Fifty-two Stories of the British Navy, from Damme to Trafalgar.Miles, Alfred H. (Alfred Henry)
History
Fifty-two Stories of the British Navy, from Damme to Trafalgar.
Miles, Alfred H. (Alfred Henry)
Great Britain -- History, Naval -- Juvenile literature
Every five men had allowance but five aspers of bread in a day, which is
but twopence English, and our lodging was to lie on the bare boards,
with a very simple cape to cover us. We were also forcibly and most
violently shaven, head and beard, and within three days after, I and
five more of my fellows, together with fourscore Italians and Spaniards,
were sent forth in a galiot to take a Greek carmosel, which came into
Arabia to steal negroes, and went out of Tripolis unto that place which
was two hundred and forty leagues thence; but we were chained three and
three to an oar, and we rowed naked above the girdle, and the boatswain
of the galley walked abaft the mast, and his mate afore the mast, and
each of them a whip in their hands, and when their devilish choler rose
they would strike the Christians for no cause: and they allowed us but
half a pound of bread a man in a day, without any other kind of
sustenance, water excepted. And when we came to the place where we saw
the carmosel, we were not suffered to have neither needle, bodkin,
knife, or any other instrument about us, nor at any other time in the
night, upon pain of one hundred bastinadoes: we were then also cruelly
manacled, in such sort that we could not put our hands the length of one
foot asunder the one from the other, and every night they searched our
chains three times, to see if they were fast riveted. We continued the
fight with the carmosel there hours, and then we took it, and lost but
two of our men in that fight; but there were slain of the Greeks five,
and fourteen were cruelly hurt; and they that were found were presently
made slaves and chained to the oars, and within fifteen days after we
returned again into Tripolis, and then we were put to all manner of
slavery. I was put to hew stones, and others to carry stones, and some
to draw the cart with earth, and some to make mortar, and some to draw
stones (for at that time the Turks builded a church); and thus we were
put to all kinds of slavery that was to be done.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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