Under harsh naval discipline and on ten shillings a month, he missed the freebooting old days. He was in his 40s and going bald and, like many an old sailor, wound up in the Navy when James I outlawed the practice of privateering - seizing enemy ships, sanctioned by Elizabeth I whose exchequer did very well out of it.
They were the Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher of the sea. They were celebrated in street ballads: 'All the world about have heard of Danseker and English Ward,' ran one. Enter rival captains John Ward, the 'Arch Pirate of Tunis' and Simon Danseker, the Dutch 'Devil Captain of Algiers'. It is chock-a-block with the sort of fascinating stories of individuals that are left out of the history books. The nerves wince, but the excitement never flags. They changed their names, their dress and in some cases their religion, converting to Islam.Īdrian Tinniswood's absorbing book is packed with bad characters, big fights and breathless chases in tumultuous and often horrifying detail. Many of the most notorious Barbary captains in those days were in fact Englishmen.
This is a rerun of the situation of 400 years ago on the Barbary Coast of North Africa, which runs for 2,000 miles from the Strait of Gibraltar to Tripoli. The Capture of the Pirate Blackbeard, 1718Ĭonsider the Chandlers, the middle-aged British couple seized six months ago as they slept on their yacht, and last seen on TV appealing pathetically for help to raise a ransom.
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