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SONGS AND BALLADS |
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called A Christian turned Turk in 1612. The ballads upon them which are included in this colÂlection (pp. 25-31) were registered on July 3, 1609. The Famous Sea-Fight between Captain Ward and the Rainbow was written after Ward was dead and his exploits had become legendary, but its popularity requires its insertion.
From Ward, Danseker, and others, the native seamen of the Barbary States learnt much. When they established themselves there, says Captain Smith, ' the Moors scarce knew how to sail a ship . . . those were the first that taught the Moors to be men of war.' Later still, after the deaths of their leaders, the European pirates in Barbary 'became so disjointed, disordered, de-, bauched and miserable, that the Turks and Moors began to command them as slaves, and force them to instruct them in their best skill, which many an accursed renegado or Christian turned Turk did, till they have made those Sallee men or Moors of Barbary so powerful as they be to the terror of all the Straits, and many times they take purchase in the main ocean, yea, sometimes even in the narrow seas.'
A modern writer, accepting the view that it was in this way the Barbary captains learned-the new art of sailing warships, points out that the expulsion of the Moriscoes from Spain in 1609 led to a further result equally disastrous. ' It led at once to the rise of Sallee as a pirate port, and its launch upon its sinister career' (Corbett, England in the Mediterranean i. 10-20). Year after year the losses of the English merchants grew greater, and the number of English captives in Barbary increased. In 1620 James I. sent Sir Robert Mansell's fleet against them, and in May 1621 Mansell made his abortive attack on Algiers (ib. 110-133). In 1624 |
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