I would like to express my gratitude to the National Maritime Museum and in particular to Dr Nigel Rigby, Director of Research, for allowing me to make use of James Looker’s “Joumall” and other manuscripts in their possession. The award of a Caird Part-Time Fellowship (2002-3) at the National Maritime Museum allowed work on the “Journall” and on a number of other projects, including the post-conference revision of the present paper, to be carried forward. Earlier and some of the continuing work on these projects was also funded in part by a research grant from the Wellcome Foundation for the History of Medicine, which I would also wish to acknowledge

1 Meyer, “English privateering in the war of 1688 to 1697”; Id., “English privateering in the war of (...)

(...) 2 Bromley, Corsairs and Navies ; Starkey, British Privateering Enterprise .

3 Cf. López Nadal, “Mediterranean privateering,” especially p. 109-111, and Fontenay, “Il mercato mal (...) 1It is now more than two decades since the English maritime historian W. R. Meyer observed that the history of English privateering during the quarter-century of virtually unbroken conflict against Louis XIV had been a neglected study ever since the pioneering work undertaken fifty years previously by Sir George Clark. In reality, the subject had not been entirely neglected: the immensely stimulating work of the late J. S. Bromley had already largely appeared, even before Meyer wrote. Nonetheless, the posthumous publication of Bromley’s collected articles in 1987 and the appearance in 1990 of David Starkey’s exhaustive study of British privateering in the eighteenth century have been the main markers of a revival of domestic interest in the field. Some openings for further research, perhaps more geographical than chronological, still remain, as a reading of the above-mentioned works, and as reference to the work of European scholars on the same period such as Michel Fontenay and Garcia López Nadal makes apparent.

4 Cf. the observations in my “The Kapudan Pasha,” p. 413-414, n. 12, 13. 1 must here apologise for an (...)

(...) 5 Cf, inter alia , the well-known works by Fisher, Barbary Legend ; Earle, Corsairs of Malta and Barbar (...)

(...) 6 Oriente Moderno , XX (LXXXI) (“The Ottomans and the Sea,” K. Fleet ed.).

7 Zachariadou (ed.), The Kapudan pasha .

8 In connection with the present paper I mention contributions to the Cambridge seminar by Elizabeth (...) 2One such opening, as I have observed in an earlier paper, remains the lack of any detailed study of English (or British, since, as will be seen, it must also include the Scots) privateering in Mediterranean waters east of the Sicilian narrows, and more specifically off the Aegean and Mediterranean littoral of the Ottoman Empire and in the waters surrounding its islands in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean, at any time from the age of Drake to that of Nelson. This is the more surprising for two reasons. Firstly, English maritime activity in connection with the Barbary Regencies of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli during these three centuries has not lacked its interpreters. Secondly, in recent years a growing interest in the sea has been manifested amongst Ottoman historians, a development signalised by a sudden proliferation of international symposia and seminars on the subject. One may note in particular conferences on “The Ottomans and the Sea,” held at the Skilliter Centre for Ottoman Studies, Newnham College, Cambridge, in March 1996; and on the office of the Ottoman Kapudan Pasha, held in Crete in January 2000, and also a Skilliter Centre Seminar on “Ottoman Piracy,” held on 5 February 2000, the papers from which remain mainly unpublished.

9 For example, of the 2,239 prizes condemned down to January 1712 in the course of the Spanish Succes (...) 3With regard to the present paper, the typology of English privateering activity in Ottoman waters, statistically insignificant as it undoubtedly was in terms of the overall pattern of English and Dutch (and French) privateering during the period of the wars against Louis XIV, may perhaps be discussed with profit in the context of Ottoman insularity, since it was in the island-crowded waters of the Aegean Sea – the Arches or the Archipelago of English shipmen – or within the port limits of Cyprus that the majority of maritime incidents involving the incursions of English (or Scottish) pirates or letters-of-marque ships and their coming into conflict with Ottoman concepts of terrestrial and maritime sovereignty mainly occurred.

10 Details in Clark, “English and Dutch privateers,” p. 215-216.

11 PRO SP 105/209, p. 58-59. 4British policy in the eastern Mediterranean, and specifically in Ottoman waters, with regard to the prosecution of the war at sea against France, was cautious in the extreme, both on the part of the Crown and of the Levant Company. The Admiralty had traditionally been reluctant to grant commissions of letters of marque to ships engaged in the Mediterranean trade, and it was not until 1694-1695 that the Privy Council authorised them for merchant ships of over 200 tons burthen, carrying at least twenty guns, and having half of their ships’ companies as landsmen. The Levant Company was ever fearful of Ottoman avanias against their trade and factories. Incidents were, wherever possible, to be avoided. In 1696 the Company thought fit to remind William Raye, consul in Izmir, with reference to the “trouble and expence occasioned by Capt. Masters taking the French tartan, so near the Castle, which we wish had never happened,” of “the strict command his majesty has been pleased to lay upon the Captains of his men of war, not to molest the Grand Signor’s Ports, but to leave them free for Enemies as well as friends to pass in and out.” This passivity contrasted with attitudes, even amongst English diplomats at the Porte, for a more aggressive stance where potential complications with the Ottomans would not be of relevance:

12 BL Add MS 61535, Sutton to [Sunderland], Pera, 17 Oct. 1707. “The French drive so great and general a Trade to all the Ports of the Turks Dominions, that I have several times taken the boldnesse to represent the great advantage, that might be reaped, if some Frigats were appointed to cruize together in the Winter & Spring about the Channel of Malta, the French ships going sometimes single, sometimes in whole Fleets without Convoy, & never yet with above two frigats of between 40 and 50 guns to attend them.”

13 BL Add MS 61535, Sutton to [Sunderland], Pera 10 July 1707. 5In Ottoman waters Sutton was constrained to urge greater flexibility on fleet commanders. In July 1707 he was summoned to an interview by the Grand Vizir to listen to Ottoman complaints that English men-of-war lying off Izmir “block up the Port of Smyrna by hindring the French from going in and out of it.” Sutton’s suggestion was that the commanders of HM ships should have liberty to cruise while the French merchant ships lay in port, rather than be obliged, as they then were, to “lye still near three months by the Castle of Smyrna, and therby occasion complaints without any advantage to the Publick.”

14 Vatin, “Un exemple de relations frontalières,” p. 349, n. 1; van den Boogert, “Redress for Ottoman (...)

(...) 15 A fuller collection of Ottoman material for the elucidation of this problem remains to be undertake (...) 6What was the Ottoman view regarding maritime sovereignty? Recent studies by M. Nicolas Vatin and others have opened up this hitherto neglected field; M. Vatin’s view, amply documented in his study of the Ottoman maritime frontier with Rhodes in the four decades preceding the Ottoman conquest of the island (1522), is that, as far as the Ottomans were concerned, on peut s’interroger sur l’existence de frontières maritimes, mais le concept d’“eaux territoriales” était inconnu. This is not to say that this was equally the case in the late seventeenth century. Within this context, the aim of the present paper is the modest one of presenting a handful of unstudied maritime incidents which may serve to illuminate the legal and situational complexities generated by British commerce-raiding against French shipping in what we may still refer to (for want of a better term) as Ottoman waters, during the wars against Louis XIV.

7The first incident, that involving Capt. Charles Newnam, master of the Blackham Galley, a London armed merchantman and letter-of-marque ship, dates from the last year of the Nine Years’ War and had its origin in the months immediately preceding the signature of the Treaty of Ryswick; a further two incidents, one involving the activities of Dugal Campbell, a Scottish privateer, and the other those of a certain Benjamin Grey, the (apparently) English commander of a freebooting Mediterranean tartane, both occurred in 1709, in the latter years of the War of the Spanish Succession.

16 Bromley, “The French Privateering War,” p. 213.

17 PRO HCA 26/3, “[Register of] Letters of Marque or reprizalls from May 1695-10th of Septr. 1697 [,] (...)

(...) 18 PRO HCA 26/2, f. 168.

19 Looker’s “Journall” serves as the basis of my article “The Kapudan Pasha.” The manuscript is in the (...) 8“Privateer” is an imprecise term, as J. S. Bromley has pointed out, and many if not most of the British vessels encountered in Ottoman waters with hostile intent are better described as “armed traders,” commissioned, as the French term had it, en guerre et marchandises, sometimes deliberately, pour faire la course en chemin faisant. Most of the English vessels for which letters of marque were issued for voyages “within the Straits” during the wars against Louis XIV fall into this category. One such London armed merchantman, the Blackham Galley, “250 tons, 26 guns and 60 men,” was typical in its size, crew and armaments of English armed merchantmen of the years around the turn of the eighteenth century. Letters of marque for its 1696-1698 voyage to the Straits appear not to have been recorded in the relevant High Court of Admiralty register, but for an earlier voyage, undertaken in 1694, the letter-of-marque registration has been preserved.Concerning the 1696-8 voyage of the Blackham Galley, I have already written at length on the basis of the invaluable detailed diary kept by the ship’s surgeon, John Looker. The Blackham’s only seizure under its letters of marque, that of a French-flagged settea off Tenedos, had serious repercussions, the political and diplomatic aspects of which are discussed at length in my above-mentioned article.

20 Bromley, “A Letter-Book of Robert Cole,” p. 39-41. 9Distinctly less legal even in form than the activities of the Blackham Galley were those more than a decade later of an unnamed vessel commanded by a certain Dugal Campbell. According to Robert Sutton, British ambassador at the Porte, Campbell had brought his ship into “these seas” – i.e. into the Ottoman waters of the Aegean – “for corn." The intended destination of the cargo he was seeking is not specified, but from the evidence it may be reasonable to deduce that such a cargo would have been destined for the support of the allied armies in Spain. Sutton, from his vantage-point in Istanbul, was able to discover that Campbell had been fitted out for cruising by certain (unnamed) English merchants in Minorca, armateurs in all but name: at this point in the war it should be noted that the allied commander in Spain was actively seeking to purchase corn from Algiers through the intermediacy of the English consul, Robert Cole. Campbell’s quest seemed to have succeeded when he came across and surprised a French barque laden with corn, lying in a creek on the island of Ipsera [sic: Antipsara], Campbell took the French ship as prize, and offloaded its cargo into his own vessel.

10Campbell then put to sea again, leaving his mate, one John Gardyne, and six men as prize crew on the French barque. The prize soon ran into bad weather, and was wrecked on the coast of the island of Negroponte (Eğriboz, Evvoia). The crew, with one exception, were saved and taken to Eğriboz, where the Ottoman authorities appear to have become involved for the first time. The French consul on Eğriboz, identified only by Sutton as “M. Charles,” accused the survivors of piracy and, being employed as interpreter in their examination before the local pasha, “by a false and treacherous interpretation” made the prize crew confess that their original vessel had been fitted out at Livorno to cruise against the Sultan’s subjects. On the basis of this falsified testimony a “hoggiet or public attestation” – i.e. a cadi’s hüccet – was made, and the surviving members of the prize crew were condemned to the galleys.

21 BL MS Add. 61535, f. 43-44. Sutton to [Sunderland], Pera, 7 July 1709. 11The prisoners were shipped to Istanbul, where their situation came to Sutton’s notice. Although only Gardyne, Campbell’s mate and de facto master of the French prize, was a Briton – the other survivors were a Maltese, a Majorcan, and three Italians – Sutton made a successful application to the Grand Vizir for their release, and had the men sent down to Izmir for passage home on a friendly vessel.

22 For an extensive treatment of this topic, based primarily on 15th and 16th century Ottoman document (...)

(...) 23 For the case of two Irish privateers operating in 1710 and 1711 – but where? – without benefit of l (...)

(...) 24 The island of Leros, in the Dodecanese. 12The second incident from 1709 is provided by the near-piratical privateering activities of a certain Benjamin Grey, who may be assumed to have been English. The incident provides an attractive illustration of the consequences stemming from the Ottoman legal view that all re’âyâ, unless proved to be slaves, were legally free persons, and that the duty of the sultan and, by extension, of his servants, was to enforce this view. Grey – in effect a pirate, rather than a privateer – was in command of a tartane, and occupying himself with cruising in the Archipelago, without possessing either a commission, instructions, or letters of marque. He had already taken several prizes when he came into conflict with the local Ottoman authorities through his capture of a French settea, freighted by “Turks and Jews the Grand Signior’s subjects,” and bound for Jaffa. Grey caused the French settea to be brought into the port of Lero. At Lero Grey declared the Jews’effects to be good prize, while keeping the Jews and Turks captive on board. In the meantime, one of the sultan’s galleys entering the port, its commander, “hearing the Jews cry out, that they were plundered and made Slaves, & beg to be delivered,” seized first the tartane’s prize, and then the tartane itself. The levends from the galley’s crew set about plundering the tartane of its arms, ammunition, “and whatever else came to hand,” in the course of which a set of Maltese colours were discovered. Setting a guard furnished by local inhabitants on the tartane, the Ottoman galley commander carried off Grey and the remainder of his crew into custody on Chios.

25 Details taken from Sutton’s despatch of 7 July 1709 to [Sunderland], loc. cit. 13Here again, as on Eğriboz, the local French consul and community nobly played their expected role, and “did all in their power to make [Grey] appear a Pirate.” This was not perhaps a difficult task, and in truth Grey’s position was not a strong one. As Sutton had already noted, he possessed neither a commission from the Queen nor any Admiralty letters of marque. Further, Grey was a notorious character amongst the French communities of the Aegean littoral, someone who, according to Sutton, had “rendered himself terrible to the French in the Arches, there being then no lesse then 3 or 4 Masters of French Vessels, which he had taken & sold.” Almost two years previously – i.e. some time in 1707 – he had commanded a French prize vessel fitted out at Izmir, with which, while en route to Livorno, that major Mediterranean entrepot for privateers from both sides, he took a further French ship as prize. Afterwards he was chased himself – by the French, or by the Algerines is not made clear – and as a result lost his ship on the coast of Sardinia. From there he escaped across the short stretch of the Tyrrhenian sea to Livorno, where certain members of the resident English merchant community, “judging him well acquainted with these seas,” gave him command of the tartane and put into his hands “a Mediterranean passe... dated in the year 1704 and subscribed by the Earl of Bridgwater and Admirall Churchill.” Shaky credentials indeed, which the Ottoman authorities at the Porte would look at very carefully when it came into their hands – as Sutton relates, he obtained the details from a copy of it taken by his secretary, “when it lay in the hands of Signor Mavrocordato to be interpreted.”

14Sutton, for the second time in the space of a couple of months, went into action at the Porte in defence of a dubious character and his allegedly piratical crew. On the arrival of the galley at Istanbul, he wrote, he endeavoured to clear Grey and his men, despite their notoriety, and in the teeth of strong representations from the French ambassador, who was also doing his best to get Grey and his crew condemned to the galleys as pirates. Once again, Sutton was successful, but nonetheless the Ottoman authorities took a close interest in the details of the incident: on Sutton’s visiting the Kapudan pasha, who had promised to release the tartane and its crew, on the occasion of the embarkation of the Ottoman fleet, the Kapudan pasha “afterwards took a note of the men, and the places where they were born,” and submitted what was termed a “representation” – clearly a tezkere – to the Grand Vizir, to the effect that the tartane was found “with Maltese colours hanging out,” that the “greatest part” of the seamen were Maltese and Livornese, “enemies to this Empire,” but that if the Grand Vizir so ordered it, he would set Grey and the English [sic] sailors at liberty and cause their tartane, and all that had been taken from them, to be restored.

26 Ibid. 15The outcome was that the Grand Vizir issued a further command that matters should be expedited in accordance with the Kapudan pasha’s representations, and accordingly a firmân was delivered to Sutton for the restitution of the tartane, and Grey with six English seamen were handed over to him. The ten Maltese and Italians from the tartane’s crew, however, were detained. Sutton thereupon presented another memorial to the Grand Vizir, demanding their release. A vizirial command was accordingly issued, “at sight whereof the Capitan Pasha promised to set them free,” but being then on the point of departure he procrastinated, first sending his kahya to the Porte, and then visiting the Grand Vizir himself, “and so managed the matter with him as to take the boldnesse to depart without executing his order.”

27 BL Add. MS 61535, f. 7-8. Sutton to Shrewsbury, Pera, 12 March 1706/7.

28 [Ahmed II]. Firmân to the [grand] vizir, the kapudan pasha Yusuf Pasha, and cadis of Izmir and Saki (...) 16The Kapudan pasha’s noncompliant attitude to the Grand Vizir’s order to release the Maltese and Italian members of the tartane’s crew should not occasion much surprise: Maltese piracy in the Archipelago was a constant problem for the Ottoman authorities. In March 1707 Sutton reported that “the Capitan pasha will go this summer with the Gallies & the greatest part of the ships into the Archipelago & Mediterranean, to keep those seas clear of the Maltese & gather the usual tribute from the islands.” On the other hand, there is plentiful evidence in both consular reports and the accounts of travellers that Ottoman attempts to prevent the depredations of Algerine corsairs against “Frankish,” more specifically English, shipping in the Archipelago and ashore at Izmir and elsewhere remained largely a dead letter.

*

29 Cf. the contemporary Italian translation of a slightly later ‘arzuhal of Ibrahim, cadi of Izmir, ad (...)

(...) 30 PRO SP 105/335 (Izmir Consulate Turkish Entry Book), f. 48 v°, 1: 25 Muh. 1102/19/29 Oct. 1690: Tra (...)

(...) 31 [William Raye] to the kapudan pasha Yûsuf Pasha, Izmir, 30 Oct. 1692 [OS], Contemporary Italian tra (...) 17What then can be said concerning Ottoman attitudes to the piracy or privateering which was carried on in “their” waters and particularly in and around the islands of the Archipelago? A clear distinction seems to have been made by the Ottomans between English (or British) privateers across the spectrum of legality and the British crews of such vessels, all of which seem generally to have been treated with leniency, even with indulgence; and privateers and crews (or part-crews) of southern European (scil. Catholic/Spanish, Italian or Maltese) origins. These last were regarded as harbî kâfirler, inveterate enemies of the Porte, their ships to be hunted down by Ottoman galleys, their nationals, wherever encountered, even on “friendly” vessels, to be enslaved and sent to serve in the Ottoman fleet. On the other hand, the Ottoman attitude to the maritime participants in King William’s War, France on the one side, and England and the United Provinces on the other, was one of studied neutrality and a desire to keep out of the conflict, whatever the current ascendancy at the Porte of one or the other side. Evidence for this can be gathered from a buyuruldu from the kapudan pasha Hüseyn Pasha, addressed to the cadi, commissioner for customs (gümrük emini) and police chief (voyvoda) of Izmir in October 1690, prohibiting the embarkation of Muslims on Allied – i.e. Dutch and English – ships (le Navi de’ Confederati) in view of the state of war “amongst the Infidels,” it having been noted at the Porte that whenever ships belonging to one side were seized by the other, any Muslims on board the captured vessel were enslaved and their merchandize taken as prize, and that the ambassadors of the said powers resident at the Porte were unable either to prevent this happening or to secure the liberation of the slaves. This view was shared by at least the English, on the evidence of an ‘arz from Consul Raye to the then kapudan pasha Yûsuf Pasha, dated October 1692, requesting that the provisions of the earlier buyuruldu be strictly enforced.

32 PRO HCA 26/3. The ships in question were 1°) the Cheisly Galley (15 May 1696, f. 83); 2°) the Trumb (...)

(...) 33 PRO HCA 26/3, f. 83.

34 The other owners of the De Grave were Sir Alexander Rigby, Stephen Pembury, John de Graves, Samuel (...) 18In the last fourteen months of the Nine Years’ War five armed merchantmen known to have operated in Aegean waters can be identified in the pages of the relevant Letter of Marque Register. All were well armed. The Cheisly Galley (Capt. John Mayne, 220 tons, 50 men), licensed for “one voyage to Newfoundland and the Streights and back,” carried (in addition to victuals for eight months) 20 guns, 15 barrels of powder, 15 rounds of great shot, and 250 weight of small shot (i.e., for each gun), and 50 small arms. The Trumbull Galley (Capt. Henry Duffield) was larger than the Cheisly by fifty per cent: 330 tons and 80 men, licensed for “one voyage to Smyrna and back again to England,” victualled for twelve months and carrying 30 guns, 20 barrels of powder, 20 rounds of great shot, a hundredweight of small shot and 50 small arms. Vastly larger than the Trumbull was the De Grave, whose burthen tonnage of 880 exceeded by 130 tons that of the Blackham, the Cheisly and the Trumbull combined. The De Grave, whose first-named owner was Sir Richard Blackham, the eponymous “chief owner” of the Blackham Galley, carried a crew of 200. Licensed for one voyage to the Straits and return, she carried a formidable armament of 52 guns, backed by 100 barrels of powder, 18 rounds of great shot, “about 5 Tons” of small shot and 80 small arms.

35 PRO HCA 26/3 , t. 150.

36 PRO HCA 26/3, f. 164. By the time the Blackham encountered the Delavall at Messina on her own homew (...) 19In the final weeks of the war, when the diplomats gathered at Ryswick were already in the last stages of their negotiations, letters of marque were issued for the last two Levant merchantmen to appear in the Nine Years’ War Letters of Marque Registers. The Mermaid Galley, Capt. Ralph Thorpe, carrying 12 months’victuals and licensed on 18 June 1697 for “one voyage to the Straits and back againe,” was of much the same size and armament as the Trumbull: 320 tons, with 22 guns and four patereroes, 26 barrels of powder, 20 rounds of great shot, four hundredweight of small shot, and 50 small arms. Finally, on 20 July 1697, the last entry in the register is for the Delavall Galley. The Delavall, commanded by the ill-starred Jonas Cock, was licensed for one voyage to Lisbon and the Straits. Ten days later, on 29 July, “pursuant to a warrant from the Lords of the Admiralty,” the licence was revoked.

37 PRO HCA 30/774.

38 PRO HCA 30/774, f. 222, 231, 245. The Panther (by then under Captain Robert Robinson, and listed as (...) 20Of the prizes taken in these last years of the war by some of the English vessels mentioned, some notice may be taken. In the Nine Years’ War Prize List the Panther, under the bellicose Captain Samuel Fuller, is recorded as capturing the St. Dominique (Captain Joseph Viard) and the St. Thérèse (Captain Francis Rondon), taken into Livorno on 7 December 1696; the Trumbull, acting in consort with the Clowdisley Galley (Captain George Matthews) took the Jesus Maria Santa Anna, a small vessel of 30 tons carrying spirits, tallow, hide, and beeswax, which they brought into Messina on 24 February 1697.

39 PRO SP 105/155, f. 191 (old p. 383). 21The belligerent activities in Ottoman waters of the armed merchantmen chartered out of London was not always welcome to the conservative, not to say timid, elements of the Levant Company. The Court of Assistants – effectively its board of directors – worked themselves up into a fine lather at their meeting on 27 October 1696, in response to news that a certain Captain Pickering had taken a French ship, the Madonna di Carmine (Captain Boysson), out of “Lymasol on the island of Cyprus,” an act which it “was apprehended may prove of dangerous consequence to the Company.”

40 Ibid.

41 PRO SP 105/115, Levant Company to Paget, 16 June 1697. 22The response of the Court of Assistants was to put in a caveat at the Admiralty to stop the condemnation of the Madonna di Carmine as legitimate prize and, taking advice from Sir William Trumbull, the company’s governor, to seek to approach the king and furnish him with copies of earlier memorials “formerly presented to their Excellencies the Lords Justices’ concerning the ships [scil. English privateers] armed out of Leghorn.” The affair of Captain Pickering and the Madonna di Carmine was to rumble on until the end of the war. In June 1697 the Levant Company wrote to Paget that the French, “by their Interest [at the Ottoman court] and Importunity,” and despite the king’s message and a favourable report drawn up by the anglophile Kapudan Pasha Mezzomorto Hüseyn Pasha, had prevailed with the francophile grand vizir Elmas Mehmed Pasha to insist the restoration of the Madonna di Carmine and her cargo. The Company urged Paget to ensure that it was not rendered liable to answer “these Demands,” bringing up the still unconcluded dispute over the seizure of the Serpent ketch and the old rankling business of the Swan, a “ship richly laden,” taken in 1689 by a French man of war “out of the road[stead] of Milo,” for which “great loss” no redress was ever obtained, despite Sir William Trumbull’s efforts with the grand vizir and the kaymakam of the time.

42 Ibid. 23For the Levant Company, Ottoman territorial limits were, in a real sense of the term, off-limits. In relation to what it termed “the affairs of the limits of the Grand Signior’s Ports,” in the last weeks of the war it reiterated its view that this was “merely a matter of state and so out of our sphere to intermedle with,” asking Paget to refer to the king’s instructions to him, Trumbull, as governor of the company, having put Paget’s letter to him into the hands of Shrewsbury, desiring him to recommend it to the king.

43 PRO SP 105/1 15, Levant Company to Consul Raye (Smyrna), 28 Sept. 1697.

44 Ibid. Levant Company to Sherman, 28 Sept. 1697. Paget had drawn a warrant on Sherman for $ 6000 for (...)

(...) 45 PRO SP 105/155. Levant Company to Consul Raye, 28 Sept. 1697. Cf. Company to Smith, treasurer at Iz (...)

(...) 46 Ibid.

47 See PRO SP 110/88.

48 See above, n. 11.

49 Cf. PRO SP 105/334 (Izmir Consulate Turkish Entry-Book), f. 48 r°, contemporary Italian translation (...) 24On the other hand, the Company could be philosophical over what it termed “the troubles and inconveniencys our affairs are brought under by reason of severall French ships taken by our Privateers.” Late in September 1697, at the very end of the war, when the Blackham incident had caused Paget to journey hurriedly to Edirne, “whither his Lordship was suddainly called by the importune clamours of the French upon the taking severall of their Ships by our Privatiers,” the Company observed, in a letter to Sherman, treasurer of the English factory at Istanbul, that “we do not see how it [scil. English privateering] can be prevented during the continuance of the warr." On the same day the Company wrote approvingly to Consul Raye at Izmir: “you did well in giving your best assistance to Captain Newnam to defend him against the violent proceedings of the Turks,” adding that “we doubt not you continue to do so farr as you could conveniently, but at his own charge and expense.” The Company also approved of Raye procuring hüccets in favour of Captain Fuller regarding the manner of his taking “the French ship” near Foca, “as we hope may secure us against all demands on that account.” The Ottoman islands – speaking here of the Archipelago – seem to be a half-way world, in the Ottoman empire but not entirely of it, when compared with the surrounding littoral of the Aegean. It is not surprising, for example, that English merchant vessels outbound were searched for escaped slaves or contraband at the Dardanelles, before exiting the Straits into the Aegean, firmans being issued to the commandants of the castles there giving clearance for a particular vessel. It is not surprising either that the affair of the Blackham Galley involved English privateering in Ottoman territorial waters but specifically in insular ones. One may contrast these situations with that at Izmir, where English men of war lay off “the Castle” – i.e., the castle at Sancak Burnu, known to European mariners as St Jacamore’s Castle -, a menacing presence but, as observed earlier, under strict orders not to act against French merchant vessels coming in and out of the port. Joseph Blondel, the French consul at Izmir in the early years of King William’s War, clearly thought otherwise, and sought to involve the local Ottoman authorities in initiating action at the Porte against the English. On the other hand, there is the example of the Panther lying in wait off Foca for a rich French vessel, and sending its longboat into port at Izmir with violent threats against the French. At Izmir, too, legal proceedings could be instituted and enforced by the Ottoman authorities against the Blackham, something which the muhâfiz of Tenedos had clearly been either unwilling or unable to do in the heat of the incident which precipitated the Blackham’s later arrest.

25One other question, which as far as I am aware had not been raised, is why the Ottomans themselves hardly ever followed the example of their co-religionists and nominal subjects in Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, and themselves permitted the financing by locally-based armateurs of licensed commerce raiding as practised by Barbary corsairs, Dutch, English, French and Maltese alike in the waters around the Aegean islands. Alone of the Mediterranean states, great and small, the Ottomans seem not to have engaged in or licensed commerce raiding, and one must ask why this was the case.

50 Cf. Barbour, “Privateers and pirates”; Bromley, “Outlaws at Sea”; Id., “The Channel Island privatee (...)

(...) 51 Slot, Archipelagus Turbatus , p. 195-202.

52 Looker, “Journall,” p. 130.

53 Ibid. On the connections of the Eatons at Izmir and later in England see Anderson, An English Consu (...)

(...) 54 Randolph, The Present State of the Islands , p. 32-33.

55 Looker’s phrase, “poor Rouges,” as applied to pirates reverberates at this period: a quarter of a c (...)

(...) 56 Looker, “Journall,” p. 37-39. Capt. Newnam’s humanity in this regard (as in others) seems to stand (...) 26In theory the Aegean archipelago, with its dispersed islands, economically challenged but potentially enterprising populations, and hidden anchorages athwart major shipping routes to and from Istanbul and Izmir, should have been an ideal breeding ground for enterprising armateurs. Parallels may be drawn with, for example, the armateurs of the Channel Islands, who played such a significant role with their small fast vessels in the guerre de course against Louis XIV, or the pirates and buccaneers of the Caribbean. Both groups were island-based, both operated from bases where metropolitan sovereignty was at best mediated through quasi-autonomous local institutions, or at worst was virtually non-existent. In fact, there is considerable evidence that there was local privateering, Muslim as well as Christian, in the Archipelago, as Ben Slot has amply documented. Nonetheless, more can be said, and there is evidence, as yet not fully explored, that the tentacles of privateering spread deep into the “legitimate” English merchant community in Turkey. Below-stairs gossip can help: one day in July 1697 John Looker, on board the Blackham Galley at the time at anchor in the port of Izmir, records in his “Journall” the arrival there of the English [vice-]consul at Milos, on business to see “Mr Eaton” on the account of the fire-eating master of the Panther, Captain Fuller. Eaton was one of the leading English merchants at Izmir; and Milos was a notorious pirate lair. Bernard Randolph, who had gained a detailed knowledge of the Archipelago in the course of his travels twenty years earlier, described Milos as a harbour where “Privateers do usually come to make up their Fleets, and it is most commonly their rendezvous at their first coming into the Archipelago” – “to almost the ruin of the island,” despite the privateers’ donations to the Capuchin church and convent there. According to Randolph, whose work was published in 1687, i.e. ten or more years after the events which he describes, “of late” the privateers “have not so much frequented it.” For Randolph, “privateers” vessels were all clearly either Maltese or Livornese; not surprisingly, therefore, in February 1697 Captain Newnam and the Blackham had encountered at Milos Maltese cruisers and their raggle-taggle and half-starved crews, “a parcell of poor hungry Rouges [sic],” people “no better than pirates,” as James Looker described them. Captain Newnam had haled their commanders on board the Blackham for close interrogation, and had concluded, in face of the threadbare nature of their explanations and the decidedly dubious ships’ papers which they proffered, that though they were indeed French subjects, they were poor, reduced to the extremities of existence. Accordingly, with a becoming humanity, he let them go. Here, however, is a nexus of connections which certainly needs to be investigated further.