On January 8th, 2021, we had the honor and pleasure of having a City Congregation member present: Jim Ryan, who was gracious enough to allow us to share a recording of his presentation.
We don’t usually make a connection between Jews and the pirates we encounter in books and movies. However, many of these buccaneers and sea dogs were in fact Jewish. They played a role during the expulsion from Spain, the Inquisition, the rise of European empires, and the founding of plantations in the New World. Hoist the mainsail and trim the jib as we explore some of the most colorful personalities in Jewish history.
Jim Ryan is a long time TCC member and volunteer. He is a history enthusiast and a writer, the author of The Pirates of New York and Red Jenny and the Pirates of Buffalo: A Novel of Consequences.
Watch a recording of his presentation, or read the transcript below the video:
Transcript:
Good evening. I’m glad you are all here tonight.
The topic for tonight is entitled “Jewish Pirates.” Now, yes, there will come up in the talk daring sea captains who ferociously bombarded and boarded ships, with sails at full reach upon the mainmasts and cutlasses at the ready, but that would be a very limited discussion. The phenomena of Jewish pirates are one of the more colorful facets of the Jewish experience in Europe as the continent found its way towards modernity. In fact, the Europe we know could not have left the Middle Ages had Jews not been there to make it possible.
Now, before we proceed, a few words about the history we’re examining. Much of what we expect for a proper study of history is, well, not entirely at hand. Yes, we can cite dates and look at what was happening among the more proper folk, but when it comes to pirates…
Well, considering who we’re discussing, the potential sources that could best tell this tale come in three varieties:
There are the second-hand accounts of these pirates through court records, written once the pirates were captured and stressing details to best get a conviction…
There are records of failed pirate raids where the participants left nothing behind but a corpse, which only gives some of the story as to how their life ended, with no sense of how they got there…
And we have the successful pirates, the ones who did not leave any accounts to be read. Much of this was likely to prevent the authorities from charging them with crimes later on, although even the most boastful pirate was further hampered by literacy rates through the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries that only went above 50% in a few corners of the world.
We should probably take a moment to discuss two labels that are often thrown around, ‘pirate’ and ‘privateer.’ Notice we have here the portrait of Henry Morgan, who has been called both during his career, sometimes simultaneously.
Yes, it is a matter of perspective, although it is easy to see where the confusion comes from:
Both groups used the same tools and tactics, which we’ll briefly look at shortly, to accomplish the same thing: Grand theft, manslaughter, anything they would need to get what they wanted, each of which being a separate charge should that seadog face a magistrate.
But, there is one important difference between them:
A pirate is someone who is in it entirely for themselves. At best, they might claim to be part of the “Brethren of the Coast” which was a loose term that pirates in the Caribbean gave themselves to indicate their non-allegiance to a state, each member of the Brethren being their own independent agent.
A privateer, on the other hand, was no simple thug, but instead a thug with a license! At times, when war broke out, governments would hand out letters of marque to captains who would be authorized by that government to go for ships and ports that the letter issuer wanted to see weakened. Often these were specific in terms of which ships privateers could go for, and while some captains ‘loosely interpreted’ their instructions, so long as most of the action fell under the instructions (and the issuer got their cut of the loot, on average 20 to 30 percent of everything taken), the holder of the letter would be safe from charges.
Now, licensed by a crown or working for themselves, each pirate would ply their trade much the same way: Pirates would crew a vessel, as good a one as they could borrow or steal, and would go after whatever ships their craft could take on (preferably one that couldn’t fight back so much), and, they would try to make sure the fight was stacked in their favor as much as possible. Pirates would often have a good idea as to what kind of ships tended to go a certain route, possibly know better the conditions where the ship would come through than their prey would. And when possible, any information they could get from on shore as to specific ships coming by was always a welcome edge.
Once the raid was a success, the prize, whether gold or goods, would often need to be brought ashore and sold to merchants who didn’t ask a lot of questions about what they were buying. Some ports, like Port Royal, were very open about fencing, but in many places, the treasure had to be smuggled in to potential buyers without the harbormaster being suspicious.
As a result, from time to time, pirates with too much booty would switch to smuggling, while smugglers who needed product would take up piracy. There was a lot of cross-discipline work in the ‘Sweet Trade,’ you see…
Now, the obvious question: Why be a pirate? Because at this time the rules of the game encouraged it.
The period we’re looking at here, for three hundred years, which was when the prates of imagination sailed, was known for its system of Mercantilism.
Mercantilism was an economic system which the states of Europe practiced as they left the Middle Ages. In this set-up, wealth was based not on how much land you could grow on, but how much gold you could accumulate. If you had a way to get more gold coming in than going out, often through trade with other countries where you sold more goods to them than you bought from them, you were doing well. And it didn’t hurt if you had access to gold coming in on its own, an advantage the Spanish had as mercantilism started from their early colonies, as you can see here.
Now, when the game was set up to go for the gold, the only real players were the governments, which in most cases were monarchs. The understanding put forth at the time was that subjects to the crown were there to make the crown money, which in return the crown would… Well, they’d try and figure that out later…
This of course was not popular with many a crown’s subjects. The sheer gulf between “haves” and “have nots” was far wider than what we’ve seen in our lifetimes, and the barriers between the two were greater to overcome when compared to comparable modern instances. As a result, a “caste economics” model emerged, which left some angry at the disparity and lack of opportunity.
Some of those, the ones with both strong feelings about this and seamanship skills, ultimately find a way to react to this, which gives us what’s been called the Golden Age of Piracy. At the very least, it’s one of the more romanticized periods of piracy, keeping in mind that piracy’s an act that’s older than the founding of Jaffa, from where Judeans pirated ships heading to and from Rome, and it’s one where a modern audience feels they can better relate to the pirates themselves.
And when this age began, the Jewish people were there from the beginning, as both victims of circumstances and agents of change, with two major events occurring in the same year
1492 would prove to be a momentous time with two events linked in that year:
On one side of the globe, Christopher Columbus would come ashore in the Caribbean.
People of certain age might refer to this as the ‘discovery of America’, although the current view is that it’s the start of European exploitation of the Western Hemisphere. One immediate impact of this, though, was opening the hemisphere as a potential money-maker back in Spain, where…
A newly emergent, unified Spain after the consolidation of Castile and Aragon under Isabella and Ferdinand…
Took action to strengthen their hold on the new kingdom by declaring that all Jews in Spain who hadn’t left after the last 100 years of persecution, had the choice to either convert to Christianity or leave.
Ironically, while the Jews were being expelled, one Jew, Luis de Torres, was a member of Columbus’ crew in the new world. He discovered during the expedition the practice of cigar smoking, and was one of the Spaniards Columbus left behind after his second voyage at La Navidad, which was destroyed by the Taino peoples in 1493. According to those who spoke about it later, de Torres supposedly tried to talk any Tainos he could out of converting to Christianity.
Which considering where things were as mercantilism took hold was a smarter bet than anyone at the time realized. The casual observer might think otherwise…
As during the Medieval period, Jews faced discrimination by being barred from owning land or becoming professionals in most of the better regarded fields, due to poor interpretation of Church doctrine and a general suspicion of outsiders during the Crusades.
What that left for most Jews were fields of activity that were considered non-essential, at the least not very prestigious. This included peddling and moneylending, the later an area where religious restrictions on usury left the field open to them.
Now even before the Western Hemisphere was opened up, rulers of states and their representatives were in need of quick transferable capital, which made the profession quite lucrative. With the advent of mercantilism, though, the demand for financial services, including setting up systems supporting trade, exploded, putting Jewish professionals in a far better position than they had been before.
Unfortunately for the Spanish, they did not realize how big a mistake they’d made with the Alhambra Decree, as up to 100,000 left the new kingdom.
While there were up to 200,000 who renounced their faith for the state-approved religion, the Spanish did not count on them to keep their oaths. Instead of being called Christians, they were known as “Conversos,” which signaled to others how poorly the Spanish thought of them.
And often, they tested those Conversos to see if anyone was still keeping their old customs quietly, which the Spanish insulted by labeling tem “Marranos,” which may have been derived Arabic word “muharram” used to refer to pigs, which were considered unclean.
Among those that left, as noted, were many Jews who had the skills an emerging modern state would have needed the most to develop and stay ahead of their rivals, which would prove to be a boon to countries that had accepted them.
Among the beneficiaries of this talent transfer was the Ottoman Empire and its vassal states in North Africa, along with its ally Morocco.
As the Alhambra Decree came into effect, many Jews were welcomed in by Sultan Sulieman the Magnificent, who saw value in using people that his enemy the Spanish expelled against them. Among those in the service of the sultan was Hayreddin Barbarossa, a corsair captain who would ultimately be appointed by Sulieman as Grand Admiral of the Ottoman fleet.
Barbarossa was especially grateful for the help from Sinan Reis, a fellow corsair captain who plied the Mediterranean. Descended from a family that was forced to leave by the Inquisition, Reis was with Barbarossa at the Battle of Prevezza, and helped to win the battle by denying the Christians from taking nearby Actium, enabling the corsairs to better protect the Greek holdings of the Sultan. In turn, Reis would become Barbarossa’s successor as Grand Admiral.
Likewise, in addition to his service as diplomat for the Kingdom of Morocco, Samuel Pallache would years later raid Spanish ships on behalf of the Netherlands, an employer we will look more closely at later on. Although his letter of marque came from Amsterdam, his native Morocco had no problems accepting stolen goods, which was otherwise considered just a part of Pallache’s holdings as a merchant.
Speaking of countries with issues with the Spanish…
Portugal, for most of this time a distinct Iberian kingdom that resisted Spanish control, owes much of its American holdings to one man, Fernao de Loronha.
While de Loronha was called a Converso, the fact that he kept ties with members of the Jewish community who kept the faith suggest that he wasn’t really into being a Christian. The fact that he was considered a knight of the royal household suggests further that he was well connected enough to not be under suspicion.
He certainly had the resources to fund the second Portuguese expedition to what would be renamed Brazil, so named as it was a source of brazilwood, a tree from India prized in Europe for its use in red dyes. The second expedition westward, which had among its crew Amerigo Vespucci, mapped the coast of South America in order to set up facilities to harvest the wood. Out of this deal, King Manuel I of Portugal gave de Loronha the island of São João (later renamed Fernando de Noronha), an impressive reward for service to his king.
But de Loronha would do more than that when he used his connections among the Jewish community (those in the open and otherwise) …
to enhance Brazil’s value as a colony, by bringing sugar to the hemisphere. And with that act, he had far greater impact on the history of the region than anyone could have imagined…
Sugar would in turn come to play a major role in the economies of Europe and the lore of pirates.
This was a valuable commodity in the 1500s, centuries after the Arabs introduced it to the Crusaders. One of the reasons for it being so valuable was its inability to plant and harvest in most of Europe, making it an expensive luxury.
However, as the Portuguese navigated the coast of Africa en route to India, they acquired as a colony the island of Sal Thome off the coast of what would later become Gabon. Here, they did have success in cultivating and processing the crop, where among the growers were Jews who refused to convert and were exiled here.
With Brazil open, plantations were soon set up there, many of them run by Conversos who likely had some contact with the Jews of Sal Thome to help get the plantations off the ground. Now, the fact that such a large group of the community went to Brazil, where it was a lot harder to run a sustained inquisition than back home, under a well-connected sympathetic patron like de Loronha, suggests that Jews who came here felt it was a refuge. What happens later at Recife gives more credence to this conclusion, which we will look at later.
For now, we turn to rum! (Apologies for those trying not to…); now, once the crop was harvested, it needed to be processed before shipping back home, which involved refining.
During this process, which produces molasses, a form that makes it easier to ship back in bulk, a byproduct called “rumbullion” is produced. This liquid can then be fermented to produce a drink that at that stage was uniformly 57% alcohol, what we call rum.
Thanks to its taste, ability to calm nerves, and not spoiling as fast as water on most ships a few days into a voyage, rum became a major staple for all crews at sea. While automatically associated with pirates, other seamen would also embrace he drink; the Royal Navy, in fact, had a daily rum ration issued to all sailors, a practice picked up at the time and still in effect until 1970.
From Brazil, the cultivation of sugar would ultimately find its way into the heart of the Spanish American possessions, a vulnerable badly protected heart at that…
The Caribbean Basin was known by this name, originally applied to the continental holdings, but over time came to refer to the whole area, due to Spain’s complete ownership over this entire area early on.
The Spanish Main, for such a large area, was claimed rather quickly, after the peoples of the islands were suppressed and the islands became bases from which to stage expeditions.
The most dramatic such action takes place in 1521, when Hernan Cortez used advanced weapons against the compromised leadership of the Aztecs, taking their capital Tenochtitlan in what has to be called a stroke of luck.
Soon after, the other peoples of the continent, some of whom helped the Spanish overthrow Aztec dominion over them, soon fell as well, and by 1530 the Spanish were masters of the entire region.
What made the Spanish so interested in the region originally were gold deposits found in Hispaniola. While gold was the primary objective, when that ran out, they settled on the much larger silver deposits found in Mexico, and for them, coming in second was good…
Later, the Spanish would benefit from the brief Iberian Union of 1580 to 1640, during which time they got the secrets of sugar from the Portuguese, and turned the region into a major sugar producer.
The Spanish also had the advantage of frontage on the Pacific Ocean, which allowed for treasure fleets from the Philippines to ship to Panama, where were then carted overland to ships going back to Spain, saving some time in transport.
While there were many advantages to owning the region, the geography of the Caribbean gave raiders and pirates plenty of opportunities to stage attacks on Spanish shipping, especially the regular Plate Fleets carrying large amounts of valuable cargo on a regular timetable back to Spain. Later, pirates would go from anchorage off ramshackle hideaways to ports in other European colonies in the region to sail from.
The first serious loss of land that threatened Spanish dominion, however, took place in Europe!
Soon after the Inquisition started, many Conversos would pick up and go to possessions out of Iberia proper to avoid continually being under suspicion. And while the Inquisition did go out to the hinterlands to do their work, they were not as constant a threat as they had been back in Spain itself.
When these Conversos yearning to breathe a little freer comparatively looked for places to go, among their top choices were Cuba, Jamaica, and the Netherlands.
Yes, the Netherlands, which Charles V of Spain inherited in 1505. While the lands were under Spanish rule, however, they were not under their control, and when it becomes intolerable…
The Dutch would declare independence from Spain 1566. The new country decided to make a clean break with their former owner; they became a republic, embraced Protestants which the Catholic rulers had tried to suppress, and embraced free trade principles.
They were so willing to protect these principles, they issued letters of marque to privateers to go after the Spanish, one of which was given to Samuel Pallache, the Moroccan we discussed earlier.
In a new country that was now more tolerant, Jews in the region could be more open about their faith, and found less barriers here than had been faced elsewhere. Amsterdam soon became a center where the removal of many such barriers allowed Jews more opportunity to make unhindered intellectual pursuits…
One of the main beneficiaries of such a setting brought about through privateers was Baruch Spinoza, who in a new country that rejected Spanish ways with hired pirates allowed him to become a lens grinder and write Ethics.
During the effort to keep the Netherlands from being run by the Spanish again, called overall the Eighty Years War…
An action was taken by the Dutch to hurt the Portuguese (who were temporarily under Spanish rule). With the oversight of the Dutch West India Company, who would hire privateers when they were needed, as was in this instance, the Dutch took Recife from Portugal in 1630.
With the threat of an Iberian Inquisition removed, the ‘Conversos’ of Recife became more open in their practices. They demonstrated where their hearts and loyalties laid all along when they established Kahal Zur Yasrael, the first synagogue established in the Western Hemisphere.
But, the good times could not last, and by 1654 the Portuguese were coming back. Anxious not to go back to those days, the Jewish community gathered in ships to leave. While some looked for friendlier places in the Americas, many set up voyages to bring them back to Amsterdam.
One group on the way to Amsterdam, 23 in all, were waylaid by Spanish pirates as they made their way home. Unable to complete the journey, they limped to the nearest Dutch possession, New Amsterdam. There, their leader, Jacob Barsimson, appealed to the colony’s governor, Peter Stuyvesant, to let the refugees stay permanently. When Stuyvesant refused, Barsimon appealed to a higher power, the board of the Dutch West India Company, who instructed the governor to not be a yutz and allow them in, the first Jews to come to New York (and the United States).
In terms of where you could go in the New World to escape the Spanish, there were more opportunities every day.
The Spanish monopoly on control of the region was dissipating. The stresses of having to protect their possessions and treasures against pirates started to strain their control.
As the Seventeenth Century starts, the Spanish possessions start to get carved away, with the Dutch, as well as the English and French claiming territories, often hiring privateers for the work.
Of particular interest is fate of Jamaica, which had a large Converso community. Come 1655, at the same time Menasseh ben Israel encourages Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell to allow Jews to return to England, Jamaica passes into English hands, at which point no longer under the Spanish and with Cromwell’s tolerance, become more open about their practices.
The control of Jamaica with an active group of encouraged professionals, as Jews who were there get joined by Jews that Cromwell doesn’t object coming there to build up these holdings, enables Jamaica to become a major privateering hub. Its principal city, Port Royal, balloons to 6,500 people before its destruction in 1692, and for most of its existence becomes a major pirate hub.
And although the Spanish would still have a presence in the region until 1898, with the loss of Cuba and Puerto Rico, the raids of pirates ultimately lead to the end of Spanish dominance.
While we do discuss a lot about how Jews benefitted from pirates in different ways, that’s not to suggest that Jews were not willing to go on the account themselves. Again, what we do know may not be everything, but among those we can alongside pirates we discussed earlier are some fascinating characters:
Active in the early 1600s was Yaakov Koriel, a Converso ship captain who the Inquisition turned their sights on. As most of his crew were also Converso, they rallied to his defense and helped him escape. Now a wanted man, Koriel went into the sweet trade, at one point commanding a fleet of three ships as they struck back at the Spanish. His career supposedly ended when he renounced piracy and went to the Holy Land to study Kabbalah.
Moses Cohen Henriques is one of the most famous pirates of any faith, active in the 1620s to 1660s. Having successfully captured the Plata Fleet when she left Cuba in 1628, he set up in port in Recife to continue his actions there, before the Portuguese took control again. He’s next heard about helping to plan and carry out Henry Morgan’s successful raid overland into Panama in 1670, which could possibly be called a consultancy gig.
Abraham Blauvelt, active from the 1640s to 1660s, had started his career at sea as an explorer for the Dutch. When he took to piracy, he was noted for sailing out with an empty hull from Port Royal, and then fencing the goods through contacts in New Amsterdam.
Late to the game is Jean Laffite, who was active from 1805 to 1823. According to his reported autobiography, he was supposedly born to Sephardic Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition (which ran until 1834), though there is some dispute. What can’t be disputed was his service as a privateer, being issued a letter of marque by the US against the British in the War of 1812, then assisting Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans.
And why do we only have his picture to show? Again, not everyone felt comfortable owing up to piracy, and likely did not want to be identified.
While the individual Jewish pirates may have tried to disappear into history, the Jews who benefitted and aided them did leave behind a more visible footprint.
In the 1680s, censuses taken by the British showed that Jews accounted for five percent of all Europeans in their possessions, making them a major group involved with British efforts to claim the New World.
They left behind more than statistics, however, having established synagogues that still hold services today:
We have Kahal Zur Yasrael in Recifie, Nidhe Israel in Barbados, Mikve Israel-Emanual in Curacao, And Neveh Shalom in Kingston, formed by the community that survived Port Royal.
Beyond this, they are able to claim a major credit for both bringing Europe into the modern era, and in putting our perceptions of a romanticized era into perspective. The Golden Age of Piracy, when looked at as part of the struggle for a people to survive, is a more compelling era when considered part of a greater narrative.
I want to thank you for attending the talk tonight. This is a field of study that has found its way into my works, some of which are currently available via Amazon. Thank you.
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