The Sultan's Admiral by Ernle Bradford Read Free Book Online

have to be taken. But the time was not ripe for any such combined effort. Countries and nations that were just beginning on the road towards nationalism were unlikely to be able to co-ordinate against a common enemy. The extraordinary success of the Barbarossas over the years to come was largely promoted by the fact that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” It is a lesson that, even four centuries later, has not yet been learned by the nations of Europe.
    The terrain, the coastland, and the natural harbours, lakelike lagoons, salt pans, fertile strips and desert wastes that the Turkish corsairs were now to establish as their home is still little known to Europeans. Soldiers and sailors who fought in the North African campaigns of the Second World War made some slight acquaintance with this land-—a land that can be as fertile and beautiful as any place on earth, but which can also show its granite teeth in hard headlands, shifting coastlines, dangerous shoals, and savage storms.
    When the northerlies whirl down across the narrow strait of Sicily, any vessel caught with the lee shore of Africa under her must beware. Conversely, when the khamsin blows up hot and furious off the deserts east of Tunis and south of Malta the sailor in these narrow seas must look to his canvas—and to his life. As the Admiralty Pilot warns: “The wind is at first light from between east and south-east. The wind veers southward, and meanwhile a thin veil of cirrus cloud often spreads across the sky from westward … The southerly wind strengthens and veers, with rising temperature, falling humidity, and increasing dustiness; the wind may reach gale force from southward or south-westward, blowing in scorching gusts, with rapid oscillations of temperature and humidity … A few drops of rain may reach the ground in the vicinity of the front during the hot season, while in the transition seasons thunderstorms occur at times; the rain in these storms frequently carries down a considerable quantity of mud, consisting of fine dust and sand picked up by the wind over the desert

    It is a dangerous sea at many times of the year. But, with its many inlets and headlands, rocky bays and concealed lagoons, it remains a fine area for the seaman who has learned his native coast, and who is intent on robbing the rich shipping lanes. Certainly in the early sixteenth century, when the Barbarossas first introduced Turkish sea power into this area, the shipping lanes were rich indeed. The Western world, cut off from its ancient trade routes with the East by the Turkish nation spread like a scimitar across Asia, had been forced to discover the overseas routes that could connect with the necessary raw materials, as well as the luxuries, of the East. The European expansion throughout the world, and its opening up of shipping lanes to the Orient, was not prompted by an abstract love of scientific discovery. It was induced almost entirely by the sheer necessity of finding another way to recommence a trade that had been closed by Turkish and Moslem power in the East.
    But now that the Spaniards had established sailing routes to the riches of the American continent—which they had, to their surprise, found barring their passage to the Far East and China —their galleons were annually returning laden with gold, uncut gem stones, and the natural wealth of a hitherto unexploited world. France, Holland, and England in the years to come were not slow to follow these pioneers of Atlantic navigation, and the trade of Europe was amazingly revivified by the return from the western side of the Atlantic of enterprising seamen, backed by enterprising investors. The Strait of Gibraltar, which in the ancient world had been regarded as the “Pillars of Hercules” (the end of any normal sailing route or trading), suddenly became the open-sesame to a world of hitherto unimaginable richness. Through the narrow gap between the great cloud-trailing rock on the European side