YOU may read dozens of English histories, and even histories of the British Navy, and find little or no mention of the subject of this chapter. And yet during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and part of the eighteenth centuries the Algerine pirates, or "Turks" as they were generally called, were a real menace to our trade, our fishermen, and even to the dwellers on our coasts. The story is not at all a creditable one to us as a nation, nor did the Navy itself gain any particular distinction in fighting with these pests; but this was not so much the fault of our sea-commanders and their men as of the Government, which rarely gave them any real opportunity of exterminating the Turkish pirates that infested even our home waters. The most discreditable part of all was that played by the British renegades, who were, more than anyone else, responsible for the Turkish efficiency at sea. Left to themselves, the corsairs from Algiers, Tunis, and Salee would never have become formidable. In mediæval times, as has already been noted, the English had the reputation of being "good seamen, but better pirates", and piracy (including English piracy), though scotched, was not killed till some time after the days of "Good Queen Bess". Why, in the youth of Edward VI, when the country was ruled by the Regent Somerset, the Regent's own brother--Sir Thomas Seymour, the Lord High Admiral of England--did not disdain to "do a bit in that line" himself! The story is this. He had been married to the Queen Dowager. When she died, he found himself rather "hard up". From his position he knew all about the Channel pirates; he had dealt with lots of them, and "executed justice" on them for their misdeeds. Now, however, he entered into a surreptitious partnership with them, "winked the other eye" at complaints, and pocketed half-profits. He did so well that he tried to start a special mint of his own at Bristol. He still pretended to the Regent and the Council to be very poor, and eventually succeeded in getting an addition of 1500 ducats a year to his salary. He was allowed, moreover, to draw this in a lump sum in advance. But it was not very long before the Council began to "smell a rat". The pirates naturally got bolder and bolder, knowing that they could work with impunity, and Sir Thomas Seymour was asked "why he did not look after these matters?" "Oh," said he, "I am just sending three ships after these fellows! I'll soon make things all right." His ships sailed, but only to become the worst and most successful freebooters in British waters. Their depredations and his great wealth, which, it seems, he spent openly and extravagantly, could not long remain a secret, and he was again summoned before the Council. He still asserted that he was poverty-stricken, but he could no longer get anyone to believe him, and a piratical captain who was captured about this time admitted, under examination, that the admiral had "gone halves" with him. "Brother or no brother, he must be