Pirates & Privateers: Adam Nichols's Books

Corsairs and Captives: Narratives from the Age of the Barbary Pirates
by Adam Nichols
Pen & Sword, 2024, ISBN 978-1-03610-607-2, US $40.00 / UK £25.00

He serves in the English navy, but rumors lead him on a path of piracy. No longer welcome in his homeland, he heads to Tunis. A single haul labels him the most successful corsair there, and pamphlet writers dub him “archpirate” because of his fearlessness and brutality. His name is John Ward.

Nicholas chooses the sea to seek his fortune. Instead, he finds himself enslaved. To escape this misery, he renounces Christianity and becomes an adherent of Islam. Being a renegade gives him the freedom to sail, which provides him with an opportunity to return home to France, where his conversion means he has to live a lie or hide. Farming proves not his forte, so he returns to the sea, where he is captured once again and recognized as a renegade.

Her ship captured by Barbary corsairs in 1756, Ellen Marsh finds herself a captive deemed worthy of a Moroccan prince. A friend poses as her husband to stave off the prince’s advances until she and her “husband” are ransomed. She later writes of her experiences as The Female Captive.

These are but three people who encounter Barbary corsairs during the nearly three centuries in which these privateers prowl the waters of the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean. Although these marauders act like pirates, their attacks are legally sanctioned by rulers of the Barbary city states for which they sail: Algiers, Salé, Tripoli, and Tunis. They seize a wide variety of plunder, but the most prized booty are the captives of all ages who end up as slaves to rulers and residents of North Africa.

Adam Nichols writes in his introduction, “Most of the stories told about pirates are exaggerations at best; at worst, they are romantic fabrications. . . . As a result, Barbary corsairs, and the world in which they operated, are often depicted in an oversimplified, distorted way.” (viii) His goal here is to correct these misinterpretations and falsehoods by showing these privateers in a more realistic manner through first-hand narratives, written by those who witness Barbary captives and/or experience life as one.

The book consists of two parts: Narratives and Narrative Texts. Narratives is divided into three distinct segments. “Corsairs” examines the privateering business, including methods, economics, and risks. “Captives” delves into the victims, focusing on specific encounters for which primary accounts exist. One of these recounts the capture of Jacob in 1621, where four sailors find themselves prisoners of Barbary corsairs during a storm. Two others discuss Friar Antonio, a clergyman who falls in love, while a Trinitarian friar named Pierre Dan is sent to Algiers by Cardinal Richelieu to negotiate the release of French slaves. The third segment, “Corsair Captains,” introduces individual leaders, such as Simon Danseker, Calafat Hassan, John Ward, and Claes Compaen.

Eight narrative texts comprise the second part of this book. These include “Captain John Smith on Pirates and Renegades,” “Captain Henry Mainwaring on the Suppression of Piracy,” “The Narrative of João De Carvalho Macarenhas: Captured at Sea by Algerine Corsairs,” “Father Pierre Dan on the Slave Market in Algiers,” “Filippo Pananti: Narrative of a Residence in Algiers,” “The Odyssey of René Du Chastelet des Boys,” “Francis Brooks: Barbarian Cruelty,” and “Elizabeth Marsh: The Female Captive.” Each begins with a brief setup, including the reason for its selection.

The final chapter, “The View from the Other Shore,” explains why other books on this subject have fallen short, which results in readers assuming that “North Africans were inhuman brutes, while Europeans were innocents cruelly wronged.” (206) Both groups commit brutalities and engage in human trafficking. By concentrating on accounts written by those who experience or witness the events, Nichols provides readers with a truer picture of what occurs during this turbulent time in history.

A center plate section includes pictures of places, people (officials as well as those who were enslaved), ships, and the treatment of slaves. There is a bibliography but no index.

In the introduction, Nichols writes, “Buried in the dry chronologies are human stories filled with pathos and danger, fear and bravery, betrayal and friendship – and love. The original sources just need a bit of editing to bring out the story element in them.” (ix) He is upfront about having edited the original accounts to some degree. Some may object to this, but his goal is not to provide another tome for serious scholars; instead, he succeeds in providing readers with informative, readable, and compelling true first-person stories that show the reality and complexity of the strife between North Africans and Europeans. Equally noteworthy are that some of these primary accounts have not appeared in English before, and that Nichols includes tidbits of information not found in other books on the Barbary corsairs and how they operated.

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