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Updated: June 26, 2025
The Dort remained at anchor that night to examine her rigging, and the next morning they discovered that the xebeque had disappeared, having sailed unperceived by them during the night. As soon as the anchor was up and sail made on the ship, Philip went down to his cabin with Krantz, to consult as to their best course.
The men who had been beaten down in the hold were twenty-two in number, making the whole complement of thirty. As soon as they had all been put into the xebeque, she was again hauled off and anchored outside, and Jack found himself in possession of a fine ship of fourteen guns, with three prisoners male and three prisoners female. "Now what's to be done, Mesty?" inquired Jack.
He hastened down to apprise Philip and procure a glass. By the time Philip was on deck the vessel had been distinctly made out to be a three-masted xebeque, very low in the water. After a short consultation it was agreed that the boats on the quarter should be lowered down, and manned and armed without noise, and that they should steal gently alongside and surprise her.
Two days after, we fell in with a vessel of suspicious appearance; and it being calm, the boats were sent in chase. They found her, on their approach, to be a xebeque under French colours; but these they very soon hauled down, and showed no others. As we came within hail they told us to keep off, and that if we attempted to board they should fire into us.
He was now in the employ of the vizier, commanding an armed xebeque which the latter had purchased. She passed off as a government cruiser, but was in reality a pirate.
I desired the captain of the xebeque to make a signal of distress, or rather I did myself, and the vessel, which proved to be English, bore down to us. "I manned the boat to go on board, and the idea came into my head, that although they might refuse to take me, that they would not refuse a lord. My title, and immediate acceptance of the terms demanded for my passage, was sufficient.
It may here be mentioned in confirmation of what has previously been said, that the Gamo, a magnificent xebeque frigate of thirty-two guns, was not allowed to be bought into the navy, but was sold for a small sum to one of the piratical Barbary States, notwithstanding that Lord Cochrane had said that if he were allowed to have her in place of the Speedy, then in a very dilapidated condition, he would sweep the Mediterranean of the enemy's cruisers and privateers.
The rigs of the Mediterranean are proverbial for their picturesque beauty and quaintness, embracing the xebeque, the felucca, the polacre, and the bombarda, or ketch; all unknown, or nearly so, to our own seas; and occasionally the lugger.
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