MHBBfM SEA-WOLVES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME. THE GREAT BOER WAR. Arthur Conan Doyle. COLLECTIONS AND RECOLLECTIONS. G. W. E.Russell. REMINISCENCES. Sir Henry Hawkins. LI FE OF LORD RUSSELL OF KILLOWEN.tf.*rry O'Brien. FROM THE CAPE TO CAIRO. E. S. Grogan. A BOOK ABOUT THE GARDEN. Dean Hole. WITH KITCHENER TO KHARTUM. G. W. Steeven*. THE UNVEILING OF LHASA. Edmund Candler. LIFE OF LORD DUFFERIN. Sir A. Lyall. SPURGEON'S SERMONS. Sir W. Robertson Nicoll, LL.D. SIR FRANK LOCKWOOD. Augustine Birrell, K.C., M.P. THE MAKING OF A FRONTIER. Colonel Durand. POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN. Mrs. Earle. LIFE OF RICHARD COBDEN. Lord Morley. LIFE OF PARNELL. R. Barry O'Brien. HAVELOCK'S MARCH. /. W. Sherer. MEMORIES GRAVE AND GAY. Dr. John Ktrr. A BOOK ABOUT ROSES. S. Reynolds Hole. RANDOM REMINISCENCES. Charles Brookfie Id. THE LONDON POLICE COURTS. Thomas Holmes. THE AMATEUR POACHER. Richard Jefferies. AT THE WORKS. Lady Bell. MEXICO AS I SAW IT. Mrs. Alec Tweedie. THROUGH THE HEART OF PATAGONIA. H. Hesketh Prichard. PARIS TO NEW YORK BY LAND. Harry de Windt. LIFE OF LEWIS CARROLL. Stuart Dodgson Collingwood. A NATURALIST IN THE GUIANAS. Eugtne Andre. THE MANTLE OF THE EAST. Edmund Candler. LETTERS OF DR. JOHN BROWN. JUBILEE BOOK OF CRICKET. Prince Ranjitsinhji. BY DESERT WAYS TO BAGHDAD. Louisa Jebb. SOME OLD LOVE STORIES. T. P. O'Connor. FIELDS, FACTORIES, & WORKSHOPS. Prince Krofotkin. LIFE OF LORD LAWRENCE. R. Bosworth Smith. PROBLEMS OF POVERTY. Dr. Chalmers. THE BURDEN OF THE BALKANS. M. E. Durham. LIFE AND LETTERS OF LORD MACAULAY.-I. & II. Sir George O. Trevelyan, Bart. WHAT I SAW IN RUSSIA. Hon. Maurice Baring: WILD ENGLAND OF TO-DAY. C. J. Cornish. LEAVES FROM AN INSPECTOR'S LOGBOOK. Dr. John Kerr. THROUGH FINLAND IN CARTS. Mrs. Alec Tweedie. THE VOYAGE OF THE "DISCOVERY."!. & II. Captain Scott. FELICITY IN FRANCE. Constance E. Maud. MY CLIMBS IN THE ALPS AND CAUCASUS. A.F.Muntmery. JOHN BRIGHT. R. Barry O'Brien. POVERTY. B. Scebohm Rawntree. F.'c., cic. Others to follow. KHEYR-ED-DIN BARBAROSSA CORSAIR, ADMIRAL, AND KING. Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean THE GRAND PERIOD OF THE MOSLEM CORSAIRS BY COMMANDER E. HAMILTON CURREY R.N. T THOMAS NELSON AND SONS LONDON, EDINBURGH, DUBLIN AND NEW YORK THE INSTITUTE OF MEDIAEVAL STUDIES 10 ELMSLEY PLACE TORONTO 5, CANADA/ - OCT 2 1931 432 TO THAT GRACIOUS LADY TO WHOSE COUNSEL AND ENCOURAGEMENT I OWE SO MUCH MORE THAN ANY ONE SAVE I CAN IMAGINE , TO MY WIFE I DEDICATE THIS BOOK PREFACE WHEN the ship is ready for launching there comes a moment of tense excitement before the dogshores are knocked away and she slides down the ways. In the case of a ship this excitement is shared by many thousands, who have assembled to acclaim the birth of a perfected product of the industry of the emotion is shared all those are man ; by who present. It is very different when a book has been completed. The launching has been arranged for and hands she like the completed by expert ; ship gathers way and slides forth into an ocean : but, unlike the ship which is certain to float, the waters may close over and engulf her, or perchance she may be towed back to that haven of obscurity from which she emerged, to rust there in silence and neglect. There is excitement in the breast of one man alone to wit, the author. If his book pos- sesses one supreme qualification she will escape the fate mentioned, and this qualification is interest. As the weeks lengthened into months, and these multiplied themselves to the tale of something like twenty-four, the conviction was strengthened that that which had so profoundly interested the writer, would not be altogether indifferent to others. For some inscrutable reason the deeds of sea-robbers viii PREFACE. have always possessed a fascination denied to those of their more numerous brethren of the land ; and in the case of the Sea-wolves of the sixteenth century we are dealing with the very aristocrats of the pro- fession. Circumstances over which they had no control flung the Moslem population of Southern Spain on to the shores of Northern Africa : to revenge themselves upon the Christian foe by whom this expropriation had been accomplished was natural to a warrior race ; and those who heretofore had been land-folk pure and simple took to piracy as a means of livelihood. It is of the deeds of these men that this books treats ; of their marvellous triumphs, of their apparently hopeless defeats, of the manner in which they audaciously maintained themselves against the principalities and the powers of Christendom always hungering for their destruction. The which is said to have quality Napoleon" ascribed to the British Infantry, of never knowing when they were beaten/' seems to have also char- acterised the Sea-wolves ; as witness the marvellous recuperation of Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa when from Tunis Charles V. and the expelled by ; escape of Dragut from the island of Jerba when apparently hopelessly trapped by the Genoese admiral, Andrea Doria. All through their history the leaders of the Sea-wolves show the resourcefulness of the real sea- men that they had become by force of circumstances, and it was they who in the age in which they dwelt showed what sea power really meant. Sailing through the Mediterranean on my way to Malta in the spring of this year, as the good ship fared onwards I passed in succession all those lurking-places from which the Moslem Corsairs were wont to burst out upon their prey. Truly it seemed as if "The spirits of their fathers might start from every wave," PREFACE. ix and in imagination one pictured the rush of the pirate galley, with its naked slaves straining at the oar of their taskmasters, its fierce, reckless, be- " " turbaned crew clustered on the rambades at the bow and stern. It be that would " might they capture some hapless round-ship/' a merchantman the coast or lumbering slowly along ; again they might meet with a galley of the terrible Knights of St. John or of the ever-redoubtable Doria. In either case the Sea-wolves were equal to their fortune, to plunder or to fight in the name of Allah and his prophet. That which differentiated the Sea-wolves from other pirates was the combination which they effected themselves the in which these lawless among ; manner men could subordinate themselves to the will of one whom they recognised as a great leader. To obtain such recognition was no easy matter, and the manner in which this was done, by those who rose by sheer force of character to the summit of this remarkable hierarchy, has here been set forth. E. HAMILTON CURREY. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE INTRODUCTORY . .15 I. THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS . 27 II. THE COMING OF THE CORSAIRS . 42 III. URUJ BARBAROSSA ... 56 IV. THE DEATH OF URUJ BARBAROSSA 71 V. KHEYR-ED-DIN BARBAROSSA . 86 VI. THE TAKING OF THE PENON D'ALGER; ANDREA DORIA . 100 VII. THE APOTHEOSIS OF THE CORSAIR KING . ..114 VIII. THE RAID ON THE OF ITALY COAST ; JULIA GONZAGA . .128 CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE IX. BARCELONA, MAY 1555: THE GATHERING OF THE CHRISTIAN HOSTS 143 X. THE FALL OF TUNIS AND THE FLIGHT OF BARBAROSSA . 158 XL ROXALANA AND THE MURDER OF IBRAHIM . .173 XII. THE PREVESA CAMPAIGN : THE GATHERING OF THE FLEETS . iSS XIII. THE BATTLE OF PREVESA . 203 XIV. THE NAVY OF OARS. THE GAL- LEY, THE GALEASSE, AND THE NEF 218 XV. DRAGUT-REIS . .234 XVI. DRAGUT-REIS . .249 XVII. DRAGUT-REIS . .263 XVIII. THE KNIGHTS OF ST. JOHN , 279 XIX. DRAGUT-REIS . .297 XX. THE SIEGE OF MALTA . .313 CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE XXI. ALI BASHA . 331 XXII. LEPANTO 347 AUTHORITIES CONSULTED . 365 LIST OF THE KINGS OF ENGLAND, FRANCE, SPAIN, SULTANS OF TURKEY, POPES OF ROME, AND GRAND MASTERS OF MALTA FROM 1492 TO 1580 . 367 DISTANCES IN SEA MILES ON THE COAST OF NORTHERN AFRICA . 369 SEA-WOLVES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN INTRODUCTORY all the ages of which we have any record there INhave been men who gained a living by that prac- tice of robbery on the high seas which we know by the name of Piracy. Perhaps the pirates best known to the English-speaking world are the buccaneers of the Spanish Main, who flourished exceedingly in the seventeenth century, and of whom many chronicles exist : principally owing to the labours of that John Esquemelin, a pirate of a literary turn of mind, who added the crime of authorship to the ill deeds of a sea-rover. The Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean in the preceding century did not raise up a chronicler from among them- selves : for not much tincture of learning seems to have distinguished these desperate fighters and accomplished seamen, descendants of those Spanish Moslems who had, during the Middle Ages, lived in a land in which learning and culture had been held in the highest estimation. Driven from their 98 INTRODUCTORY. homes, their civilisation crushed, their religion banned in that portion of Southern Spain in which they had dwelt for over seven centuries, cast upon the shores of Northern Africa, these men took to the sea and became the scourge of the Mediter- ranean. That which they did, the deeds which they accomplished, the terror which they in- spired, the ruin and havoc which they wrought, have been set forth in the pages of this book. It was the age of the galley, the oar-propelled vessel which moved independently of the wind in the fine-weather months of the great inland sea.