This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations .(January 2015) |
Part of a series on |
Slavery |
---|
Owen Fitzpen (also known as Owen Phippen) was an English merchant taken captive by Barbary pirates and sold into slavery. He later mounted a heroic escape and is memorialised on a plaque placed in St. Mary's Church at Truro, Cornwall, England.
Owen Fitzpen was born at Weymouth or Melcombe Regis, Dorset, in 1582, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. He was the son of Robert Fitzpen (1555–1589) and Cecily Jordon (born 1559). With the English victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588, England became the major naval power in the world and, as a result, her merchant trade thrived.
With the death of his father when Owen was 7 years old, it was natural that he, the eldest son and second child of the family, would take to the newly found opportunities in seafaring and merchant trade and he attained a high degree of success in the business. His sister Cecily, only two years his senior, worked with the mother to hold the family together, by then consisting of his brothers Robert, age 6, David, age 4 and George, age 2.
While it is not known at what age Fitzpen became an apprentice seaman, it is known that he left home not many years after his father's death and worked his way up quickly in the business. He was married to Annie Coinie on 3 July 1603 in a wedding ceremony said to be lavish for his time and reflective of the status of a young merchant seaman.
His family benefited from his wealth, George becoming first Master of the Truro Grammar School (1621–1635) and then a Rector at St. Mary's Church in the same town, where he served for the next 26 years. David went to America and settled at Hingham, Massachusetts, where he became an ancestor of several veterans of the American Revolution through which the Daughters of the American Revolution trace their ancestry.
The most famous chapter in Owen's life, however, began when he was taken captive by Turkish pirates on 24 March 1620, while on a trading voyage in the Mediterranean Sea. More than likely, these were Barbary pirates, as historical accounts of the time considered any of the Muslims in the Mediterranean region to be Turks.
For seven years, Owen and a number of other Christian captives served as slaves to the Turks near present-day Algiers. Their chance for freedom finally came when Owen and 10 other Christian captives (Dutch and French) were herded aboard a corsair with 65 Turks to set sail for their next assignment. Owen and the 10 other captives fought against the Turks for three hours and suffered five of their number slain before the surviving Turks surrendered the ship. Owen and his crew sailed the ship to Cartagena, Spain, where news of the mutiny reached the King.
Owen was summoned to Madrid where the king offered him a captain's position and great favor if he would convert to Catholicism. Owen respectfully declined, sold the ship for 6,000 pounds sterling and made his way back to England, where he settled near his brother George in Cornwall. Owen died at the village of Lamorran on 17 March 1636 at age 54. George had the memorial put in St. Mary's Church shortly thereafter.
The plaque reads as follows (original errors in spelling included):
"The old record says Owen Phippen who most Valiantly freed himself from the Turks - This relates to his rescuing himself and companions after seven years bondage on board an Algerine Corsair, the history of which exploit is engraved upon a monument or tablet erected in his memory by his brother George, in St. Mary's church whiled he was settle over it. This church is a handsome Gothic structure built during the reign of Henry VIII on the north side of the chancel of which is a monumental inscription. "Glory to God in the Highest). . .to the pious and well - deserved memory of Owen Fitzpen alias Phippen, who travelled over many parts of the world and on 24 mar, 1620 was taken by the Turkes and made Captive in Algier. He projected Sundy plots for his libertie and on 17 June 1627 with 10 other Christian captives, Dutch and French (persivaded by his counsel and courage) he began a cruel fight with sixty-five Turkes in their own ship - which lasted three howers in which five of his company were slain yet God made him conquer and so he brought the ship in Cartagene being of 400 tons and 22 ord. The king sent for his to Madrid to see him - was offered a captaines place and a Kings favor if he would turn Papists, which he refused. He sold all for 6000 L returned to England, and died at Lamorran 17 Mar 1636. Melcomb in Dorset was his place of birth. Age 54 and here lies Earth in Earth."
A copy of the inscription can be seen in Lysons' Magna Britannia, Vol. III, Cornwall, p. 312; in Hitchins' Cornwall, Vol. II, p. 648, and in Orchard's Epitaphs.
It is not known when the family name was changed from the old English form Fitzpen to Phippen, but it is generally believed this was done by his brother David to coincide with the move of his family to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. A number of David's descendants fought in the American Revolutionary War.
Owen and his wife, Annie, had at least three children born in Ireland before Owen's capture, one son of whom changed the spelling of the family name to Thigpen, yet a third variation. His grandson, James Thigpen, would be the first of his direct descendants to settle in America, this time to North Carolina. Thigpen's descendants would include two famous athletes, former National Football League player Yancey Thigpen (through slaveholders of the same name) and former Major League Baseball pitcher Bobby Thigpen.
Owen is also a first cousin (many times removed) of three U.S. presidents through his paternal grandfather: Zachary Taylor, Rutherford B. Hayes and John F. Kennedy.
Truro is a cathedral city and civil parish in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is Cornwall's county town, sole city and a centre for administration, leisure and retail trading. Its population was 18,766 in the 2011 census. People of Truro can be called Truronians. It grew as a trade centre through its port and as a stannary town for tin mining. It became mainland Britain's southernmost city in 1876, with the founding of the Diocese of Truro. It is home to Cornwall Council, the Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro Cathedral, the Hall for Cornwall and Cornwall's Courts of Justice.
The Barbary Wars were a series of two wars fought by the United States, Sweden, and the Kingdom of Sicily against the Barbary states and Morocco 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. The Barbary Wars were the first major American war fought entirely outside the New World, and in the Arab World.
The Barbary pirates, Barbary corsairs, or Ottoman corsairs were mainly 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. Slaves in Barbary could be of many ethnicities, and of many different religions, such as Christian, Jewish, or Muslim. 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.
John Ward or Birdy, also known as Jack Ward or later as Yusuf Reis, was an English pirate who later became a Corsair for the Ottoman Empire operating out of Tunis during the early 17th century.
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.
Jan Janszoon van Haarlem, commonly known as Reis Mourad the Younger, was a Dutch pirate who later became a Barbary corsair in Ottoman Algeria and the Republic of Salé. After being captured by Algerian corsairs off Lanzarote in 1618, he converted to Islam and changed his name to Mourad. He became one of the most famous of the 17th-century Barbary corsairs. 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.
Captain William Rainsborough, usually spelt Rainsborowe, was an English Captain and Vice-Admiral in the Royal Navy, English ambassador to Morocco and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1640 to 1642.
The Turkish Abductions were a series of slave raids by pirates from Algier that took place in Iceland in the summer of 1627.
This timeline of the history of piracy in the 1640s is a chronological list of key events involving pirates between 1640 and 1649.
The Barbary slave trade, part of the Arab slave trade, involved the capture and selling of European slaves at slave markets in the Barbary states. European slaves were captured 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.
Siemen Danziger, better known by his anglicized names Zymen Danseker and Simon de Danser, was a 17th-century Dutch privateer and Barbary corsair based in Ottoman Algeria. His name is also written Danziker, Dansker, Dansa or Danser.
Lamorran is a village and former civil parish], now in the parish of St Michael Penkevil, in the Cornwall district, in the ceremonial county of Cornwall, England. Lamorran lies 3+1⁄2 miles (5.6 km) southeast of Truro, within the Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). In 1931 the parish had a population of 49.
The Republic of Salé, also known as the Bou Regreg Republic and the Republic of the Two Banks, was a city-state maritime corsair republic based at Salé in Morocco during the 17th century, located at the mouth of the Bou Regreg river. It was founded by Moriscos from the town of Hornachos, in western Spain. The Moriscos were the descendants of Muslims who were nominally converted to Christianity, and were subject to mass deportation during Philip III's reign, following the expulsion of the Moriscos decrees. The republic's main commercial activities were the Barbary slave trade and piracy during its brief existence in the 17th century.
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 on the Barbary Coast refers to the enslavement of people taken captive by the Barbary corsairs of North Africa.
Sir Francis Verney was an English adventurer, soldier of fortune, and pirate. A nobleman by birth, he left England after the House of Commons sided with his stepmother in a legal dispute over his inheritance, and became a mercenary in Morocco and later a Barbary corsair.
Ottoman Tunisia, also known as the Regency of Tunis, refers to the Ottoman presence in Ifriqiya from the 16th to 19th centuries, when Tunis was officially integrated into the Ottoman Empire as the Eyalet of Tunis. The Ottoman presence in the Maghreb began with the takeover of Algiers in 1516 by the Ottoman Turkish corsair and beylerbey Aruj, eventually expanding across the entire region except for Morocco. The first Ottoman conquest of Tunis occurred in 1534 under the command of Khayr al-Din Barbarossa, the younger brother of Aruj, who was the Kapudan Pasha of the Ottoman Fleet during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. However, it was not until the final Ottoman reconquest of Tunis from Spain in 1574 that the Turks permanently acquired the former territories of Hafsid Tunisia, retaining it until the French occupation of Tunisia in 1881.
The French-Algerian War of 1681–1688 was part of a wider campaign by France against the Barbary Pirates in the 1680s.
The sack of Madeira occurred in 1617 when Algerian pirates known as Barbary Corsairs sacked the Island and took 1,200 inhabitants as slaves. The attack occured during the height of slavery on the Barbary coast. Madeira was at that time a part of the Iberian Union headed by the Monarchy of Spain.
In 1622 The Dutch Republic and The Regency of Algiers concluded a peace treaty. The Algerians failed to respect the treaty. Following this the Dutch set out a punitive expedition to punish the Algerians.