The Sultan's Admiral (5 page)

Men of ability know by instinct how to seize the circumstances of their world and make them work for their own interests. Two of the sons of the retired Moslem soldier Ya’Kub were to prove this to the hilt. The dead Isaac was to be more than avenged. The eldest and the youngest of the brothers were to leave the comfortable shores of Lesbos and make their way westwards into that part of the Mediterranean which had hitherto been dominated by the European powers. While the third son, Elias, seems to have remained behind as a trader, Aruj and Khizr arrived on the shores of North Africa sometime between 1500 and 1504.

There are a number of different accounts as to how they acquired the two ships in which they set out for the land which was later to be called by distraught and frightened Europeans “the Barbary Coast.” It matters very little at this remove of time, but the actions of the brothers during their lives still contain a meaning for all who inhabit the seaboard of the inland sea. The fortresses and watchtowers, many of which survive to fascinate modern visitors, were built to preserve the local people against the activities of the Barbarossas and their successors. The hill towns, perched on their almost inaccessible peaks, were a direct result of the fact that it was no longer safe to live in the ancient seaports.

The year 1504 seems to be the nearest one can get to a date for the moment when Aruj, the red-bearded, and his brother Khizr came silently and determinedly to the ancient port of Tunis. No doubt they had touched previously at the island of Djerba, and no doubt they had surprised one or two trading vessels during their passage westwards from the Aegean Sea. Two galleots, the record says, were all that they possessed—two open rowing boats, that is to say, with about seventeen oars a side, each oar manned by two, or possibly three, Turks who had elected to come on a speculative piratical voyage. In a very similar way, some years later, Francis Drake was to adventure into the Spanish-dominated waters of the Caribbean with his crew of young Devonians. Both Drake and the Barbarossas, it would be fair to say, began their sea careers as pirates—and ended up as admirals and heroes of their respective nations.

The city of Tunis, to which Aruj returned in triumph with his two captured papal galleys, was very suitable for its new role as a haven for the corsairs. La Goletta, the harbour, was more than adequate for the shallow-draft galleys; there was ample water nearby; the harbour was protected from attack by fortifications; and the Sultan of Tunis had already shown himself friendly to the Barbarossa brothers. Indeed, upon his first arrival, Aruj had paid intelligent court to this Sultan of the house of Hafs, Mouley Mohammed. Both he and his brother “were kindly received by the King, who granted them free entrance and protection in his ports, with liberty to buy whatever they wanted; in return to which favour, the corsairs agreed to give him the tithe of all their purchase or booty …”

Now, within a brief year of concluding this business arrangement with the brothers, the Sultan had good proof of the advantages that could accrue to him and his state. “A great procession was formed of Christian captives marching two and two. Four young Christian girls were mounted on mules, and two ladies of noble birth followed on Arab horses sumptuously caparisoned.

These unfortunates were destined for the harems of their captors. The Sultan was greatly pleased at the spectacle, and as the mournful procession defiled before him, cried out: ‘See how Heaven recompenses the brave!’ ”

Meanwhile the galley slaves were transferred from the two ships to the bagnio or slave quarters. Until such time as they might be required again at sea, their labour would be used to restore the fortifications and improve the harbour walls and defences. Fine ships though the captured galleys were, they were larger than Aruj really needed for his future operations. Throughout his life it is noticeable that he rarely used large galleys, which required a captured slave population to row them. The large galley of those days was the battleship of a later century—and a battleship was not what the determined corsair needed for his business. To pursue the modern analogy, he needed a destroyer: a swift, easily manoeuvrable raiding vessel. The time would come when the Barbarossas were forced to keep large galleys, manned by slaves, in order to engage their enemies on equal terms. But so long as their main objective was raiding the European shipping lines, the lean galleot manned by Turkish freemen was far more to their purpose.

Aruj’s brother Khizr (Kheir-ed-Din) is reputed by some authorities to have begun his service as an oarsman in Aruj’s ship. Certainly, it is a fact that at the famous battle of Preveza in 1538 many of the victorious Turkish galleys under the younger Barbarossa were part-manned by Turkish freemen. These volunteers, often janissaries by origin, were regarded as more efficient (and naturally far more trustworthy) than slaves, who might be expected to mutiny at the first available opportunity. Another great advantage in employing your own race at the oar was the fact that, when battle commenced, the oarsmen themselves became part of the fighting force. In the large Christian galleys, on the other hand, the oarsmen were redundant—indeed a dangerous liability—the moment that an engagement actually started. A Turkish galleot, therefore, manned on the system adopted by the Barbarossas, might be half the size of a European galley, but every man in her would be a fighting man, and every man in her would be a Turk, or fellow Moslem, eager for battle.

Aruj’s technique in these early years seems to have been to keep one large galley, manned by slaves, in company with him, while relying upon a number of galleots to do the fighting and secure the prizes. The galley was something of an “insurance policy,” kept at hand in case a fighting vessel of her own size might be encountered. In our own century this method of operating against enemy shipping might be compared to having a flotilla of destroyers in company with a heavy cruiser, the latter being on call if need be, but otherwise nearly all the work being done by the destroyers.

As evidence of this we find that Aruj now “armed out both the galleots and one galley.” Leaving Tunis quickly before the advent of winter closed the sea to shipping “he scoured the coasts of Sicily and Calabria, taking several vessels, and a considerable number of slaves …” As in the ancient world, the sailing season was extremely limited, and with the first signs of bad weather both merchantmen and warships were laid up until the spring (usually the month of May), when they were launched once again.

The astonishing success of this first year’s operations out of the port of Tunis must have been more than encouraging to the brothers and the Sultan. But it could not be expected that this sudden arrival in the waters of the western Mediterranean of Turkish warships would go unnoticed in the courts of Europe. For the first time for many years the news of these shipping disasters began to suggest to the European powers that some concerted action might have to be taken. But the time was not ripe for any such combined effort. Countries and nations that were just beginning on the road towards nationalism were unlikely to be able to co-ordinate against a common enemy. The extraordinary success of the Barbarossas over the years to come was largely promoted by the fact that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” It is a lesson that, even four centuries later, has not yet been learned by the nations of Europe.

The terrain, the coastland, and the natural harbours, lakelike lagoons, salt pans, fertile strips and desert wastes that the Turkish corsairs were now to establish as their home is still little known to Europeans. Soldiers and sailors who fought in the North African campaigns of the Second World War made some slight acquaintance with this land-—a land that can be as fertile and beautiful as any place on earth, but which can also show its granite teeth in hard headlands, shifting coastlines, dangerous shoals, and savage storms.

When the northerlies whirl down across the narrow strait of Sicily, any vessel caught with the lee shore of Africa under her must beware. Conversely, when the khamsin blows up hot and furious off the deserts east of Tunis and south of Malta the sailor in these narrow seas must look to his canvas—and to his life. As the Admiralty Pilot warns: “The wind is at first light from between east and south-east. The wind veers southward, and meanwhile a thin veil of cirrus cloud often spreads across the sky from westward … The southerly wind strengthens and veers, with rising temperature, falling humidity, and increasing dustiness; the wind may reach gale force from southward or south-westward, blowing in scorching gusts, with rapid oscillations of temperature and humidity … A few drops of rain may reach the ground in the vicinity of the front during the hot season, while in the transition seasons thunderstorms occur at times; the rain in these storms frequently carries down a considerable quantity of mud, consisting of fine dust and sand picked up by the wind over the desert

It is a dangerous sea at many times of the year. But, with its many inlets and headlands, rocky bays and concealed lagoons, it remains a fine area for the seaman who has learned his native coast, and who is intent on robbing the rich shipping lanes. Certainly in the early sixteenth century, when the Barbarossas first introduced Turkish sea power into this area, the shipping lanes were rich indeed. The Western world, cut off from its ancient trade routes with the East by the Turkish nation spread like a scimitar across Asia, had been forced to discover the overseas routes that could connect with the necessary raw materials, as well as the luxuries, of the East. The European expansion throughout the world, and its opening up of shipping lanes to the Orient, was not prompted by an abstract love of scientific discovery. It was induced almost entirely by the sheer necessity of finding another way to recommence a trade that had been closed by Turkish and Moslem power in the East.

But now that the Spaniards had established sailing routes to the riches of the American continent—which they had, to their surprise, found barring their passage to the Far East and China —their galleons were annually returning laden with gold, uncut gem stones, and the natural wealth of a hitherto unexploited world. France, Holland, and England in the years to come were not slow to follow these pioneers of Atlantic navigation, and the trade of Europe was amazingly revivified by the return from the western side of the Atlantic of enterprising seamen, backed by enterprising investors. The Strait of Gibraltar, which in the ancient world had been regarded as the “Pillars of Hercules” (the end of any normal sailing route or trading), suddenly became the open-sesame to a world of hitherto unimaginable richness. Through the narrow gap between the great cloud-trailing rock on the European side and the rock of Ceuta in North Africa, there began to pass argosies of wealth that could hardly fail to excite the greed of the new race of corsairs—especially of the expelled Moriscos who, for so many centuries, had lived happily in Spain. The western basin of the Mediterranean, which previously had been of less importance than the eastern, took on a new lease of life. It was at this very moment in history that the expulsion of the Moslem people from Spain coincided with the ejection of the Christians from the east after the capture of Constantinople in 1453. At the same time, by a strange accident of fortune, there arrived upon the scene the extraordinary Barbarossa brothers.

The territory which these Turkish sea rovers were to make peculiarly their own ranged from Tripoli, due south of Malta, to Tangier, and beyond to some of the small Moroccan ports on the Atlantic. From these latter the Moslems were soon to harry merchantmen returning from America, before they had even entered the Mediterranean.

The coastline of North Africa is remarkable for its excellent harbours—something comparatively rare in this tideless sea— and it was this fact, above all, that gave the area its special value to the Barbarossas. Moving westward from the secure harbour of Tripoli, less than a hundred miles away lies the island of Djerba, concealing behind its palm-fringed sandy shores a beautiful great lagoon whose only access is through one narrow channel at the western end. A whole armada of ships could lie safely at anchor here, and rest secure whatever winds splintered the dangerous Gulf of Gabes. This gulf was rendered particularly treacherous to shipping by its variable and tricky currents, and by the shifting sandbanks that fringed its shores. Two islets due north of Djerba, Chergui and Rharbi, provided a convenient resting place for the marauding galleys, and an excellent lookout post for traffic passing south of Lampedusa through the channel eastward to Malta. A little north of them on the mainland lay the ancient city of Mahdia, usually referred to by contemporary writers as Africa, since this was the name given to the cape on which it stood. The small harbour there, now silted by the sand of centuries, was more than adequate for galleys that rarely drew more than six foot of water. North again, the great arm of Cape Bon thrust itself out into the strait of Sicily-—perfect vantage point from which to watch for traffic bound for the southern ports of that island. Within the next gulf lay Tunis itself, and then beyond it there were the ancient harbours of Carthage and of Porto Farina, ravaged by time and the destruction of centuries but still adequate for shallow-draughted vessels. Westwards Bizerta and Tabarka, Bone, and Djidjelli beckoned the mariner—good harbours all of them, and with rich coastal land behind and always adequate water, fed by the watershed towering above the fertile coastal strip. Still further to the west lay Bougie, Algiers* Shershell, Tenez, and Oran with its superb port of Mers-el-Kebir. Quite apart from its harbours the land grew corn, olives, dates, vines, and almost every kind of fruit. Its inhabitants were mainly Berbers with an admixture of Arabs: the mountain people hardy and warlike, and the coastal people industrious farmers. With such a springboard behind them—food to nourish and harbours to shelter—it was little wonder that the warlike Turks would soon begin to shake the trade of Christendom.