Wessex Society

August 28, 2023August 23, 2023

From Moscow To Murmansk: A Somerset Soldier On The Arctic Convoys (Part 2)

This article originally appeared in Wessex Chronicle Volume 15, Issue 2 (Summer 2014)

The story so far…

When war was declared in 1939, a 21-year-old Able Bodied Seaman from the Chew Valley in Somerset – my father, Charles Barrie Gunter – was aboard the battleship, HMS Rodney on patrol south of Iceland. From May 1942 to the end of the war, my father served on HMS Jamaica, a newly built cruiser, adopted by the city of Bristol, which acted as a distant escort in the frozen hell that was the Arctic Convoys until September 1944, providing cover for 13 convoys. Part 1 included his diary extract for one of those convoys in December 1942-
January 1943.

At the end of 1942 my father had been given compassionate leave to pay a final visit to his dying mother. On return to the fleet he missed his ship, HMS Jamaica, which had already sailed with convoy JW51A, and was instead deployed to the destroyer, HMS Oribi, covering the twin convoy JW51B. This meant that he missed the action in the Battle of the Barents Sea when Jamaica was one of the vessels engaged against the German heavy cruisers, Admiral Hipper and Lutzow, and six destroyers. By the end of 1943, in midwinter, Jamaica, this time with my father on board, was to play a critical part in another major confrontation well within the Arctic Circle.

Convoy JW55B, consisting of ten US and nine British merchant vessels had sailed from Liverpool on 20th December en route to Archangelsk. Jamaica was part of the Distant Covering Force with the battleship HMS Duke of York and four destroyers. On 22nd December, German air reconnaissance spotted the convoy, and the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst with five destroyers sailed out of her Norwegian fjord base on Christmas Day in Operation Ostfront aiming to intercept the convoy.

Unfortunately for the German fleet, their orders had been intercepted by British code-breakers. Convoy RA55A, sailing south from Russia, was also about to cross the path of the northward convoy. This allowed a short window of opportunity when the close escort vessels could share their tasks, freeing up some to join a strike force against Scharnhorst. In all, the British strike force included the battleship, HMS Duke of York, four cruisers and four destroyers. It had another advantage. British radar was more technically advanced than the German navy’s. Whereas the German equipment could only detect ships, the British system allowed them to identify the size of the vessels. Despite these advantages the Scharnhorst was a formidable opponent. She was faster – a top speed of 33 knots (61km/h) – more manoeuvrable and, alone, had more firepower than all the British ships lined up against her.

In bad weather, Admiral Erich Bey on the Scharnhorst had not been able to precisely locate the two convoys, so he divided his force, sailing north alone. At 08:40 on 26th December HMS Belfast had picked up Scharnhorst on her radar; by 09:41, HMS Sheffield had made visual contact. Under cover of snow, the British cruisers opened fire; the Battle of North Cape had begun. Joined by HMS Norfolk, the three British cruisers attacked, demolishing Scharnhorst‘s main radar aerial, leaving her unable to return accurate fire in low visibility.
Norfolk suffered some damage. Meanwhile HMS Jamaica and HMS Duke of York approached from the south west, barring the Scharnhorst’s way.

Despite suffering further hits Scharnhorst was able to use her superior speed to escape, only the small British destroyers were able to keep pace, hitting her with four torpedoes, slowing her progress. It still took until late afternoon before Jamaica and Duke of York caught up and battered Scharnhorst with gunfire. The battle raged until at 18:00 Scharnhorst‘s main gun battery went silent; at 18:20 another round from Duke of York destroyed a boiler room, reducing Scharnhorst‘s speed to about 22 knots (41km/h) and leaving her open to attack. Duke of York fired her 77th and final salvo at 19:28. Scharnhorst,
though crippled, continued to fight with her secondary armament still firing wildly as Jamaica and the destroyers closed and launched more torpedoes at 19:32. The last three torpedoes, fired by Jamaica at 19:37 from under two miles (3km) range, were the final crippling blow. The team responsible for those final, fatal shots were Petty Officer J O Mahoney, of Co Cork, J Beck, of Wakefield, R Polkinghorne, of Hayle, S Bell, of Thornaby and LTO (Leading Torpedo Operator) Charles Gunter of Chew Magna, Somerset – my father.

Torpedomen of HMS *Jamaica* who finally dispatched the *Scharnhorst*. C B Gunter at the right of the photograph. (official war photograph)

It had taken a total of 55 torpedoes and 2,195 shells to cripple the Scharnhorst. As the ship was sinking, all was calm and orderly on deck. Officers were helping hundreds of men over the rails; the captain checked all lifejackets and Admiral Bey shook hands with all the assembled officers. Scharnhorst sank at 19:45 hours on 26th December 1943. Of a total complement of 1,968 men, only 36 survivors – not one an officer – were rescued from the icy seas; three of those were named Gunter, a cruel irony of war.

Later that evening, Admiral Bruce Fraser briefed his officers on board Duke of York: “Gentlemen, the battle against Scharnhorst has ended in victory for us. I hope that if any of you are ever called upon to lead a ship into action against an opponent many times superior, you will command your ship as gallantly as Scharnhorst was commanded today”. The convoy completed its voyage with no losses.

In October 2000 the submerged wreck of the Scharnhorst was found by the Norwegian Navy. It lay 300m deep, 130kms NNE of North Cape; 9° north of the Arctic Circle (see illustration at top of page). It was probably the most northerly naval battle ever fought.

My father continued to serve on the Jamaica to the end of the Russian convoys and for another three years after the end of the war. The cruiser departed Devonport on 25th August 1946 on a tour of duty as part of the British East Indies Squadron. This tour included visits to Gibraltar, Malta, East Africa, the Maldives, India, Sri Lanka (Ceylon), Malaya and Singapore, Indonesia, Mauritius, the Seychelles, Zanzibar and South Africa – a tour that lasted 26 months and covered a total of 69,713 miles. After all those years in the frozen north he seems to have reaped his reward.

August 20, 2023August 23, 2023

From Mendip to Murmansk: A Somerset Sailor on the Arctic Convoys (part 1)

This article originally appeared in Wessex Chronicle Volume 15, Issue 1 (Spring 2014)

The battleship, HMS Rodney – the flag ship of the C-in-C Home Fleet – was on patrol south of Iceland at 11:22 on the morning of 3rd September 1939 when the message was received that Britain was at war with Germany. Amongst the 1,640 crew hearing that message was a 21 year old Able Bodied Seaman from East Harptree in Somerset – my father, Charles Barrie Gunter.

This voyage, his first experience of colder northern waters, having previously spent six years sailing the Mediterranean, was to be just a taster for the next six years in the frozen hell that was the Arctic Convoys. And to think, he had run away to sea to escape the prospect of falling into the hell that was his father’s life as a miner in the north Somerset coalfield (including mines owned by the Rees-Mogg family, one of whom, Jacob, is the current MP for the area). With the announcement that all sailors who saw action north of the Arctic Circle during the war were to be recognised and awarded the Arctic Star, I started to research my father’s records, which included his own account of one particular voyage.

From the outbreak of war, Rodney (and my dad) patrolled off Norway, Denmark and Iceland to keep shipping lanes open. Then, on 8th April 1940 Germany invaded neutral Norway – beating a planned but delayed Allied invasion by seven days. This intensified actions along the Norwegian coast. On the 9th, manoeuvring just outside the Arctic Circle, Rodney was hit by a 500kg bomb dropped by a Ju88 dive bomber. The bomb struck on the port side abaft the funnel; an ammunition locker deflected the bomb and split the fuse from the explosive. The body then passed through the boat deck hitting a table at which two midshipmen were sitting. The bomb then continued down into an engineering store where it broke and where its explosive charge caused a fire. Apart from the structural damage and a small fire, only 10 sailors were injured.

On 12th April 1940 my father crossed the Arctic Circle for the first of many times. On 10th May, the UK and Canada invaded Iceland to prevent a German occupation that would have put trans-Atlantic supply routes in peril. An inlet on Iceland’s eastern seaboard, Seyðisfjorður, was later to play a major role in the Arctic Convoys.

Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22nd June 1941. Acting on Stalin’s demand that the western Allies provide supplies, the Arctic Convoys were commenced. The first convoy sailed in September 1941. The route passed through a narrow funnel between the Arctic ice pack and German bases in Norway. From the start the convoys were attacked by German submarines, aircraft and warships. One convoy, the infamous PQ17, was almost totally destroyed. The merchant vessels were not just British but included American, Canadian, Panamanian, Polish and Russian ones, some quite small – about 3,000 tons (compared with the 17,000 tons of the container vessel featured in the movie Captain Phillips). Escort vessels were also drawn from the navies of all the major allies. Many Soviet vessels sailed
alongside their British and American counterparts.

From May 1942 to the end of the war, my father served on HMS Jamaica, a newly built cruiser, which was adopted by the city of Bristol. It acted as a distant escort on Arctic Convoys from September 1942 until September 1944, providing cover for 13 convoys. That’s 13 times patrolling up the coast of Nazi-occupied Norway, crossing the Arctic Circle, and sailing into Murmansk or Arkhangelsk in the far north of Russia. Conditions were among the worst faced by any Allied sailors. As well as the Germans, they faced extreme cold, gales, and pack ice. The loss rate for ships was higher than any other allied convoy route. Even so, over four million tons of supplies were delivered to the Russians, including tanks, aircraft, ammunition, trucks, tractors, telephone wire, railway engines, food and boots. To spice things up a little more, most convoys were in the winter in order to take advantage of the cover of darkness and bad weather which, it was thought, would hamper German attacks

In December 1942, my father was granted compassionate leave to pay one last visit to his mother, dying of cancer at just 53 years of age. He started his return journey to Scapa Flow on Orkney on 15th December but arrived just in time to see his ship leave harbour without him.

My father was switched to the destroyer Oribi (adopted by Havant) for one convoy – JW51. This was a large convoy and was split into 2; A & B. Jamaica had left Scapa Flow on 17th December as escort for JW51A; Oribi was assigned as a close escort to JW51B. The “B” Convoy comprised 15 merchant ships from the UK, USA and Panama. In their holds were 2,046 vehicles, 202 tanks, 87 crated fighter planes, 33 crated bombers, 11,600 tons of fuel oil, 12,650 tons of aviation fuel, and 54,000 tons of other equipment and supplies.

It became the target for a major German naval campaign (Operation Regenbogen – Rainbow) involving the heavy cruisers, Admiral Hipper and Lutzow, and six destroyers. It led to the Battle of the Barents Sea on 31st December 1942 in which two British warships – the destroyer Achates and the minesweeper Bramble – and the Kriegsmarine destroyer Friedrich Eckholdt – were sunk. But 13 of the original 15 merchant ships arrived with their essential cargoes.

My father’s account of this convoy tells only part of the story. Wartime censorship meant that he had to omit many details but even so it makes intriguing reading:

– RETURNING FROM LEAVE 1942 –

Left Bristol T.M. 08:00 Tuesday 15/12/42
arrive Thurso 09:00 Wednesday 16th
Had breakfast in Town Hall and caught bus to jetty where papers were
inspected.
depart Thurso 11:00 Wednesday 16th
arrive Scapa Flow 14:30
H.M.S. Dunluce Castle for distribution
H.M.S. Iron Duke (transit) from 1830 Wed. 16th – 21st Mon.
depart Tues 22nd 04:00 from Scapa in HMS Oribi for Iceland
arrive Iceland 15:30 23rd Thurs at Sadys Fjord
depart Iceland 23:00 24th from Sadys Fjord

(This was Seyðisfjorður, commonly referred to as Sadys Fjord by British
sailors.)

Christmas Day : Weather not too bad, doing fairly good speed. Picked up with convoy 25th Friday during hours of darkness (normal grub). Weather gradually getting worse, heavy swell, on 26th following sea very heavy.
22:15 26th: just had drink of cocoa brought to us while doing D/C sentry of first watch and was pouring cup out for myself when ship gave extra heavy lurch to starboard which upset me through deck being slippery and me wearing leather sea-boots; split head on deck pretty badly, (needed four stitches and some skin cut away, also part of eyebrow). Ended up with feet out through guardrails and knocked out for couple of seconds.
Speed 8 knots since joining convoy.
27th: weather getting worse still; very cold, guns beginning to freeze up, deck covered with ice. 33 degrees F (0.5°C).
28th: 8 knots, weather worse, 12 degrees F (-11.0°C).
29th: 8 knots, weather at highest yet, 26 degrees F (-3.3°C). 12:00 lost convoy.
30th: Doing 18 knots trying to find convoy. Ice and snow on decks and everywhere very bad. Hands turned-to to chip all off that’s possible. Weather very bad. Lost motor boat and davits overboard about 07:00. No guard-rails from break of fo’c’sle to tubes. Ship did 63 degree roll on losing boat to starboard. At 09:30 one Able Seaman washed overboard and another taken outboard on one wave and brought back In the next. Spent 55 minutes trying to find man overboard, but useless. Ship rolling terribly badly owing to overweight of ice. Hands not allowed to use the upper decks, those changing watches to go in bunches; p.m. D/C watchkeepers decide to stay aft all night. Speed about 12 knots.
31st: entered harbour at 08:00. Went alongside jetty, had first walk on Russian soil during forenoon. Air raid in progress whilst going up harbour. Temperature 9°F (-13.0°C). Saw Russian subs like young battle ships. Change billets; fog; hands chip ice; 4°F (-15.5°C).

(The distant escort vessels, including Jamaica were on this day engaged in the
Battle of the Barents Sea; while Oribi and the close escort vessels steamed
ahead with the merchant vessels.)

1st Jan: Hands chip ice. 4°F (-15.5°C).
2nd Jan: Very foggy. 2°F (-16.7°C). Had Christmas dinner of turkeys,
spuds, peas and then plum pudding and custard.
3rd Jan: Temperature 1 degree below zero. Hands still chipping during light hours. Foggy. Air-raid warning during afternoon.
4th Jan: Foggy. 4 degrees F. Two air-raid warnings.

(Gap in journal)

(The gap in the journal masks the fact that the official Admiralty Board of Inquiry into the loss of HMS Achates and HMS Bramble took place on-board Oribi at this time.)

Jan 10th: Alongside oiler 600 tons, benzene. Bombed from high level.
Struck oiler. Killed two outright, one more died on stretcher. Two died
in sickbay onboard. Carried out dead ones from sick bay to side of
fo’c’sle for boat alongside. Had to lift one fellow who had just died, all
his back was smashed and pulpy and soaked in blood, my hands and
arms covered with blood.
Jan 14th: Left Polyarna for [Iceland] (journal ends).

Part 2 will deal with the Battle of North Cape.

September 19, 2019September 9, 2019

Cross and Crescent in Wessex Seas, part 2

For International Talk Like A Pirate Day, we present the second part of this article. Part 1 can be found here.

When peace was declared with England’s enemies, privateers at a loose end slipped easily into straightforward piracy. In 1609, Captain Thomas Salkeld, a heavy-drinking reprobate from Barnstaple, became known as the Pirate King of Lundy, after seizing the island and enslaving prisoners from captured shipping. Despite many bitter experiences in the 1620s, Barnstaple gave licence to 8 shipowners, who between them operated 14 ships. Whatever measures were employed were very unsuccessful. in ending the chaotic mayhem in the Bristol Channel. in 1627, another illegal occupier of the Isle of Puffins was Jan Janszoon, a Dutch renegade who hoisted an Ottoman flag over his ill-gotten occupation.

In 1627, a ship’s boy from Minehead, whose name, unfortunately, was not recorded, was captured by raiding “Turks” (as we saw in part 1, the name “Turks” was applied indiscriminately to people from North Africa and the Near East). He was taken to Algiers, pressed into service, and forcibly converted to Islam. He was eventually freed at sea by an English warship, still wearing Muslim attire. He was chastised by local clergy for not becoming a martyr to his faith, and made to undergo a service of penance by local clergy. On a Sunday in May 1628, he was apparently subjected to long, pedantic and, to him, incomprehensible sermons by priests from Bagborough and Luccombe, under the watchful eye of the Bishop of Bath and Wells.

In 1649, Robert Blake, the redoubtable Parliamentary defender of Taunton in the Civil War, was appointed Admiral by Cromwell. In that same year, the depredations of the Barbary pirates was so severe that it was enacted that one shilling in every pound paid in customs duty was to be allocated to the redemption of captives.

Earlier in 1646, there had been negotiations in Algiers led by Edmond Cason, a representative of the Barbary Company. to purchase the release of 244 prisoners of the Bey. These negotiations were followed by the treacheries, misunderstandings and violations which then characterised the politics of both Christian and Muslim powers in the Mediterranean.

Blake’s duties in the Mediterranean initially focussed on warfare with the Dutch, and a watching brief on the likely hostile acts of both France and Spain, However, when Blake learned in 1654 of a great concentration of Corsair vessels at Tunis, he requested authority to “sieze, surprise and sink and destroy all ships belonging to the King of Tunis that we shall meet.” He “stayed not for an answer”, but arrived at La Goulette, the port of Tunis, on 7 February 1655. There he found no great concentration of ships, and his requests to the ruling Bey for the return of the captured ship Princess and the release of captives were rudely refused. After some reconnoitring and revictualling in Sicily, he located nine well-protected Corsair ships at Porto Farina, a Tunisian arsenal, and these he set effectively on fire, destrying all with the loss of only 25 English lives.

It is almost impossible to comprehend the mixture of appeasement and aggression used in relations with the Corsair ports. Sometimes England had recognized consular officials operating in places like Algiers at the same time as captured English slaves were being tortured in nearby prisons. In 1628, soon after the accession of Charles I, a royal proclamation was issued demanding that the Corsair ports and their ships shuld be immune from any attacks by English vessels. This craven surrender excited enormous indignation in suffering ports such as Exeter, Plymouth and Dartmouth. One petition blamed the Jews who financed many lucrative piratic operations from North Africa. Seemingly no faith was entirely unable to avoid being drawn into the conflict.

As the Stuart monarchs Charles II and James I were keen sailors, and in James’s case a competent admiral, it must have been especially irksome that their efforts to deal with the problem were largely unsuccessful. However, during Charles’s reign, in 1675, a naval expedition led by Rear-Admiral Sir John Narborough managed to negotiate a treaty with Tunis, and to bombard Tripoli into submission.

Fot the next century, British ships were largely protected from the depredations of Barbary corsairs. But once the United States of America broke free from British rule, they lost the protection that went with it. In 1784, Morocco, which had been the first nation to recognise the USA, became the first nation to sieze one of its vessels, the brigantine Betsey. The Spanish government managed to negotiate the release of the hostages, but the repercussions lead to the realisation that the US Revenue-Marine (forerunner to the present-day coastguard) was not sufficient to protect American maritime interests, and to the foundation in 1794 of the US Navy. The navy fought two wars against the Barbary states, the first from 1801-5 and the second in 1815. It was an English Vice-Admiral, Edward Pellew, who eventually subdued them, though. In 1816, he led a fleet of British and Dutch warships in a bombardment of Algiers, which secured the release of some 1200 Christian slaves. For this, he was created the 1st Viscount Exmouth, thus bringing the Wessex connection full-circle.

September 14, 2019September 13, 2019

Going Underground: Mining and Quarrying in Wessex

The legend of Joseph of Arimathea being a tin trader who brought the boy Jesus to Glastonbury will be the subject of its own article in due course, and so lies outside he scope of this post, but it does testify to the antiquity of Wessex’s mining history. Since prehistoric times, Wessex’s mineral resources have been a major source of her wealth.

Wheal Betsy engine house, near Mary Tavy, Devon.

The British Isles have long been thought to be the Tin Islands mentioned by Herodotus, and remains of iron age tin mines have been found on Dartmoor. Extraction was probably through the use of stone hammers, antler picks and wooden wedges. Many churches in Devon feature the symbol of the “tinners’ rabbits”, three rabbits or hares chasing each other in a circle. The same symbol appears in Asia, originating in China and associated with Buddhism. There is some debate as to whether it was brought to Devon by traders travelling the Silk Road, or whether it appeared independently as a motif from insular Celtic art.

Roof boss at St Pancras Church, Widecombe-in-the-Moor, Devon. Note the way each rabbit appears to have two ears, yet there are only three ears in total.

In Roman times, the Mendips were a major source of lead. Pigs (ingots) of lead from Charterhouse have been found as far afield as France, stamped with their place of origin and the names of emperors from the first and second centuries AD.

The Mendips were also mined for calamine, a generic name for the zinc ores nowadays known by their specific names of smithsonite and hemimorphite, to distinguish them from the disgusting pink gloop that many of us will have had smeared all over us as kids when we had chicken pox. These ores are mixed with copper to form brass, an alloy which was in great demand from the 16th century, when brass combs came to be preferred for wool-carding.

The Free Mine exhibit at the Dean Heritage Centre.

Whilst coal has been mined in the British Isles since at least Roman times, used for smelting iron and making bronze, the industrial revolution massively increased the demand. The needs of mining drove the invention of Thomas Newcomen’s steam engine – which of course required coal to power it, creating a cycle of production and consumption. Coal mining was mostly confined to the northern half of Wessex: the Forest of Dean, the Oxfordshire- Berkshire coalfield, south Gloucestershire and north Somerset. A small amount also took place in Devon, particularly of lignite, or brown coal, a low-grade coal used mainly in electricity generation. The Forest of Dean was specifically exempted from the 1946 Coal Nationalisation Act, and freeminer Rich Daniels currently operates Hopewell Colliery, the last working coal mine in Wessex, though it is nowadays more of a tourist attraction than a genuine contibution to Wessex’s energy needs.

As well as mining, Wessex also has a long history of quarrying for stone, sand and gravel. Jim Gunter, who comes from a long line of Cotswold stonemasons, very kindly sent me some information on some tools used in quarrying. The illustration above comes from County Relics: An Account of Some Old Tools and Properties Once Belonging to English craftsmen and husbandmen saved from destruction and now described with their users and their stories by H J Massingham & Thomas Hennell (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2011). The slat-pick shown used to be known in the Cotswolds as a Pittaway, which was also the surname of Jim’s great-grandmother. This is not a coincidence – it speaks to a familial connection with our Society’s treasurer.

Hamstone wall from tithe barn, Haslebury Mill, Somerset (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Cotswold stone is not the only honey-coloured limestone from Wessex. Ham Hill stone from Somerset (sometimes shortened to Hamstone) has been described by Simon Jenkins as “the loveliest building material in England”. There were once 24 small quarries on Ham Hill, but now the number is down to just two. As well as being used as a building material, Hamstone was burned locally in kilns for the manufacture of lime.

Portland Stone is arguably one of Wessex’s best-known exports. The Cenotaph in Whitehall (above) and the UN headquarters in New York are among the high-status structures made from this Jurassic limestone, but the oldest known example is local: Rufis Castle on the Isle of Portland. Originally built in 1080, walls from the mid-15th century still survive today. However, stone quarrying on the Isle has certainly been going on a lot longer than that, as several Roman sarcophagi made from blocks of Portland stone have been unearthed in Dorset over the years.

A blog post such as this can barely do justice to such a vast and fascinating subject. I hope that you will click on some of the links embedded in this post, and maybe visit some of the attractions whose websites provided much of the information for this article.

August 29, 2019August 29, 2019

Cross and Crescent in Wessex Seas, part 1

…in Aleppo once
Where a malignant and a turban’d Turk
Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,
I took to the throat the circumcised dog
And smote him thus.
Othello, Act 5, Scene 2

Shakespeare’s Othello, the Moor of Venice, having abjured his religion, was credited with unswerving loyalty to the state of Venice, with whom he had taken service. The seemingly everlasting conflict between Islam and Christendom did not merely envelop the Mediterranean and Middle East, but soon extended to Western Europe, pirate galleys reaching as far as Iceland. Wessex was certainly not immune from pillaging and plunder. Extensive records, especially from the 17th century, show that authorities often fought a losing battle against the marauders–on one occasion, 50 men, women and children walking along the coast at St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall were next heard of in the slave market in Algiers.

The Barbary Pirates who crewed most of the galleys which plagued our shores took their name from the Berbers of the Mahgreb hinterland; but in fact their bases at Tunis, Algiers and Sallee were independent cities, offering for a time a vague alliegance to the Caliphate of Baghdad. Later, these brigands tended to be referred to by the catch-all name of ‘Turks’.

Thomas Norton, a Devon merchant captain, was captured by pirates in 1620. He escaped to Sallee where “he (went) to sea on his own account and (was) credited to exceed the Turks in cruelty to his own countrymen”.

Sometimes captives were able to gain freedom by overpowering their captors, occasionally because the corsairs with their rowed galleys were unfamiliar with the skills needed to handle captured sailing ships. John Rawlins, captain of a small Plymouth barque, was captured in 1621, sold on to the renegade Ramanda Rais (real name Henry Chandler), and employed as a pilot. Rawlins managed to win over the motley crew of slaves and renegades, and stage a mutiny with a cry of “God, King James, and St George for England”. With what must have been enormous courage and leadership, he sailed the ship safely back to Plymouth.

It is difficult for us to conceive that often the same people and places indulged in trade, war and piracy simultaneously, The Christian powers of Genoa, Venice and Catalonia were early in the field. Although both Christians and Muslims encouraged religious fervour for their activities, people frequently changed their religious alliegance in order to save their skins and/or make some money.

On 18th August 1625, the Mayor of Bristol declared that Ilfracombe was threatened by Turkish ships from Lundy Island and there were reports of three pirate ships at large in the Bristol Channel. After an enquiry was held, Captain Harris of HMS Phoenix refuted this alarming information, but a Nicholas Cullen maintained that the Turks had been there a fortnight, adding that “I saw the Turkish ship lying the road off Lundy.”

The merchants and shipowners of Exeter, Plymouth, Barnstaple, Dartmouth and other places in a petition to the Lords of the Council, dated September 2 1636, stated that the pirates had become so numerous and terrible in their ships, and so well piloted into the Channel by English and Irish captives, that they dared not send their vessels to see, seamen refused to go, and fishermen refrained from taking fish. A few years later, the number of slaves had greatly increased, as appears by a petition, dated October 3 1640, to His Majesty. stating that at that time, there were no less than 3000 poor English in miserable captivity, undergoing divers and most insufferable labours, such as rowing in galleys, drawing carts, grinding in mills, with divers such unchristian-like works most lamentable to express, and most burdensome to undergo, withal suffering much hunger and many blows on their bare bodies, by which cruelty many, not being able to undergo it, have been forced to turn Mohammedan.
RF Playfair (Smith, Elder 1884)

Queen Elizabeth I was, no doubt, angered by piratical incursions into her realm. She wrote: “Inasmuch at that cost of Devonshyre and Cornwall is by report much hanted by pyrattes and Rovers to cause on or too apt vessells be made redy with all spede iit some ports ther abouts.” Her frugality suggested that the necessary expenditure to be obtained from captured men and ships.

The story of the Barbary pirates is endlessly fascinating, but there was a plethora of other disreputable maritime activities going on simultaneously. In particular the privateers, privately owned and manned armed vessels given letters of marque to prey on shipping of hostile foreign powers. Wessex seamen in numbers made a great deal of fairly dubious wealth from signing up for expeditions.

Tag: History