As promised: Barbary Pirates
Since the subject of the Barbary pirates is so broad. I have focused on the Dutch corsairs in the Service of the Barbary states.
The Barbary Coast refers to the shoreline of modern Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. It has been a haunt of pirates since ancient times, but the term Barbary pirates or corsairs as such refers especially to the fleets of pirates and privateers operating from Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers and Salé (Rabat) when they were semi-autonomous states in the Ottoman empire, i.e. during the 16th thru 18th centuries
The first half of the 17th century may be described as the flowering time of the Barbary pirates. More than 20,000 captives were said to be imprisoned in Algiers alone. The rich were allowed to redeem themselves, but the poor were condemned to slavery. Their masters would not in many cases allow them to secure freedom by converting to Islam. A long list might be given of people of good social position, not only Italians or Spaniards, but also German, Dutch and English travelers in the Levant, who were captives for a time.
Maarten Harpertsz Tromp (later admiral in the first Anglo-Dutch War) was captured by the British captain in Moroccan service, Peter Easton, and enslaved for two years in Salé (1609-1611), before being bought free. In 1618 he was back on the Barbary Coast as part of a Dutch expedition against Algiers and Tunis. On his way back home aboard a merchant ship he was again captured and kept for a year, this time by the Bey of Tunis, who offered him a position in his fleet in vain. This was an offer that other Dutch captains had accepted, when faced with the choice between slavery, or conversion to Islam (not everyone had hopes of being bought free).
Bontekoe (whose trials and tribulations I mentioned in an earlier post on page 11 of this thread) was bought free as a boy in 1617 by one of those captains who had "gone Turk", Sulayman Reis (Wynand de Veenboer), who hailed from the same hometown of Hoorn. Sulayman Reis had become an admiral of Turkey (but operating on behalf of the sultan of Algiers), who maintained his loyalty to his home country by liberating countrymen enslaved by other Barbary corsairs. He saw no problem however in capturing and enslaving other nationalities and it was during his reign that large scale attacks on British fishing fleets began.
His second in command and successor, Murat Reis the younger (Jan Jansz. of Haarlem), was even less scrupulous and became the terror of all shipping in both the Mediterranean and in the Atlantic, from his base in Salé (later Algiers). He sometimes sailed to the Netherlands in his function of Turkish admiral and had the habit of capturing ships on the way. Murat Reis exploited his knowledge of the Northern seas to raid as far North as Iceland (1627, he used a liberated Danish slave as pilot) where he took many prisoners to hold for ransom, or sell off as slaves. In 1631 he struck in Ireland capturing almost the entire population of the town of Baltimore, only two of those unfortunates ever saw Ireland again.
Both Suleyman and Murat Reis had learnt their trade from yet another Dutchman, Simon de Danser (a.k.a. Zymen Tantziger; the nickname "the dancer" referred to the Dutch slang for a pirate tour as a dance around the seas) of Dordrecht, who had started out as a privateer for the States of the Netherlands, but had turned pirate out of disagreements over the division of the profit. Simon de Danser did not attack Dutch shipping and never converted to Islam, but he became nonetheless a very respected man in his home base of Algiers. He is credited as the one who taught the Barbary corsairs to start using square-rigged sailing ships in addition to their traditional galleys. This and the enrolment (voluntary or forced) of European sailors in the corsair fleet enabled them to strike far from home in Northern Europe and even in the Caribbean. Attempts by the States of Holland to bribe him with a pardon as well as French, Spanish and British naval expeditions against him failed. Unfortunately, de Danser had a falling out with his masters and escaped from Algiers with a small fleet crewed only with Dutch and Flemish sailors (the Moors had "fallen overboard"). He sailed from there to Marseilles to accept the pardon of the French king and lead an expedition against Algiers. However, the French admirals, humiliated by him in earlier naval encounters resisted and instead de Danser was sent to Tunis to negotiate about the return of some captured ships. He made the mistake to believe the assurances of safe conduct by the Bey and went ashore, only to be promptly captured and decapitated (1611).
It did not always end that badly for the Dutch Barbary corsairs. Both Murat Reis and another of the 25 (!) contemporary Dutch corsair captains, Claes Compaen, ended their lives peacefully at home in Holland after buying an expensive pardon. Murat Reis' descendants eventually settled in New Amsterdam (New York) and are rumoured to to be among the ancestors of some of the best known Dutch-American families (like the Vanderbilts).
The problem in dealing with the Barabary corsairs was that the European powers failed to act in unison and tried instead to convince the pirates to attack only the ships of their enemies, while obtaining safe conduct for their own ships and the release of their countrymen from slavery (It is estimated that over the centuries Barbary pirates took as many as a million Christian slaves from European ships and shores). With the shifting of alliances in Europe and the succession of rulers in the Barbary ports these treaties never lasted very long. For example, after the Dutch republic had finally made peace with Spain in 1648, Dutch admiral van Galen led three expeditions against the Barbary corsairs (1648 to 1650) to protect the interests of the newly-won ally.
Between 1661 and 1663 famous Dutch admiral Michiel de Ruyter harassed the Barbary Coast sufficiently to force a treaty with the Bey of Algiers, but as with previous and subsequent treaties it was soon broken necessitating another punitive expedition in 1699 , with unsatisfactory results.
In 1670, England and the Dutch Republic sent a joint naval expedition against Algiers, which sank six vessels in port and shelled the city, much of which was then destroyed by fire. Algiers, as the main hub of the Barbary pirates had already been shelled earlier by the British in 1622 and 1655, by French vessels in 1661 and 1663 and later again in 1682, 1683 and 1688, always with at best only temporary results.
These punitive expeditions continued on and off during the 18th century and became to include the newly-founded United States as well, who carried out two punitive expeditions (The first Barbary War, 1801-1805 and the Second Barbary War 1815), but it was not until after the Napoleonic wars that Europe could finally make a fist and the Anglo-Dutch expedition of 1816 laid waste to Algiers and led to the release of thousands of European prisoners. Still another British expedition was needed in 1824 and the pirate activity in the area did not cease until the French finally conquered Algiers in 1830.
(pic of the bombardment of Algiers 1816)
