UNRULED BRITANNIA

White Gold might be a term little heard nowadays, but there was a time when Barbary Pirates, and the threat of capture, were a very real danger.

In the end the nations of northern Europe would come together to defeat the Barbary Pirate menace, and when an Anglo-Dutch fleet shelled Algiers thousands of slaves would finally be released. Image: Everett Collection/Shutterstock

When we learn our history at school, it is a safe bet that one of the earliest and most important lessons we will focus on is “1066 and all that”! The short, populist version is that after being invaded by the Romans, then the Vikings, before William the Conqueror and his Normans crossed the Channel, our island status and our naval strength kept us all safe in our beds.

The Spanish Armada, the high hopes of Napoleon and then the frustration of Hitler in 1940 all share the same theme that, as a nation doubly defended by the seas and by the ships of our Navy, we have been able to resist all comers for nearly 1,000 years. Little wonder, then, that we sing those patriotic words to Rule Britannia at the tops of our voices.

But before you burst into song about ‘Britons never, never shall be slaves’ it is worth looking back in history to a time when, for the people of the far SouthWest, slavery was a very real and terrifying prospect. For more than 200 years, for those who lived and worked on or near the water, fisherman, maritime traders and their families in the supporting coastal communities, the fear was attack and capture by what would become known as the Barbary Pirates.

Unlike the traditional vision of the pirates that operated in the Caribbean, the rum drinking mercenaries of popular culture, the Barbary Pirates, the legendary Corsairs, were skilful Muslim sailors from the north coast of Africa, notably ports such as Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli.

At first, their voyages took them northwards along the coast of what is now Andalusian Spain, where their repeated raids on Malaga were so successful that the area became depopulated to the point it was no longer worthy of further attacks.

Out in the Atlantic, the Barbary Pirates worked their way northwards towards the Biscay coasts of Spain, then France, with their raids becoming ever more lucrative, as they seized not only goods, but the more precious trade of people. Those that were well off would be offered back on payment of a ransom, but for the majority, capture meant being taken back to North Africa to be sold in one of the many slave markets.

UK ARRIVALS When the Barbary Pirates first reached UK shores, firstly around the coasts of Devon and Cornwall, the easy pickings were the fishermen, who were taken from their boats which were then left to drift, abandoned; a mute message as to the fate of the occupants.

The demands were increasing, though, for what was becoming known as ‘White Gold’. 60 women and children were taken in just one attack on the shoreline at Mounts Bay, whilst the village of St Keverne on the Lizard peninsular was repeatedly raided.

With the pirates operating so far away from their home ports, a forward base was needed, with Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel becoming a little bit of North Africa, albeit with the assistance of a Dutch sea captain who had turned into a maritime mercenary.

The raids around the south and west intensified further, with an estimated 60 pirate ships operating in UK waters, and in a seven year period between 1609 and 1616 some 466 vessels were taken. In just one year, 1625, 27 boats were attacked just in the waters off Plymouth.

One of the most shocking attacks came in June 1631 when the village of Baltimore in Southern Ireland was left deserted after a pirate raid carried away more than 200 locals. It was no surpise, then, that the authorities in London accepted that control had been lost over the waters of the South West, with a bigger concern being that the attacks were starting to threaten the growing trade with North America.

THE FIGHT BACK It would finally fall to Oliver Cromwell to start the fight back, with his command that the Lundy base be cleared of Barbary Pirates and that should any be taken alive, they should be returned to Bristol where they would be slowly drowned. Naval forces then bombarded the island ahead of it being cleared of pirates and, at the same time, a huge number of prisoners who were being held ahead of shipment south were released, with some putting the number into the thousands.

As the Royal Navy grew in strength and organisation, control of the UK’s waters was wrested back from the Barbary Pirates, but they still remained a threat further south around the Mediterranean.

Those nations that had suffered so much, Spain, France and the UK, now took the fight to the North African coast, with the ports of Tunis, Tripoli and Algiers all suffering from a number of naval bombardments which further weakened the threat before, in 1816, the British fleet led yet another

attack on the coast, which brought about not just an end to the piracy, but the release of some 4,000 European slaves who had been held in the area.

BEYOND EUROPE It would be a mistake, though, to think of the Barbary led piracy as purely a European problem, for as North America became an increasingly active maritime nation, their ships would also be taken and their crews enslaved.

In the late 1700s payments to the pirates for the release of captives and as a sweetener to prevent further attacks was swallowing up a significant percentage of total government revenue.

The United States had originally determined that it would not maintain a standing military presence, but the pressures and the costs of the losses to the pirates was one of the triggers that saw the creation of the United States Navy.

In 1801 – 1805, then again in 1815, American Forces fought the first and second Barbary Wars which conclusively brought the reign of the pirates to an end (the heroes of the US actions, one of their very first overseas conflicts, are recorded on the Tripoli Monument, America’s oldest Military Monument which now resides at the United States Military Academy at Annapolis).

Today, historians will argue about just how big a problem the Barbary Pirates really were, but there seems little doubt that some 850,000, maybe even more than a million people, found themselves treated as ‘White Gold’ and forced into the abject misery of slavery. As the song goes, Britannia would eventually get to rule the waves, but it is a historical reality that beforehand, so many of its people had to become slaves. All images: Andrew Wiseman