SEA-ROVERS 



The Scourge of the Mediterranean. 



Having the advantage of a coast that was absolutely ideal for the 

 purposes of piracy and being led by men who were among the finest 

 seamen of their age — often renegade Christians — the corsairs soon made 

 themselves formidable. They were always described as pirates, 

 although they regarded themselves as the properly commissioned men- 

 of-war of a State which was in open and continuous hostility with the 

 Christian world. The fact that they were not hanged when caught but 

 were treated as prisoners of war shows that their enemies regarded them 

 in the same light. In addition they had the advantage of always being 

 subsidised by one or other of the Christian powers, who took the short- 

 sighted view that this was a good way to injure their trade rivals. 

 Successive bombardments failed to reduce them and it was not until the 

 French took possession of the coast in 1830 that they were really 

 exterminated. The damage that was done to civilisation in less than 

 four hundred years cannot be calculated, and practically all of it was 

 preventable. 

 The Galley-Slaves. 



The fate of the captive in the constant war between Christian and 

 Turk was a terrible one, no matter which side had been his. The big 

 galleys pulled as many as six men to the oar, all chained naked to their 

 benches and packed tight to economise the scanty space. Perfect time 

 had to be kept, the loom of the oar stretching over the bent backs of the 

 men on the bench next abaft. One foot was pressed against a stretcher, 

 the other against the edge of the next thwart, and in this way the rowers 

 were able to get a firm purchase, rising to their feet with each stroke 

 and throwing themselves back to get their full weight on to the oar. 

 In times of emergency men were sometimes kept hard at it for as long 

 as twenty hours at a stretch, by which time the crew was thinned terribly. 

 The boatswain and his mates on the central fore-and-aft gangway 

 plied their whips almost unceasingly. If the rowers were nearing the 

 end of their powers pieces of bread dipped in wine were pushed into 

 their mouths as they toiled, but the whip was never forgotten and when 

 a man collapsed at his oar it was the only remedy that was ever con- 

 sidered. If he did not revive under this treatment he was unshackled 

 and his body pitched into the sea, no matter whether life were extinct 

 or not. The rowers in Christian ships were captives and convicts mixed ; 

 the Turks always had a plentiful supply of slaves and when they ran 

 short it only needed a raid to renew their numbers. Sometimes they 

 were never unchained for six months on end, and yet there were men 

 who survived this life for twenty years or more. Skilled captives were 

 not sent afloat but were allowed to earn money as shipwrights, all the 

 Barbary galleys being built by Christian slave labour. 



The Barbarossas. 



The most formidable and dreaded of the corsairs were the brothers 

 Barbarossa — " Redbeard " — Uruj and Khair-ed-Din. They were born in 

 Lesbos, home of pirates from time immemorial, and it is uncertain 



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