The Sack of Baltimore

[blackjohn]

This morning while trying to think of the name of some British guy, I got caught up in a wikiloop that took me to the Sack of Baltimore. Being from Baltimore, and having never heard of it being sacked, I clicked, and found it was not Baltimore, Maryland, town of my birth, that was scaked, but Baltimore, Ireland. And it was sacked by Algerian pirates!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Baltimore

History... it's sooo cool!

[Pew]

Wow.

Coming up on the 374th anniversary. There's got to be a celebration in there somewhere's.

I like the last line in the article "Baltimore became important only as a rotten borough . . ."

Funny how history comes around.

[JoshuaRed]

Yeah Maryland's finest royally screwed me while going past Baltimore on 95! C'mon! Speeding? On 95? Geez, it's called survival!!

[Fox]

For the benefit of you Colonials who may not have come across a "rotten borough" before (apologies if you have) allow me to explain:

A rotten borough was one in which there lived only a small number of voters, most or all of whom might be controlled by one person, effectively meaning that that one person could elect whoever he pleased as a Member of Parliament. Notable examples included Sarum, which had only 5 voters, and Lambeth where everyone eligable to vote worked for the Archbishop of Canterbury. Rotten boroughs were abolished in the 19thC Parliamentary reforms.

Out of interest, who was the Englishman you couldn't think of John?

[blackjohn]

I was trying to think of Henry Morgan, and all I could think of was, "you know, the guy who sacked Panama."

Sack of Panama led to Sack of Baltimore... wikiloop!!! (That's when you go to wikipedia, and get caught in in reading links, looping around from one interesting topic to the next.)

[Longarm]

Wasn,t Grace O'Malley attacked by Algerian pirates while giveing birth to one of her children below decks? That is if the stories are true.

[Fox]

I've certainly heard stories about Grace O'Malley being associated with Barbary pirates - I wouldn't like to comment on the historical accuracy of those stories though.

By the early 17th century there was nothing odd about Barbary pirates attacking the British Isles. It is estimated that between 1616 and 1642 approximately 350-400 English ships were taken by the corsairs and about 6,500-7,000 prisoners were taken as slaves. Barbary pirates also raided as far afield as Iceland. Even as late as 1816, when Sir Edward Pellew battered Algiers into submission and ended the Barbary slave trade there were 1,642 European slaves in that city alone.

One thing that I didn't notice mentioned on the pages about the Baltimore raid was that the leader of the Algerian pirates was actualy a Dutch renegade, the notorious Murat Reis.

[Longarm]

This is the first time I've heard of Algerian pirates raiding Iceland. It wasn't until I stareted reading about Grace O'Malley that I heard about raids on England and Ireland by Mediterranean corsairs. It's hard to believe their ships could handle the northern atlantic.

[Fox]

It was all thanks to north European privateers displaced by the peace with Spain in the early 17th century. Men like Murat Reis, John Ward, Simon Danseker, William Bishop and co. went to the Barbary coast and took the tricks of Atlantic ship-building with them.

[Longarm]

But why Iceland? What could they have wanted from there? I've heard the women are very beautiful but is that enough for such a dangerous voyage?

[Fox]

In most of the raids on European countires by Barbary pirates slaves were the principal commodity sought. The Iceland raid was led by Murat Reis a couple of years before the Baltimore raid and netted 400 Icelandic slaves.

In the 1640s an English mission to Sallee to buy back English slaves paid an average price of £38 per slave (at that price Reis would have made £15,200 from the Iceland raid and £9,766 from the Baltimore raid). However, women were much more expensive to redeem, some costing many hundreds, some over £1,000, and one cost £1,392. If the women of Iceland were particularly beautiful (and fair) it would definitely be worth Reis's while to go there if he could make £1,000 (nearly 6 years wages for an English naval captain of a first rate!) from each woman.

[Cire]

Or maybe he just wanted a particularly lovely harem..... :)

*will behave now*

[Fox]

Just came across this and thought it might be interesting.