Under the Bloody Flag (49 page)

The activities of unruly or unlicensed reprisal ships aroused a clamour of overseas protest. During the second half of the 1590s the council was faced with a stream of complaints from foreign merchants and shipowners against unlawful depredation or piracy. The nature of the problem is indicated by a sample of cases heard by the council from January to June 1596. During these months, among a wide range of other business, it dealt with grievances concerning the seizure or spoil of at least nine foreign vessels. Four of these ships were of French origin, while the rest were of Dutch or north European background. In most cases their capture was apparently justified by letters of reprisal, though the owners of goods aboard a ship of St Malo, taken during a return voyage from Lisbon, denied that it was lawful prize. Indeed, the spoil of two other French vessels led the council to issue warrants for the arrest of those involved, who it accused of piracy. In at least two cases an attack on neutral ships was accompanied by outrageous behaviour and conduct. Thus the
Jonas
of Rotterdam, returning from Malaga with a lading of sugar, wine and raisins, was violently boarded by Captain Morrice and his company, in a man-of-war set forth by Sir Thomas Norris. At some stage during this encounter, in obscure circumstances, the master and crew of the Dutch vessel were all slain, while the cargo was taken to Limerick to be sold. In a separate incident Captain Webb, in command of the
Minion
of Bristol, seized a ship of Danzig returning from Lisbon, the master and company of which were tortured and then cast overboard.
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The complaints heard by the council included an example of sharp practice by an experienced captain, which may have been commonplace. It concerned the seizure of a Dutch vessel off Santo Domingo in the Caribbean, by Captain Thomas West. The prize was laden with a rich cargo of ginger and other commodities, valued at £15,000, which was returned to England. But the High Court of Admiralty was unable to proceed with the case, because the bills of lading and other documents from the vessel had been dispersed by West to others, who he refused to identify, ‘albeit his examinacion was taken upon oathe’.
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The range of grievances which came to the attention of the council reveals the opportunism and tactical versatility of the captains of many men-of-war. Nor was unlawful plunder or sharp practice restricted to the wilder element among the promoters of reprisal ventures. The council heard repeated complaints from Dutch, German and French traders against captains serving under Cumberland. In December 1597 it ordered the restoration of the cargoes of two Hamburg vessels, only to discover that some of the goods had been sold secretly. With little sign of any lessening in the disorder, special commissioners were appointed to deal with the spoil of friends and allies, though they had little success in limiting the damage at sea, particularly when it was the result of ventures involving high-ranking or well-connected officials. During the closing years of the war persistent allegations of unlawful plunder were heard by the council against Sir John Gilbert, captain of the fort at Plymouth, the son of Sir Humphrey Gilbert and the nephew of Ralegh, with whom he sailed to Guiana in 1595. Gilbert was involved in reprisal venturing with Ralegh and Cecil, and occasionally as an associate with Richard Drake, an esquire of the Queen’s stable. At various times between 1600 and 1603 he was embroiled in suits before the High Court of Admiralty involving the plunder of Scottish, Dutch, German and Italian goods. In September 1601 he sought the assistance of Cecil in a case which had dragged on for three years, involving a contested claim to booty ‘for more than I am worth’.
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Cecil, unlike his father, was also engaged in several irregular ventures to the coast of Spain and into the Mediterranean as a partner with the Lord Admiral.

These ventures demonstrated the way in which powerful officials effectively subverted or ignored the regulations governing the sea war, exploiting their own and the Queen’s resources in voyages for public and private purposes. During 1597 Captain Martin Bredgate was sent out in the
Truelove
on a trading voyage to Barbary, with instructions from Cecil to seek ‘intelligence and purchase’ along the Spanish coast.
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The vessel had been recently constructed for Cecil and the Lord Admiral, who authorized Bredgate to dispose of prizes in north Africa if they were not worth returning to England. Bredgate’s associates included Richard Gyfford, who was involved in several subsequent ventures in the Mediterranean promoted by Cecil and others, which aroused angry complaints of piracy.

It was within the Mediterranean that the slippage between disorderly privateering and piracy became an acute problem, provoking anger from neutral traders. English predators of varying shades of legality made a distinct contribution to a long-standing pattern of war, slave raiding, commerce and corsair enterprise, in which the hostility between Christendom and Islam was qualified by other rivalries. The opportunistic incursions of raiders cruising along the coasts of Spain and Portugal, initially restricted to the western Mediterranean, were overtaken during the later 1590s by more purposeful and aggressive raiding by men-of-war who ranged further east, attracted by the prospect of rich, vulnerable prizes of dubious legality, trading with Turkey and the Levant. The activities of these adventurers were facilitated by access to the ports of north Africa, where rulers welcomed potential allies against Spain. In exchange for a levy or tax, the regents of the Barbary ports provided English rovers with overseas bases and markets, creating the means for a flourishing trade in plunder and prisoners.

These borderland encounters represented a new departure for the development of English depredation. While access to overseas havens had far-reaching implications, encouraging the growth of Mediterranean piracy after 1604, the association with Turkish rulers and their agents provoked moral opprobrium, engendered by fears of English rovers and pirates ‘turning Turk’.
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Closer contact with Barbary failed to break down such suspicion and hostility, which were reinforced by the growing use of sermons and collections in London and elsewhere in support of the redemption of captives in Turkish imprisonment. The Turkish connection thus helped to weaken support and sympathy for piracy within England in the aftermath of the war with Spain.

Among the earliest English adventurers to venture into the Mediterranean during the war was Edward Glenham. An ambitious but inexperienced captain, Glenham sold his estate in Suffolk to support a venture to the Canary Islands, which led to a raid on the Azores. Thereafter the voyage became increasingly disorderly and piratical. The capture of a rich Venetian vessel laden with sugar within the Mediterranean may have laid the basis for Glenham’s subsequent indictment for piracy. A second voyage of 1594 was another failure. Short of supplies, Glenham put into Algiers where he ‘unnaturally’ left eight of his men ‘in pawne for victualles’.
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But he died too poor to redeem them. Consequently, the council authorized a collection for their redemption, though they remained in captivity at least until 1600, by which time several had been released after converting to Islam.

The activities of rogue adventurers like Glenham provoked alarm in Venice, whose rulers were concerned at the wider threat to their commercial interests. Alarm turned to outrage during the later 1590s as an increasing number of men-of-war invaded the Mediterranean. In December 1597, the Venetian ambassador in France complained to the English agent of piracies and violence committed by English vessels within the jurisdiction of the republic. By 1598 the Venetian ambassador in Spain warned that ‘the English, not content with piracy on the high seas, are thinking of the Mediterranean too, where they have begun to make themselves felt’.
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The danger seemed to increase with a report from Vienna, the following year, that the sultan in Constantinople had granted the English a port on the coast of Barbary for use against Spain. Though inaccurate, the use of the Barbary ports encouraged and sustained a growing number of disorderly predators who attacked friends and enemies.

By 1600 it was claimed that there were as many as thirty English men-of-war operating in the Mediterranean. In fact the number was inflated, possibly deliberately so. It seems to have been based on the confusion between trading vessels and rovers or pirates, particularly among the Venetians, whose complaints against the ‘villanous English’ were in part provoked by the threat to their trading interests in the Levant from London traders.
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Nonetheless, such uncertainty reflected a real problem which was beginning to reach the eastern Mediterranean. Within a busy trading region, crossed by well-armed English trading vessels capable of combining trade with plunder, unlawful depredation was a tempting, at times overwhelming, opportunity.

The voyage of the
David
of London during 1597 demonstrated the powerful appeal of such opportunities, encouraging opportunistic plunder, which appeared to confirm Italian suspicions that all English vessels sailing within the Mediterranean were corsairs or pirates. The ship was freighted by two London merchants, Thomas Offley and Edward Parris, for a trading voyage in the Levant. Sailing from Scanderoon to Zante in August, the English sighted and gave chase to a vessel close to the island of Crete. The latter was subsequently identified as the
St John Baptist
of Chios, which was bound from Ancona to Alexandria with several Italian merchants aboard. As the
David
gained on its quarry, a group of the company appeared to abandon the vessel, seeking to escape in a boat with a substantial amount of money. This was revealed when the English caught up with the boat, through the interpretation of one of the quartermasters who spoke some Italian. A mad scramble for booty ensued. Richard Willett, a servant of the merchants, later described how the members of the company of the
David
rushed to board the boat in such an unruly fashion that the master lost control, while some of the money was lost in the sea.
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The master, William Greene, struggled to reassert his authority and recover the money, by searching his company as they returned aboard the
David
. Philip Wistbrowe, the boatswain’s mate, who was one of the first to enter the boat, admitted to acquiring a bag of money and a cap nearly full of money, while having more hidden up his sleeve, though it was recovered by Greene. Although Wistbrowe managed to retain some of the booty, which he hid in a jar of water in the gunner’s room, it was later discovered by the master. The
St John Baptist
was rifled of any remaining money and allowed to depart with water, wine and some biscuit.

According to the quartermaster, who acted as an interpreter for his English companions, the master of the
St John Baptist
voluntarily confessed that most of the money was owned by Spaniards, except for 3,712 dollars which belonged to merchants of Florence. This was contradicted by one of the merchants aboard the plundered vessel, who insisted that only 1,500 ducats were Spanish owned; Florentine traders owned the rest. Faced with threats from the English that they would sink the vessel, however, the merchant admitted that he advised the master to say that the money was Spanish for fear of being cast overboard.
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One of the most striking features of this encounter, which was related in detail before the High Court of Admiralty, was the apparent disunity among the company of the
David
over the spoil of the
St John Baptist
and its boat. A servant acting for the owners of the English ship instructed the quartermaster to inform their victims ‘that they were merchants & used continuall trade in Italy & therefore would not offer wronge to eany Italians or take eany thinge from them’. While it was agreed to break off from the voyage, in order to return to England with at least two of the Italian merchants, the master, Greene, remained profoundly uneasy at the behaviour of some of his men. Several members of the crew described him as growing frantic or being troubled in mind after the spoil of the
St John Baptist
. Greene later claimed that ten days thereafter he ‘fell sicke and was disquieted with a feare in such sorte that he could not abide the money in his chist’; indeed, ‘he was in such a hatred therewith’ that he handed it over to the servants of the merchants.
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Even so, when the
David
put into Tunis during the return voyage for London, the master was among other members of the company who were ‘continually ashore & brought many things & spente much of the money in providing victuals for the ship & themselves’. At the same time the ruler of Tunis, the captain of the fort and the French consul all received gifts from the English mariners. During the stay at Tunis a warning from one of the Italian merchants, that the booty would have to be restored, provoked a dispute among the English, a group of whom were in favour of throwing their prisoners into the sea.
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Following the return of the
David
to London, the council was faced with angry complaints from Florence against the unjust and illegal spoil of the
St John Baptist
, amounting to losses of 32,000 crowns. Although the matter was handed over to the High Court of Admiralty, the council retained a close interest in the case to ensure that the Italians received compensation. Partly in response to such actions, in February 1599 the Queen issued a proclamation instructing English men-of-war sailing into the Mediterranean not to harm friendly shipping. In addition the declaration warned that anyone caught breaking bulk or disposing of plunder before legal proceedings would be executed as pirates.
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Yet the piratical conduct of English rovers within the Mediterranean persisted. As the lawlessness and disorder increased, the regime was faced with mounting Venetian grievances. The coastal waters of Provence and the Aegean Sea, between Zante and Crete, were favoured haunts for the English where they plundered Venetian and French shipping laden with cargoes of sugar, spices and silk. Venetian agents at Constantinople, moreover, continued to claim that they were unable to distinguish between English trading vessels and men-of-war. According to one report, ‘all of them were hampered with artillery, and provisioned for a year, even to the water, and in order that they might be handy in fighting they were kept clear, leaving not only the quarter deck but also the main deck, where goods are usually placed, free for the artillery’.
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