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The "Coast of High Barbary" is a traditional song (Roud 134) which was popular among British and American sailors. It is most frequently sung as a ballad but can also be a sea shanty. It tells of a sailing ship that came across a pirate ship off the Barbary Coast and defeated the pirates, who were left to drown.
An earlier version of the ballad is found in the Stationers’ Register for January 14, 1595 and tells the story of two merchant ships, the George Aloe and the Sweepstake, both sailing to Safee. While the George Aloe was resting at anchor, the Sweepstake sailed on, but a French ship attacked the Sweepstake and threw the crew overboard. The George Aloe gave chase and defeated the French ship, whose crew were shown no mercy because of the fate of the crew of the Sweepstake.
The most common lyrics may refer to the problems European and North American traders had with the North African pirates in the second half of the 18th century and the early 19th century, which led to the Barbary Wars.
William Kidd, also known as Captain William Kidd or simply Captain Kidd, was a Scottish sea captain who was commissioned as a privateer and had experience as a pirate. He was tried and executed in London in 1701 for murder and piracy.
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, vessels used for piracy are pirate ships. The earliest documented instances of piracy were in the 14th century BC, when the Sea Peoples, a group of ocean raiders, attacked the ships of the Aegean and Mediterranean civilisations. Narrow channels which funnel shipping into predictable routes have long created opportunities for piracy, as well as for privateering and commerce raiding. Historic examples include the waters of Gibraltar, the Strait of Malacca, Madagascar, the Gulf of Aden, and the English Channel, whose geographic structures facilitated pirate attacks. The term piracy generally refers to maritime piracy, although the term has been generalized to refer to acts committed on land, in the air, on computer networks, and, outer space. Piracy usually excludes crimes committed by the perpetrator on their own vessel, as well as privateering, which implies authorization by a state government.
A xebec, also spelled zebec, was a Mediterranean sailing ship that was used mostly for trading. Xebecs had a long overhanging bowsprit and aft-set mizzen mast. The term can also refer to a small, fast vessel of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, used almost exclusively in the Mediterranean Sea.
The First Barbary War (1801–1805), also known as the Tripolitan War and the Barbary Coast War, was a conflict during the Barbary Wars, in which the United States and Sweden fought against Tripolitania. Tripolitania had declared war against Sweden and the United States over disputes regarding tributary payments made by both states in exchange for a cessation of Tripolitatian commerce raiding at sea. United States President Thomas Jefferson refused to pay this tribute. Sweden had been at war with the Tripolitans since 1800.
The Barbary Wars were a series of two wars fought by the United States, Sweden, and the Kingdom of Sicily against the Barbary states of North Africa in the early 19th century. Sweden had been at war with the Tripolitans since 1800 and was joined by the newly independent US. The First Barbary War extended from 10 May 1801 to 10 June 1805, with the Second Barbary War lasting only three days, ending on 19 June 1815.
A sea shanty, chantey, or chanty is a genre of traditional folk song that was once commonly sung as a work song to accompany rhythmical labor aboard large merchant sailing vessels. The term shanty most accurately refers to a specific style of work song belonging to this historical repertoire. However, in recent, popular usage, the scope of its definition is sometimes expanded to admit a wider range of repertoire and characteristics, or to refer to a "maritime work song" in general.
The Barbary pirates, Barbary corsairs, or Ottoman corsairs were Muslim pirates and privateers who operated from the Barbary States. This area was known in Europe as the Barbary Coast, in reference to the Berbers. Their predation extended throughout the Mediterranean, south along West Africa's Atlantic seaboard and into the North Atlantic as far north as Iceland, but they primarily operated in the western Mediterranean. In addition to seizing merchant ships, they engaged in Razzias, raids on European coastal towns and villages, mainly in Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal, but also in the British Isles, the Netherlands, and Iceland. The main purpose of their attacks was to capture slaves for the Ottoman slave trade. Slaves in Barbary could be of many ethnicities, and of many different religions, such as Christian, Jewish, or Muslim.
7th Sea is an out-of-print collectible card game (CCG) produced by Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG). It was released in August 1999. It is based on the 7th Sea tabletop role-playing game setting of Théah.
John Ward or Birdy, also known as Jack Ward or later as Yusuf Reis, was an English-Ottoman pirate who later became a Barbary Corsair for the Ottoman Empire operating out of Tunis during the early 17th century. He is an ancestor of notable Cambridge, MA resident Jack Ward.
Henry Every, also known as Henry Avery, sometimes erroneously given as Jack Avery or John Avery, was an English pirate who operated in the Atlantic and Indian oceans in the mid-1690s. He probably used several aliases throughout his career, including Benjamin Bridgeman, and was known as Long Ben to his crewmen and associates.
The Golden Age of Piracy is a common designation for the period between the 1650s and the 1730s, when maritime piracy was a significant factor in the histories of the North Atlantic and Indian Oceans.
"Oh Shenandoah" is a traditional folk song, sung in the Americas, of uncertain origin, dating to the early 19th century.
"The Sweet Trinity", also known as "The Golden Vanity" or "The Golden Willow Tree", is an English folk song or sea shanty, listed as Child Ballad 286. The first surviving version, about 1635, was "Sir Walter Raleigh Sailing In The Lowlands ".
The George Aloe and the Sweepstake is Child ballad 285. In 1595, a ballad was entered into the Stationers' Register with the note that it was to be sung to the tune of The George Aloe and the Sweepstake. The ballad tells of the battles with a pirate ship. Several variations of the ballad exist.
"Good Ship Venus", also known as "Friggin' in the Riggin", is a bawdy drinking song devised to shock with ever increasingly lewd and debauched sexual descriptions of the eponymous ship's loose-moralled crew. The tune usually used is "Go In and Out the Window".
Jan Janszoon van Haarlem, commonly known as Reis Mourad the Younger, was an Ottoman and Salé Rovers Dutch pirate in Algeria and Morocco who converted to Islam after being captured by a Moorish state in 1618. He began serving as a pirate, one of the most famous of the 17th-century "Salé Rovers". Together with other corsairs, he helped establish the independent Republic of Salé at the city of that name, serving as the first President and Commander. He also served as Governor of Oualidia.
"Pirate Jenny" is a well-known song from The Threepenny Opera by Kurt Weill, with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht. The English lyrics are by Marc Blitzstein. It is probably the second most famous song in the opera, after "Mack the Knife".
The Barbary slave trade involved slave markets in the Barbary States. European slaves were acquired by Barbary pirates in slave raids on ships and by raids on coastal towns from Italy to the Netherlands, Ireland and the southwest of Britain, as far north as Iceland and into the Eastern Mediterranean.
Anglo-Turkish piracy or the Anglo-Barbary piracy was the collaboration between Barbary pirates and English pirates against Catholic shipping during the 17th century.
Slavery existed in Morocco since antiquity. Morocco was a center of the Trans-Saharan slave trade route of enslaved Black Africans from sub-Saharan Africa, as well as a center of the slave trade of Barbary slave trade of Europeans captured by the barbary pirates. The slave trade was suppressed in Morocco in the 20th-century.
