The navy was willing enough to deal with the pirates, but it was in a very poor way itself, its men robbed, starved, and stinted, its ships and many of their commanders anything but efficient. It is even stated that two of the King's ships lying at Kinsale had word of Murad Reis's attack, but did not attempt to intercept it. Apparently all that was done was to set up additional alarm-beacons on the coast. Captain Richard Plumleigh wrote from Waterford in October of the year following, reporting an engagement he had had with "the arch-pirate Nutt", and adds, "Nutt has 2 Turks with him and his consort.... I never saw people in whom one disaster had settled so deep an impression as the Turks' last descent hath done in these Irish: every small fleet they see on the coast puts them into arms, or at least to their heels." There would appear to have been something like a permanent, though inefficient, watch in St. George's Channel about this time, for in 1634 Sir John Plumleigh, another naval officer, writes from the Isle of Man, after "scouring" those waters, "Of the Turks as yet we hear nothing, though the general bruit runs that they intend hither this year, as some prisoners from Algiers have written over to their friends". So enterprising had the pirates become that not long before this it was represented very strongly to the Mayor of Barnstaple that "unless vigorous steps are taken for the suppression of these marauders" there was great danger that "they will fall upon our fishing shippes both at Newfoundland and Virginea, for they desire both our shippes and men". The "Turks" were, in fact, insatiable. At this time it was reported that they had 25,000 Christian slaves in Algiers alone, besides 8000 renegades, among whom were over 1000 women. The petitions to the Government from coastal towns, from merchants, from the friends and relations of the unhappy captives, were legion--but nothing practical was done. The celebrated Robert Boyle writes of his passage from Youghal to Bristol in 1635, that he accomplished it safely, "though the Irish coasts were infested with Turkish galleys". [Illustration: THE RELEASE OF CHRISTIAN PRISONERS AT ALGIERS The bold and aggressive Turkish pirates were for long the terror of merchantmen. So successful were they in their raids that at one time they were reported to have 25,000 Christian slaves in Algiers alone.]