English law defines piracy as : ‘Taking a ship on the High Seas or within the jurisdiction of the Lord High Admiral from the possession or control of those who are lawfully entitled to it and carrying away the ship itself or any of its goods, tackle, apparel or furniture.’

There are, however, distinctions to be made between pirates, privateers and buccaneers.

Pirates take their name from the Latin ‘pirata’, a marine adventurer, and are sea raiders who operate without any authorisation except that of their own greed and need.

Privateers, however, having been known since the 13th century, operate with the consent of government, usually their own. They were privately owned ships that were licensed under a Letter of Marque to capture enemy ships in time of war and the captains could not be charged with piracy. Sir Francis Drake, one of the most famous English seafarers, was not strictly a privateer as he attacked Spanish ships before there was a declaration of war. Queen Elizabeth I did not consider him a criminal as he enriched her coffers with his spoils.

After the American Revolution French ‘privateers’ preyed upon American ships and caused an undeclared war which led to the creation of the U.S. Navy.

A licensed privateer often quickly became a pirate ship after an armistice had been signed and Cotton Mather, an infamous puritanical minister, famous for his part in the Salem witch trials in 1692, once preached that ‘the privateering stroke so easily degenerates into the piratical and the privateering trade is usually carried on with an un-Christian temper and proves an inlet into so much debauchery and iniquity.’ A century later, Lord Nelson thought that there was virtually no difference between the two so by his reasoning, many of the English heroes such as Sir Walter Raleigh, Drake, Frobisher and John Hawkins would have been pirates!

Buccaneer was a name that the pirates gave to themselves when raiding in the Caribbean claiming that they were privateers but often attacking any ship in war or peacetime. The word derives from the ‘boucanes’, dome shaped smoke houses on the island of Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic) where strips of beef and pork were smoked over a slow fire. Pirates in the area bought this meat from the ‘boucaniers’ (smokers of meat) – so often that they also became known as boucaniers, or buccaneers.

Freebooter is another word for buccaneer derived from the French ‘flibustier’ – as was ‘filibuster’, a word now used in Parliament to define a delaying tactic.

Corsair was a Spanish word for a pirate or privateer or something in between and ‘sea rover’ was a Germanic term for a pirate. Centuries ago the Roman Orator Cicero called all pirates ‘hostes humani generi’ ( enemies of the human race).

Many years ago, I was taking over from the Thames pilot as North Sea Pilot, when he told his control room that there was a North Sea Rover on board. It sounded quite good at the time but now I begin to wonder!

by Terry Took © 2014

Terry Took was born in Yorkshire but has lived in Tynemouth for over 50 years. He spent 45 years in the Merchant Navy which included 27 years as North Sea Pilot. He then spent five years as a lecturer at the Marine Department of South Tyneside College.

He is now an Elder Brother in Trinity House and Marine Director.

If you have any comments or would like to contact Terry then please e-mail him at pilotone@pilotone.plus.com.

 

There is a huge painting hanging in the banqueting hall at Trinity House painted by Carmichael, a prolific local artist, in 1826. It is a dark picture, with ships and boats firing their guns into Algiers harbour in an attempt to rid Europe of the scourge of the Barbary pirates.

The Barbary Corsairs, as they were known, had raided England and Ireland since the 17th Century to capture people for the slave trade in North Africa. In 1630, it was known that as many as 32,000 Christians were for sale, 3,000 of them English. In 1631, on June 19th, they landed early in the morning at the fishing village of Baltimore in Ireland. Taken from their beds, practically the whole population of 22 men, 33 women and 54 children were herded into boats and taken to North Africa, there to be sold as slaves.

The pirates also wreaked havoc along the coast of South West England, landing in Cornwall in 1645 and taking 240 people. In the 1650s, Oliver Cromwell, realising that shipping was also affected by these raids and insurance rates were increasing, decreed that any pirate captured should be taken to Bristol and slowly drowned! Even this did not deter the corsairs and the practice continued into the 19th century.

After the Napoleonic war ended in 1815, the British Royal Navy no longer needed the Barbary States as a source of supply for the garrison at Gibraltar. Therefore, considerable political pressure was put on the Dey of Algiers to free the slaves, with warnings that if he didn’t mend his ways then he would be subjected to military attack. Earlier, the Dutch and the Spanish had bombarded the towns of Algiers and Tunis but the practice of enslaving Europeans, and others, continued.

Edward Pellew, Admiral Lord Exmouth, was given the task of bombarding the city. He had already unobtrusively surveyed its defences and was aware of weaknesses in their field of fire. He gathered a small fleet of five ships of the line and one 50 guns vessel, four frigates and five ‘bombs’; these latter being small, specially designed naval vessels with mortars carried near the bows, which fired explosive shells in a high ballistic arc. His flagship was HMS ‘Queen Charlotte’ of 100 guns.

They were joined, before leaving Gibraltar, by five Dutch frigates and the fleet set sail to anchor close to the harbour of Algiers, where bombardment began at 15:15hrs, immediately following a shot fired by an Algerian vessel.

The explosive mortar shells set fire to the ships in the harbour, which burned so fiercely that warehouses along the harbour were also burnt down. At 22:15hrs, Exmouth gave orders for the fleet to weigh anchor and sail out of range of the few remaining defensive batteries.

Shortly after this, the Dey of Algiers capitulated after being warned that the bombardment would continue if he didn’t free all the slaves. He was not to know that the fleet had very little ammunition left! More than 4,000 slaves were freed.

by Terry Took © 2014

Terry Took was born in Yorkshire but has lived in Tynemouth for over 50 years. He spent 45 years in the Merchant Navy which included 27 years as North Sea Pilot. He then spent five years as a lecturer at the Marine Department of South Tyneside College.

He is now an Elder Brother in Trinity House and Marine Director.

If you have any comments or would like to contact Terry then please e-mail him at pilotone@pilotone.plus.com.