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Updated: June 28, 2025
"Foes are they," sang a Roman poet of the time, "fierce beyond other foes and cunning as they are fierce; the sea is their school of war and the storm their friend; they are sea-wolves that live on the pillage of the world!"
The people all different from the others, and as much as those passed were of cultivated manners, these were full of uncouthness and vices, so barbarous that we were never able, with howsoever many signs we made them, to have any intercourse with them. They dress with the skins of bear, lynxes, sea-wolves, and other animals.
Being returned to our ships we weighed anchor, and ran somewhat further, and harboured ourselves between the rock and the main; where by means of the rock that brake the force of the sea, we rid very safe. And upon this rock we killed for our provision certain sea-wolves, commonly called with us seals.
Then when we came again he gave us the meat we came for, taking certain fine fleeces and lambskins for himself. We stole as the wild creatures do, for food; we have no use for parchments or carded wool. We killed as they kill, to fend off our enemies. The Danish sea-wolves and the armored wild beasts of Strongbow and de Lacy hunted us as if we were wolves indeed.
These galleys were Spanish, Venetian, and Maltese, and, although they offered a most vigorous resistance, they were mostly destroyed or captured. Doria, in spite of all his efforts, was on this day both outgeneralled and outfought: the Sea-wolves, under their grim leader, manoeuvring for position, obtaining it, and then falling like a thunderbolt on the foe.
Captain Schouten sent a boat, however, to look for a safe place to anchor; but the officer in command of her, on his return, reported that the island was inaccessible, though he brought off a large quantity of lobsters, crabs, and a few fish, having also seen many sea-wolves.
Some among these leaders have risen to eminence in their evil lives, most of them have been the captains of single ships preying on commerce in an indiscriminate manner; but this was not the case with the Sea-wolves of the Mediterranean, Primarily sea-robbers they were of course, but as time and opportunity developed their characters they rose to meet occasion, to take fortune at the flood, in a manner that, had they been pursuing any other career, would most certainly have caused them to rise to eminence.
In this historic conflict he was to show once again how, on the face of the waters, the Sea-wolves were supreme; as it was he and his corsairs, out of the whole of the Moslem host, who acquitted themselves with the greatest credit on that day so fatal to the arms of the Ottoman Turk. How Ali Basha fought at the battle of Lepanto: his subsequent career Conclusion.
From the earliest days of the Moslem corsairs of the Mediterranean they were in close communication with their co-religionists of the Ottoman Empire; and this for a very good reason, which was that the Turk had not the habit of the sea, but was essentially a land warrior, and, as the story of the Sea-wolves progresses, we shall see how in a sense the Grand Turk and the pirates became interdependent in the ceaseless wars which were waged in the epoch of which we treat.
This was the end; the Christians were both outnumbered and outfought, for among them were many who were not by profession warriors, whereas no man found a footing among the Sea-wolves, or was taken to sea as a fighting man, unless he had approved himself to the satisfaction of his captain that he was a valiant man of his hands.
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