Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean

Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean

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Title: Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean
Author: E. Hamilton Currey
Release Date: October 10, 2004 [EBook #13689]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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SEA-WOLVES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN

[Illustration: KHEYR-ED-DIN BARBAROSSA--CORSAIR,
ADMIRAL, AND KING.]

SEA-WOLVES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
THE GRAND PERIOD OF THE MOSLEM CORSAIRS

BY COMMANDER E. HAMILTON CURREY, R.N.
WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

"Ships be but boards, sailors but men: There be land rats and water rats,
land thieves and water thieves, I mean pirates."
Merchant of Venice.
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W
1910

TO THAT GRACIOUS LADY TO WHOSE COUNSEL AND
ENCOURAGEMENT I OWE SO MUCH MORE THAN ANY
ONE--SAVE I--CAN IMAGINE...
TO MY WIFE
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK

PREFACE
When the ship is ready for launching there comes a moment of tense
excitement before the dogshores are knocked away and she slides down
the ways. In the case of a ship this excitement is shared by many
thousands, who have assembled to acclaim the birth of a perfected
product of the industry of man; the emotion is shared by all those who
are present. It is very different when a book has been completed. The
launching has been arranged for and completed by expert hands; she
like the ship gathers way and slides forth into an ocean: but, unlike the
ship which is certain to float, the waters may close over and engulf her,
or perchance she may be towed back to that haven of obscurity from
which she emerged, to rust there in silence and neglect. There is
excitement in the breast of one man alone--to wit, the author. If his
book possesses one supreme qualification she will escape the fate
mentioned, and this qualification is--interest. As the weeks lengthened
into months, and these multiplied themselves to the tale of something
like twenty-four, the conviction was strengthened that that which had
so profoundly interested the writer, would not be altogether indifferent
to others. For some inscrutable reason the deeds of sea-robbers have
always possessed a fascination denied to those of their more numerous

brethren of the land; and in the case of the Sea-wolves of the sixteenth
century we are dealing with the very aristocrats of the profession.
Circumstances over which they had no control flung the Moslem
population of Southern Spain on to the shores of Northern Africa: to
revenge themselves upon the Christian foe by whom this expropriation
had been accomplished was natural to a warrior race; and those who
heretofore had been land-folk pure and simple took to piracy as a
means of livelihood. It is of the deeds of these men that this book treats;
of their marvellous triumphs, of their apparently hopeless defeats, of
the manner in which they audaciously maintained themselves against
the principalities and the powers of Christendom always hungering for
their destruction.
The quality which Napoleon is said to have ascribed to the British
Infantry, "of never knowing when they were beaten," seems to have
also characterised the Sea-wolves; as witness the marvellous
recuperation of Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa when expelled from Tunis by
Charles V.; and the escape of Dragut from the island of Jerba when
apparently hopelessly trapped by the Genoese admiral, Andrea Doria.
All through their history the leaders of the Sea-wolves show the
resourcefulness of the real seamen that they had become by force of
circumstances, and it was they who in the age in which they dwelt
showed what sea power really meant. Sailing through the
Mediterranean on my way to Malta in the spring of this year, as the
good ship fared onwards I passed in succession all those lurking-places
from which the Moslem Corsairs were wont to burst out upon their
prey. Truly it seemed as if
"The spirits of their fathers might start from every wave,"
and in imagination one pictured the rush of the pirate galley, with its
naked slaves straining at the oar of their taskmasters, its fierce, reckless,
beturbaned crew clustered on the "rambades" at the bow and stern. It
might be that they would capture some hapless "round-ship," a
merchantman lumbering slowly along the coast; or again they might
meet with a galley of the terrible Knights of St. John or of the
ever-redoubtable Doria. In either case the Sea-wolves were equal to