Then Sir John Pennington, in his _Journal_ on board H.M.S. _Vauntguard_, in 1633, reports falling in with a "fly-boat", which informed him that he had been "clapt aboard" by two Turks, one of eleven, the other of seven guns, "betwixt the Gulfe and the Land's End, and hurt 9 or 10 of his men very dangerously, but at last--God bee praysed--they got from them and slew 4 of the Turkes--that entered them--outright and drove the rest overboard". Again, when anchored in the _Swiftsure_, in Stokes Bay, Pennington notes on 24th September, 1635: "There came in a freebooter, and in his company a barke of Dartmouth laden with Poore John (dried fish) which he tooke in the Channel from a Turks man-of-warr". In 1652, just after the Republican form of government had been established in England, the _Speaker_ frigate was dispatched to "Argier in Turkey" with £30,000 to ransom English captives from slavery. But when the strong hand of the Protector Cromwell had seized the helm of state there was no more question of ransoms or presents to the barbarians of Algiers. He dispatched the celebrated Admiral Blake with a dozen men-of-war to deal with the Turks in the only effective way. Blake stood into the harbour of Tunis, burned all the shipping there, and knocked their fortifications to pieces, with the loss of only twenty-five killed and forty wounded. He then appeared before Algiers, whither the story of his victory at Tunis had preceded him, and had no difficulty in arranging for the release of the whole of the British captives. More than this, the "Turks" gave British waters a wide berth, and there were no more complaints of their performances in the Narrow Seas during the Protectorate.