A piece of history that draws rather a long bow in tying the start of the English Civil War to Muslim raiders, but which is fascinating nevertheless.

The link is something called “Ship Money”, which was a tax that King Charles I raised to re-build a navy that had declined badly since the glory days of the Spanish Armada but which wasn’t actually placed against ships or even coastal towns but every county in England:

Because parliament had not authorised this, the demand, made in 1628, was viewed unfavourably and abandoned after stiff opposition. It was not the end of the matter and in 1634, when he issued another writ to raise Ship Money,

Which is when he tried to restrict it only to ports, with actual ships in the mix:

Charles’ demand for money in October 1634 was limited to ports and required them either to provide a certain number of fully equipped warships or to supply the treasury with their equivalent cost in hard cash.

This time it worked; he got  £104,000. In 1635 the tax was extended to the entire country and got £208,000. When he tried it again in 1636 everybody realised it was going to be permanent, fights started and a few years the Civil War started in earnest, with taxation very much primary factor.

All interesting enough, but it’s the reason why the Royal Navy had to be re-built that’s of interest here, and it’s very much an echo of current British times:

Between 1609 and 1616, a total of 466 English ships were boarded and the crews taken to North Africa as slaves. In April 1625, three ships from Cornwall and one sailing from Dartmouth in Devon were captured by Corsairs and their crews taken. The following month, an entry in the Calendar of State Papers lamented that, ‘The Turks are upon our coasts. They take ships only to take the men to make slaves of them.’ Because the Barbary Coast was part of the Ottoman Empire, whose caliph was in Turkey, all Muslims were regularly referred to in England at this time as ‘Turks’.

I knew about the famous Barbary Coast raiders because their attacks on American ships, following US independence, led to the establishment of the US Navy and the First Barbary War after President Thomas Jefferson refused to pay tribute to prevent the attacks. It’s the reason for this line in the Marines’ Hymn: To the Shores of Tripoli”.

But I’d had no idea that such attacks were being made almost two centuries earlier on British ships in British coastal waters, often with complex tactics that sound like the German “Wolf Pack” submarine attacks of WWII. And more than just ships:

In August 1625, a raiding party landed at Mounts Bay in Cornwall. The villagers saw the ships at anchor and fled for safety to the local church, but this was not enough to save them. The slavers dragged 60 people out of the church, loaded them into their rowing boats and took them on board the waiting ships. They all ended up in the slave markets of North Africa.

Given the military power that Britain had even at that stage it seems unbelievable, and as you can imagine the King’s subjects were none too impressed:

The Royal Navy had large, heavily armed ships which would have been ideal when it came to conventional naval warfare, but they were not fast enough or sufficiently manoeuvrable to cope with these swift attacks.

They were even less impressed when the King started taxing them for a navy that was utterly unable to defend them:

In 1640, a group of citizens in London sent a petition to the king, stating their grievances. Heading the list was Ship Money and the petition mentioned:

“The pressing and unusual Impositions upon Merchandise, Importing and Exporting, and the urging and Levying of Ship-money, notwithstanding both which, Merchants Ships and Goods have been taken and destroyed both by Turkish and other Pirates“

Put plainly, they were saying, what is the use of our paying all this money for ships if the navy can’t even protect shipping from the corsairs?

In 2025 British subjects are once again asking similar questions, although to be fair to King Charles I at least he didn’t arrest or abuse the people complaining about this.