The Sultan's Admiral (13 page)

Drinking water was carried in casks or barricoes, or, in the large galleys, in cisterns which were situated down below to act as additional ballast. Primitive though many of the arrangements might seem to a modern eye, it has to be remembered that the sixteenth-century galley was the product of two thousand years of usage and adaptation. Generations of men had built them, generations had toiled in them, and generations had fought and navigated them. No type of vessel in history has served the human race so long, nor has been so completely understood by its sailors as the Mediterranean galley. Its tactical handling, and the over-all strategy of galley warfare, had been evolved from the Greeks and the Romans, the Byzantines and the Venetians, until there was little room left for improvement. Only in one direction did Turks like Aruj and Kheir-ed-Din make some slight change in the use of their vessels, and that was in preferring free men at the oars and light, fast galleots rather than the heavier vessels favoured by most of the European nations.

Between the years 1520 and 1529 Kheir-ed-Din made himself master of nearly all the coast, with the exception of the island fortress of Algiers which still resolutely held out against him. The port of Col, east of Djidjelli near modern Philippeville, fell into his hands, as did the more important harbour and town of Bone. Inland he secured his hold over the country by becoming master of. the town and trading centre of Constantine. It was during these years that the full realisation of what was happening on the North African coast dawned on the naval powers of Europe—and not only those in the Mediterranean. Even northern countries like England found their merchantships attacked and their Mediterranean trade declining. If the initial spur to Europe’s transatlantic exploration had been the Turks cutting off the ancient trade routes to India and the East, this was now given a further impetus by the activities of Kheir-ed-Din and the other captains who swarmed to join his flag on the Algerian coast.

Although he was writing at a later date, the picture that Abbot Diego de Haedo painted of the situation in the Mediterranean gives a good idea of what effect Barbarossa and his companions had upon the trade and the life of this sea: “While the Christians with their galleys are at repose, sounding their trumpets in the harbours, and very much at their ease regaling themselves, passing the day and night in banqueting, cards, and dice, the Corsairs at pleasure are traversing the east and west seas, without the least fear or apprehension, as free and absolute sovereigns thereof. Nay, they roam them up and down no otherwise than do such as go in chase of hares for their diversion. They here snap up a ship laden with gold and silver from India, and there another richly fraught from Flanders; now they make prize of a vessel from England, then of another from Portugal. Here they board and lead away one from Venice, then one from Sicily, and a little further on they swoop down upon others from Naples, Livorno, or Genoa, all of them abundantly crammed with great and wonderful riches. And at other times carrying with them as guides renegadoes (of which there are in Algiers vast numbers of all Christian nations, nay, the generality of the Corsairs are no other than renegadoes, and all of them exceedingly well acquainted with coasts of Christendom, and even with the land), they very deliberately, even at noon-day, or indeed just when they please, leap ashore, and walk on without the least dread, and advance into the country, ten, twelve, or fifteen leagues or more; and the poor Christians, thinking themselves secure, are surprised unawares; many towns, villages and farms sacked; and infinite numbers of souls, men, women, children, and infants at the breast dragged away into a wretched captivity. With these miserable ruined people, loaded with their own valuable substance, they retreat leisurely, with eyes full of laughter and content, to their vessels. In this manner, as is too well known, they have utterly ruined and destroyed Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, Calabria, the neighbourhoods of Naples, Rome, and Genoa, all the Balearic Islands, and the whole coast of Spain: in which last they feast it as they think fit, on account of the Moriscos who inhabit there; who being all more zealous Mohammedans than are the very Moors born in Barbary, they receive and caress the Corsairs, and give them notice of whatever they desire to be informed of. Insomuch that before these Corsairs have been absent from their abodes much longer than perhaps twenty or thirty days, they return home rich, with their vessels crowded with captives, and ready to sink with wealth; in one instant, and with scarce any trouble, reaping the fruits of all that the avaricious Mexican and greedy Peruvian have been digging from the bowels of the earth with such toil and sweat, and the thirsty merchant with such manifest perils has for so long been scraping together, and has been so many thousand leagues to fetch away, either from the east or west, with inexpressible danger and fatigue. Thus they have crammed most of the houses, the magazines, and all the shops of this Den of Thieves with gold, silver, pearls, amber, spices, drugs, silks, cloths, velvets & c., whereby they have rendered this city [Algiers] the most opulent in the world: insomuch that the Turks call it, not without reason, their India, their Mexico, their Peru.”

An interesting point made by Haedo is that so many of the pirate captains who joined their lot with the Turks in North Africa were Christian renegades. Among the outstanding lieutenants of Kheir-ed-Din was Dragut, or Torghoud, a child of Christian parents born in Anatolia and adopted at an early age by a Turkish Governor and converted to Islam. Others were Sinan, a renegade Jew, nicknamed “the Jew of Smyrna,” because of his birthplace, and Ochiali, an Italian from Calabria. Records show that in 1588 there were thirty-five galleys and galleots in the fleet of Algiers, twenty-four of them commanded by renegades and only eleven by Turks. Lane-Poole traced the following different nationalities represented among the renegades: “From France, Venice, Genoa, Sicily, Naples, Spain, Greece, Calabria, Corsica, Albania, Hungary, and a Jew.” Not all of them, of course, were renegades in the true sense of the term, for some of them were no more than Christian children who had been captured and then trained as Moslems and seamen in Algiers (in rather similar fashion to the janissaries of the Turkish army). The real renegades joined the Moslem forces either because they were fleeing from debt or criminal charges in their own lands, or because they had been captured at sea and had decided to “turn Turk” rather than continue as slaves at the oars. A debtor or a criminal who had been sentenced to a Venetian galley might well feel, if his vessel was overwhelmed and captured by the Turks, that his best course was to throw in his lot with them. Unlike the rich or noble who had every prospect of being ransomed, the poor man had none. He probably had little use in any case for the Christian church. It was no more than sensible to become a convert and enjoy the benefits that this could bring him in a place like Algiers, which was rapidly becoming as rich, prosperous, and civilized as any city in Europe.

In the matter of ship construction there is no doubt that the Turks learned a great deal from their European neighbours. Haedo tells us that “galleys are continually being built and repaired in Algiers” and that “the builders are all Christians, who have a monthly pay from the Treasury of six, eight or ten quarter-dollars, with a daily allowance of three loaves of the same bread with the Turkish soldiery, who have four …” Kheir-ed-Din and his richer lieutenants owned their own galleys, but many of those built on the North African coast were often owned by a syndicate. Just as in England, nobles and merchants, even Queen Elizabeth herself, would take shares in the ships to be commanded by Drake and his contemporaries in their raids on Spanish America, so Algerian tradesmen would invest in the building of a galleot or galley. They would appoint their own rais who, in his turn, would be responsible for slaves to row her, and a crew to man and fight her. Unlike the sailors and oarsmen who came under the command of the rais, the troops (janissaries as often as not) came under their own aga. In this respect the system was not unlike that aboard British and other European ships of the period, where the soldiery were commanded by their own officers and had nothing to do with the working of the ship. At its best this system served to provide a check both upon the ship’s captain and upon the commander of the soldiers. At its worst it led to the kind of situation that Drake had to resolve on his voyage round the world, when the military tried to disassociate themselves from anything to do with the ship. But in the comparatively short voyages made by Kheir-ed-Din and his fellows such rivalry was less likely to occur, and the fact that the whole object of the voyage was plunder made both sides of the ship’s company eager to co-operate.

Any idea that because these Turks, renegades, or Moors were engaged in piracy their ships were badly maintained must immediately be dismissed. Indeed, to quote again from Abbot Haedo: “their galleots are so extremely light and nimble, and in such excellent order … whereas, on the contrary, the Christian galleys are so heavy, so embarrassed, and in such bad order and confusion, that it is utterly in vain to think of giving them chase, or of preventing them from going and coming, and doing just as they themselves please. This is the occasion that, when at any time the Christian galleys chase them, their custom is, by way of game and sneer, to point to their fresh-tallowed poops, as they glide along Uke fishes before them, all one as if they showed them their backs to salute.”

He also goes on to describe how the various groups of galleys were stationed up and down the coast, some working from the ports west of Algiers, and others swooping upon the traffic passing south of Sicily from their lairs in Tunis and Djerba. Many of these raiders, of course, had no connection with Barbarossa but were acting on their own account, and had made their own private agreements with local Sultans (at Tunis, for instance) just as Aruj and Khizr had done in their early days. But it was only the fact that the strong central block of the Algerian coast had come into Turkish hands that gave these other corsairs their freedom to operate with little fear of reprisals.

Among the many summer hideouts of the Turks were the islands of Pantelleria, Linosa, and Lampedusa off North Africa, lying athwart the strait of Sicily. But, so secure had these waters now become for the raiders, they thought nothing of using the coves, harbours, and islands that lay well within Spanish or Italian territory. The superb natural harbour of Bonifacio was another one of their haunts—appropriately enough, perhaps, since it had been the home of the man-eating Laestrygonians, who had destroyed all but one of the ships in Ulysses’ squadron when the hero was attempting to find his way home after the Trojan War. Other haunts of the pirates, as Haedo tells us, were “the islands Lipari and Stromboli, near Sicily and Calabria; and there, what with the conveniency of those commodious ports and harbours, and the fine springs and fountains of water, with the plenty of wood for fuel they meet with, added to the careless negligence of the Christian galleys, who scarce think it their business to seek for them—they there, very much at their ease, regale themselves, with stretched-out legs, waiting to intercept the paces of Christian ships, which come there and deliver themselves into their clutches.”

It is difficult to imagine these gracious islands, with their vines and white villas (now the haunt of holidaymakers and skin divers), as having been one of the main bases of Barbarossa’s terrible Turks. But they certainly chose well. All the traffic bound north and south through the Strait of Messina passes within sight of a watcher on any of the lofty peaks, while the western islands of the group, Alicudi and Filicudi, command the trade route between Naples and Palermo. A corsair’s life was not all “battle, murder, and sudden death.” There were consolations no doubt in the excellent wine from the slopes of Mount Salvatore and the firm-breasted, dark-eyed girls of Lipari.

In 1529 Kheir-ed-Din was engaged in tricky negotiations with the mountain Zouaves, who had shown as little liking for the Turks as they had for any of the other coastal occupiers of the country. The pacification of his territory and the job of welding it into one entity—so that ultimately the whole area would be united under the Turks and against the Spaniards—were exercises in which he showed a greater flair for politics than his brother. Aruj’s reaction to difficulties or opposition from neighbours was to go out and “smite them hip and thigh.” This simple technique often worked, but it was hardly suitable for holding a country together for any length of time. Kheir-ed-Din was more successful, and by playing upon the fears and distrusts of various local leaders, he seems to have consolidated a large part of the Algerian hinterland behind him. Meanwhile, he was not idle in other directions.

As soon as the summer settled over the sea, he sent out a large raiding party under the command of one of his most able lieutenants, Aydin Rais. With him, as second in command, went Salah Rais, an outstanding sea captain who was later to be described by a French commentator as a man of “noble courtesy”;

he was also a most efficient commander of land forces. Aydin Rais, for his part, was one of the most able Turkish seamen afloat, and his reputation among his Christian enemies was almost equal to that of Barbarossa.

Taking fourteen galleots under their command, these two set out under their leader’s orders to ransack the Balearic Islands, about 120 miles due north of Algiers. The Balearics, then as now, were rich and fertile, well inhabited, with a number of good harbours. They were an ideal target for a raid, especially when it was known that most of the Spanish fleet was away, taking Charles V to Genoa where he was to be crowned Emperor by Pope Clement VII at Bologna in the following year. Fanning out across the blue acres, the squadron loitered in the channel between the North African coast and the islands. Soon enough a number of merchantmen, some bound from Spain for Naples and Sicily, and others from Italy heading for Spain and the Atlantic, fell into their net.