence of a proud and legitimately independent history.

[tellusd20]

This week's map update is a three masted lateen-rigged warship based on a xebec, a vessel popular with the pirates of the Barbary States and other Mediterranean navies. Fast, maneuverable, and armed with fourteen guns, this corsair would be suitable to serve as both an enemy warship or as an adventuring party's vessel in a nautical campaign. She is not intended or designed for long voyages however, as space onboard is quite cramped and unpleasant (though navigating that morale hazard could be a fun challenge for party and DM). As always, Patreon supporters have access to the full size PNG/VTT files without watermark, and in grid/gridless + night/day variants. I've also included description of a sample ship in PDF, as well as a transparent background version for those who would like to convert the file into an object and overlay it on their own Roll20/VTT backgrounds, or to simply make navigating between layers easier.

[empirearchives]

The Congress of Vienna, Part 2: Slavery

Okay, so I made another post with my initial reaction to reading this article, but I missed a lot, and wanted to go back and take notes on the different areas it covered. So here are some developments on the issue of slavery according this article:

Winning the War and Losing the Peace: Spain and the Congress of Vienna, by Dan Royle

— British public was very pro abolition by 1815

— Slavery was seen by many in Spain and elsewhere as a “necessary evil” to support their economy.

— The reason the British tried to enforce abolition onto the rest of the world was not entirely due to moral reasons. It was also because they knew it would be harder for British goods to complete with countries which were selling goods without having to pay for labor. So it was in British interests to make the rest of the world abolish slavery at the exact same time they did.

— Though many in Spain were “economic realists” when it came to slavery, one notable exception includes José Miguel Guridi y Alcocer, who made a petition to ban it in 1811.

— Augustín Argüelles was another abolitionist, but he didn’t like the idea of the British forcing them and wanted Spain to be doing it on its own terms.

— 24 August 1814: King Ferdinand VII signed an addition to the treaty of friendship with Britain, which was to acknowledge the ‘injustice and inhumanity’ of the slave trade.

— Overall, Spain was pretty uncomfortable with being forced to implement a policy by a foreign country, so Castlereagh, the British plenipotentiary, dropped the subject until later.

— Many in Spanish America, notably Cuba, strongly objected to abolition. This deeply worried the Spanish plenipotentiary to the congress, Pedro Gómez Labrador.

— Spain actually had fewer slaves than Britain at that time.

— October 1814: rule to limit slavery to only the region south of the equator and 10 degrees north. I’m not sure what the reason was for that seemingly arbitrary line on a map. I think it was meant to be a compromise.

— William Wilberforce wanted abolition immediately.

— Castlereagh offered the Duke of San Carlos 10 million Spanish dollars to end the slave trade, but nothing happened.

— Unlike the British, the French public was “vehemently opposed” to immediate abolition.

— Napoleon as emperor had abolished the slave trade in France anyway.

— So coming off of that, Talleyrand decided to help Castlereagh put pressure on Spain to do the same.

— Some were concerned that the Congress of Vienna was not addressing enslavement of Europeans happening in the Mediterranean by Barbary Corsairs.

— The main reason why it wasn’t being addressed was because the Barbary issue had declined a lot, though still important. It mostly effected the Mediterranean countries.

— Which is kind of interesting since Britain was actually the dominant naval power in the Mediterranean by that time.

— Labrador tried to get Johann Friedrich Hach’s pamphlet about Barbary slavery translated into English. Hach was the representative of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck.

— Piedmont-Sardinia, another Mediterranean country, made an official declaration against Barbary slavery at the congress.

— The Congress of Vienna representatives officially signed a declaration against the slave trade. But the countries disagreed on the timetable to officially implement its abolition.

— Castlereagh thought the issue of slavery was less significant than the reason the Congress of Vienna had been organized in the first place (which was to restructure Europe post-Napoleon), but made it a priority due to public demand in Britain.

— Metternich feared that the issue of abolition could lead to war.

[crimson-phantom-designs]

So in my under the weather mind, I had an idea of a few variations where once being discovered for who he really was, Francis dissappears to life at sea as a privateer what eventually turns into a notorious captain of The Barbary pirates coining himself the name Black King of the Ottoman corsairs striking terror in the coasts of Europe, North Africa all the way to Tripoli. (Somehow my characters always turn to piracy at some point in any fandom, I swear 🤣 Francis just would look nice as a pirate lord OKAY)

Years later, one of his fleet strikes raids through London's Thames again, yet this time worse in retaliation to EITC taking down some of their ships. They're busting down business, taking whatever isn't nailed down and setting the rest to burn whilst battling the royal forces. Eb makes sure he's out in the midst of it this time to try and find Francis and asks if they know Osman, he knows him and he wants to convene with him. Securing his idea of meeting with what he thinks is a guarantee by quoting parlay(Eb you poor idiot, stop mixing your adventure novels with real life).

Which they would delightfully sneer in entertainment. "Oh he doesn't go by that name anymore but we know who you are, he bloody hates you- but we'll gladly take you to him." He gets taken prisoner but they do leave after that and will take him to Francis main vessel in eager hopes of a bounty of their lord's worst kept secret fixation of spiteful vindication.

Francis at this point is madly hostile and ever bit his reputation over Eb not leaving with him years ago so this could go one of two ways. What Eb knows but doesn't care for Eb himself has repined in regret for not leaving from having been afraid to. He feels responsible for turning Francis into the terror he's become and just wants to stop the violence he caused, to apologize and confess then let whatever be may. At least he got it off his chest and said his peace.

Friend after telling them this: Hey have you watched Our Flag Means Death?

Me: No... It's that pirate series right? I haven't heard much about it but I do love pirates. Is it a new show?

Friend: Yeah... you should... You basically described it. It's two middle aged men down bad for each other and goes horribly because one wouldn't accept his feelings leaving the other to brood in a emo, angsty mess of violent rage. They act like a rogue version of your Francis and Scrooge. They're about to come out with a second season.

Me: O^O ...Why am I always the outler to hear about good shows, what the hell? I didn't know it was about two men that need to just smash each other! That's made for me!

@rom-e-o thought you might find this amusing. My mind is a circus sometimes. I don't see myself writing this but definitely would enjoy some pirate style artwork for it.

[chubbycaucasianchristiancloseted]

Europeans were also enslaved by North Africans, you mean white slaves?

Europeans were also enslaved by North Africans, you mean white slaves? Sounds like Africa snatched up whatever they thought they could sell, especially Christians. WAIT! Does Africa owe me Reparations?

The coasts of Valencia, Andalusia, Calabria and Sicily were so often raided that “there was no one left to capture”. Historians estimate as high as 1,250,000 captives were enslaved from 1530 - 1780. Was the Northern part of Africa built on the backs of white, European, Christians? Maybe it’s time to “rethink our belief that race was fundamental to pre-modern ideas” of slavery.

Direct Quotes:

The fishermen and coastal dwellers of 17th-century Britain lived in terror of being kidnapped by pirates and sold into slavery in North Africa. Hundreds of thousands across Europe met wretched deaths on the Barbary Coast in this way.

In the first half of the 1600s, Barbary corsairs - pirates from the Barbary Coast of North Africa, authorised by their governments to attack the shipping of Christian countries - ranged all around Britain's shores.

Admiralty records show that during this time the corsairs plundered British shipping pretty much at will, taking no fewer than 466 vessels between 1609 and 1616, and 27 more vessels from near Plymouth in 1625.

Considering what the number of sailors who were taken with each ship was likely to have been, these examples translate into a probable 7,000 to 9,000 able-bodied British men and women taken into slavery in those years.

Not content with attacking ships and sailors, the corsairs also sometimes raided coastal settlements, generally running their craft onto unguarded beaches, and creeping up on villages in the dark to snatch their victims and retreat before the alarm could be sounded. Almost all the inhabitants of the village of Baltimore, in Ireland, were taken in this way in 1631

how they eat nothing but bread and water.... How they are beat upon the soles of the feet and bellies at the Liberty of their Padron. How they are all night called into their master's Bagnard, and there they lie.'

According to observers of the late 1500s and early 1600s, there were around 35,000 European Christian slaves held throughout this time on the Barbary Coast - many in Tripoli, Tunis, and various Moroccan towns, but most of all in Algiers.

The unfortunate southerners were sometimes taken by the thousands, by slavers who raided the coasts of Valencia, Andalusia, Calabria and Sicily so often that eventually it was said that 'there was no one left to capture any longer'.

On this basis it is thought that around 8,500 new slaves were needed annually to replenish numbers - about 850,000 captives over the century from 1580 to 1680.

for the 250 years between 1530 and 1780, the figure could easily have been as high as 1,250,000 - this is only just over a tenth of the Africans taken as slaves to the Americas from 1500 to 1800, but a considerable figure nevertheless. White slaves in Barbary were generally from impoverished families, and had almost as little hope of buying back their freedom as the Africans taken to the Americas: most would end their days as slaves in North Africa, dying of starvation, disease, or maltreatment.

Slaves in Barbary fell into two broad categories. The 'public slaves' belonged to the ruling pasha, who by right of rulership could claim an eighth of all Christians captured by the corsairs

These slaves were housed in large prisons known as baños (baths), often in wretchedly overcrowded conditions. They were mostly used to row the corsair galleys in the pursuit of loot (and more slaves) - work so strenuous that thousands died or went mad while chained to the oar.

During the winter these galeotti worked on state projects - quarrying stone, building walls or harbour facilities, felling timber and constructing new galleys. Each day they would be given perhaps two or three loaves of black bread - 'that the dogs themselves wouldn't eat' - and limited water; they received one change of clothing every year. Those who collapsed on the job from exhaustion or malnutrition were typically beaten until they got up and went back to work.

selling water or other goods around town on his (or her) owner's behalf. They were expected to pay a proportion of their earnings to their owner - those who failed to raise the required amount typically being beaten to encourage them to work harder.

As they aged or their owner's fortunes changed, slaves were resold, often repeatedly. The most unlucky ended up stuck and forgotten out in the desert, in some sleepy town such as Suez, or in the Turkish sultan's galleys, where some slaves rowed for decades without ever setting foot on shore.

Many slaves converted to Islam, though, as Morgan put it, this only meant they were 'freed from the Oar, tho' not from [their] Patron's Service.' Christian women who had been taken into the pasha's harem often 'turned Turk' to stay with their children, who were raised as Muslims.

Slaves in Barbary could be black, brown or white, Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Jewish or Muslim. Contemporaries were too aware of the sort of people enslaved in North Africa to believe, as many do today, that slavery, whether in Barbary or the Americas, was a matter of race. In the 1600s, no one's racial background or religion automatically destined him or her for enslavement. Preachers in churches from Sicily to Boston spoke of the similar fates of black slaves on American plantations and white slaves in corsair galleys; early abolitionists used Barbary slavery as a way to attack the universal degradation of slavery in all its forms.

This may require that we rethink our belief that race was fundamental to pre-modern ideas about slavery. It also requires a new awareness of the impact of slave raids on Spain and Italy - and Britain - about which we currently know rather less than we do about slaving activities at the same time in Africa. The widespread depopulation of coastal areas from Malaga to Venice, the impoverishment caused by the kidnapping of many breadwinners, the millions paid by the already poor inhabitants of villages and towns to get their own people back - all this is only just beginning to be understood by modern-day historians.

[zmtn]

Some very rough and belated hourly comics

[Feb. 1 2023. 7:30 am. (in bed) Wake up, spend a bit playing games on my phone. 8:00 am. (still in bed but sitting up, doing Arabic homework. ) "My dog... كلبي! كلب?"]

[9:00. (Me with book in hand looking tired) "I need to finish my Arabic homework but I also need to eat breakfast... 9:30. (standing in front of a vending machine in my winter clothes with my bag) I did not get a 'real' breakfast.]

[10:00. I had missed 3 classes after being sick. (my Arabic instructor, at her desk) "Oh, you're back" (me, holding out paper) "Yea. Here's the assignment." 10:30. Arabic instructor: "I'm extending the due date to Monday." Me, thinking: "I could have had breakfast..."]

[11am ish. Geology, in lab instead of lecture. Geology instructor in classroom: "Zoe! How are you feeling?" Me: "Tired." Her: "You look it." Soon, me looking at a very large nautical fossil, thinking: "THIS FOSSIL IS HUGE..."]

[12 pm. I love geology. Me, in front of a very small square sample with a couple of dots in it. "This TRILOBITE IS TINY...". (drawn beside is an approximate life sized version smaller than 1 centimeter. 12:30. Lunch. Quote unquote fajitas (in theory.) two badly drawn tortillas with black bean and chicken toppings and a few vegetables. There's also a chocolate chip cookie.]

[1pm. The uni has a fish tank. Me, in front of the fish tank with one fish labelled as my fave: "Fishies I missed you." (Me, sitting.) Reading Hippocrates on the bench in front of the fish tank.]

[2pm. (a barely imcomprehensible drawing of me with my legs up on a chair beside a vending machine, my arms on my legs and my head on my arms.) Folded up like an accordian is me. napping (awake). 2:30pm History of Western Medicine. (me, raising hand in front of professor.) "This guy needs an ancient Greek editor."]

[3pm. (Me with my copy of the hippocratic writings.) Literally being schooled on Ancient Greek analogy re: that long ass bit about trees. "Oh." In the Nature of the Child. 3:30. (A drawing of my drawing of a uterus with legs and a suitcase on my notes.) Me, thinking: "They did think the womb roamed the body though." Doodling in my notes.]

[4pm Pirates Class. (Just a drawing of some students including me and my instructor in front of the board reading "Barbary Corsairs".) (Then, more drawings of my notes.) "Christian pirates - the Knights of Malta - Doesn't sound very christian... though I guess the Roman punishment for piracy WAS crucifixion... wrong time period though." Being impudent in my notes.]

[5pm. (Rough drawings of other students.) A student in class wears a witch's hat. rad as hell. I have literally no room to judge. 5:30 pm. Drawing of the description: waiting for the bus in the cold. Then, I just wrote "Nothing interesting happened after that."]

[therogerclarkfanclub]

"The Lionkeeper of Algiers: How an American Captive Rose to Power in Barbary and Saved His Homeland from War"

Author: Des Ekin Narrated by: Roger Clark Release Date: March 28, 2023 Length: 10 hours, 22 minutes

Listen to a sample of this audiobook release! 👇 Click on the media player below

Overview:

In 1785, a young American named James Leander Cathcart is kidnapped at sea and carried as prisoner to the maverick North African statelet of Algiers. The piratical corsairs of Algiers have decided to exploit the vulnerability of the United States by seizing its mariners and holding them for ransom. Today, the name of James Leander Cathcart has been all but forgotten. The Lionkeeper of Algiers reveals the extraordinary and unlikely story of Cathcart, who rose steadily up the ranks from lionkeeper at the Dey's private zoo to become Chief Clerk at the Palace, along the way amassing a chain of taverns in Algiers that functioned as safe houses and food banks for American prisoners.

Eleven years later, Cathcart was paroled back to America and charged with delivering a vital letter to President George Washington, saving a tenuous peace deal and bringing the other captives home. Cathcart would go on to become a US diplomat in the lands where he was held captive for more than a decade. This narrative follows the twists and turns of Cathcart's own life upon the international stage of diplomacy, trade, and maritime statecraft at a time when America's place in the world was hanging in the balance.

The Lionkeeper of Algiers is available from:

Audible ✰ Audiobooks.com ✰ AudiobooksNow ✰ AudiobookStore ✰ Barnes & Noble ✰ Google Play ✰ Overdrive + Libby ✰ Rakuten Kobo ✰ Scribd

TIP: If you are interested in more audiobooks from Roger, you can click on the "Roger's Audiobooks" tag below, or you can also check out my pinned post 😉

[piratesofnassauarchive]

Masterlist (Posts and Sources):

Blog:

Profile Icon - 19th century Barbary Corsairs Jolly Roger flag, one of two known authentic Jolly Rogers in the world, currently residing at the Åland Maritime Museum.

Header Image - "Haunts of the 'Brethren of the Coast'", a map of the time reproduced in "Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts" (1897)

Topics:

Nassau:

Overview

Economy:

Push Back To Pirates

Sam Bellamy:

The Wealthiest Pirate

Ann Bonney & Mary Read:

Anne Bonny and Mary Read, Notorious Pirate Women

Stede Bonnet:

The Gentleman Pirate

[illustratus]

Barbary pirates terrorising the coast of the Mediterranean, kidnapping the inhabitants to sell as slaves

by Albert Robida

[theoutcastrogue]

Corsairs of Barbary: Dividing the Loot

"Apart from searching the passengers and crew, the captain and the purser (khodja) were always quick to get hold of the ship’s books and to seal the cargo in order to prevent their men from sacking that as well. But on the score of pillaging captured ships the Barbary corsairs had a better reputation than most privateers of the period.

It was the universal custom of corsairs that certain goods such as the possessions of captured sailors and passengers should be the personal reward of those who captured them. Other goods such as any cargo below deck and the contents of the captain’s cabin were reserved either for the general share-out or for particular persons who had customary rights to them.

The normal practice of the Barbary corsairs was to pile goods that were destined for the general share-out around the mast. Many writers were surprised at the high standard of honesty shown in doing this. D’Arvieux went as far as to say that the Barbary corsairs did not pillage at all. This seems rather unlikely though the punishments for the individual found defrauding his mates were characteristically savage. None the less the general behaviour of the corsairs when capturing a ship was very much better than that of their Maltese rivals, and incomparably better than that of a contemporary English privateer.

The strong discipline of the janissaries and the scrupulously fair division of booty in the Barbary ports were the main reasons for this. D’Arvieux writes: "It is surprising that people as brutal and barbarous as the Algerians can keep so much order and justice as they do in their brigandage. One never sees the least difficulty amongst them over the division of the booty"."

— Peter Earle, Corsairs of Malta and Barbary (1970)

[ltwilliammowett]

A Sea Fight with Barbary Corsairs, by Lorenzo a Castro (1644–1700)