June 20, 2007 -- The story of Devon folk being taken as slaves has provided an interesting footnote to the Echo's recent series marking the abolition of slavery. It has come from Teignmouth county councillor David Cox, who has pointed out that while many Devon people made a small fortune from the slave trade, some Devonians also became victims of slavery - with a noted episode marking its 376th anniversary today.

He said: "On Monday, June 20, 1631, Corsairs - pirates from the Barbary coast of North Africa - with Ottoman troops came ashore in captured fishing boats to the little Irish port of Baltimore in County Cork. They sacked the village and took almost all the villagers away to a life of slavery in Algiers.

"Baltimore may have been a remote harbour in the southwest of Ireland, but its population was made up almost entirely of new English 'planted' Protestant settlers from Somerset and Devon.

"This was one of the occasions, comparatively rare for northern Europe, when a slaving mission from Africa landed on English-held territory and seized slaves.

"From the 17th century, Algiers - by then only formally part of the Ottoman Empire but essentially free of Ottoman control - was sited on the periphery of both the Ottoman and European economic spheres. Finding itself depending for its existence on a Mediterranean that was increasingly controlled by European shipping, backed by European navies, it turned to piracy and ransoming.

"Repeated attempts were made by various nations to subdue the pirates disturbing shipping in the western Mediterranean and engaged in slave raids as far north as Cornwall. The United States fought two wars (the First and Second Barbary Wars [ First Barbary War & Second Barbary War) over Algiers' attacks on shipping.

"In 1816, the city of Algiers was bombarded by a British squadron under Lord Exmouth - a descendant of Thomas Pellew, who had been taken captive in an Algerian slave raid in 1715 - assisted by Dutch men-of-war, and the corsair fleet was burned."

Mr Cox stressed that such incidents like that at Baltimore were little more than a cottage industry compared to the vast and cruelly industrialised slavery that Europeans practised on African people. [ Mr Cox is ignoring the industrial nature of the Corsair operations - Editor ]

However, in 2003, amateur divers found one of the richest treasure wrecks off the South Devon coast near Salcombe, and are convinced the 16th- century ship was one of the dreaded Barbary pirate vessels, and its intended cargo was English captives for slave markets in North Africa.

The divers' claims for the Salcombe wreck are backed by another academic, Robert Davis of the University of Ohio, who has completed a study of the white slave trade. He believes that in the 250 years from 1580 more than a million Europeans were kidnapped for slavery or ransom.

The Salcombe wreck was located by Neville Oldham, a former Grenadier Guard and retired builder, and his friend, Ron Howell. The ship had broken up almost without trace - only one chunk of oak was recovered, despite meticulous seabed surveys - but a wealth of contents has been raised, including cannons, personal possessions such as Dutch porcelain and pipes, and the largest haul of 17th-century Islamic gold ever found in British waters.

Both men, who formed a local group of amateur underwater archaeologists, were convinced that the ship was a xebec - the fast, light, triangular-sailed craft, rowed by slave crews, that were used by the Barbary pirates.

They believe the reason no other timbers have been recovered is because the light, shallow-hulled ship would have turned turtle and been broken up on the rocks, rather than sinking in one piece like the heavy European ships.

Mr Oldham said he had suspected a pirate connection as soon as he realised that all the beautiful gold coins and jewellery they had found were chopped in half - in order, he believes, to divide the spoil between the pirates.

MrOldham said: "The fact that people have forgotten about this doesn't mean it never happened.

"History tends to be written by rich people. When the rich were captured, they were ransomed. When the poor were taken, they disappeared without anyone recording their names."
Algerian pirates took Devon settlers as slaves
UNQUOTE
So there you have it. Englishmen were prone to be victims too.