White Slaves Pirate Gold

[Red Maria]

I saw this last night on the History channel. A little know piece of pirate history. Babray pirates arid the southern coasts of England and Ireland. I'm not sure when it will play again but when it does watch it!

White Slaves Pirate Gold

In 1995, amateur marine archaeologists made an important and valuable discovery of Islamic gold. But what was the 17th century vessel, laden with treasure, doing off England's coast? For the first time, a professional team explores the site in attempt to reveal the vessel's true identity. Could it be the wreck of a Barbary pirate ship? For 200 years, Barbary pirates plundered shipping and coastal villages, taking over a million "white slaves" to be ransomed or sold in North African slave markets.

[Lady Seahawke]

If you would like to read a good historically accurate book on this, take a look at

"Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption - Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England"

Seleced and Edited by Daniel J. Vitkus with an Introduction by Nabil Matar.

As stated on the back cover

During the early modern period, English seamen and merchants sailing to the Mediterranean were subject to attack by Muslim privateers who attempted to seize their cargo and carry their crew to the salve markets of North Africa. After being sold into slavery, some prisoners escaped, ransom payments gave others freedom, some converted to the Muslim faith, and still more remained in captivity for years. A few of those who returned to England recounted their experiences in printed narratives that entertained and informed British readers.

these seven exciting narratives recount the harrowing ordeal of English seamen abducted by the Barbary pirates. Never before available in a modern annotated edtin, these tales describe combat at sea, imprsionment, torture, extraordinary escapes and religious conversion, ....etc....

the book was writen in 2001.

the Narratives John Fox 1589 "The Worthy Enterprise of John Fox in Deliverin g 266 Christians out of the Captivity of the Turks...

Richard Hasleton, 1595...Strange and Wonderful Thinkgs Happened to Richard Hasleton..in his ten year's Travails in many foreign countries.

John Rawlins, 1622 ..The Gamous and Wonderful Recovery of a Ship Bristol, Called the Exchange, from the Turkish pirates of Argier..

News from Sally of a Strange Delivery of Four English Captives from the Slavery of the Turks..1642

then there is the narrative from 1675, another from 1685, and the last from 1705.

The Appendixes contain...

1st...contains two ballads

2nd...contains Letters from Captives to Their Families in England...one was dated 1610, the next 1625 and the final 1647

3rd...contains Letter and Depositions describing "Turkish" Corsair Raids on the West Country Sent by Thomas Ceely to the Privy Council in 1625.

4th...contains Petition sent by English Captives in Morocco to King Charles in 1632.

5th...is an item that was written in 1637

6th...was issued April 25, 1643.

7th..a letter to King Charles..1680...

The book is an interesting read

[Red Maria]

This is a good book. The inresting thing about the documentary is that it's about Barbary corsairs who left the Mediterranean and raid the coast of Southern England and Ireland. There is the story of Baltimore Ireland had almost the entire population of 300 people captured. Men women and children. The town never recovered and was abandoned.

These corsairs raided as far as Iceland. Another interesting thing about this shipwreck is that therre were Dutch objects aborad ship. This mislead archeologist to beleive that it was a Dutch merchant ship. In fact there were Dutch who had turned Turk (converted to Islam) on board the ship.

[PirateQueen]

Here's a web page with some interesting articles on the subject. (I stumbled onto it last year while doing some research on Barbary corsairs for a writing project.)

British Slaves on the Barbary Coast

There's a link there to a news story from January 2003 on the discovery of the corsair gold in question:

Seabed gold 'clue to white slavers'