Anglo-Turkish piracy

[1][2][3] The Protestants and the Muslim Turks, more precisely the Barbary pirates, collaborated during that period against their common enemy, Catholic Europe.

[4][5] Piracy in the ranks of the Muslim pirates of Barbary was also a way to find employment, after King James I formally proclaimed an end to privateering in June 1603.

[2] Catholic ships were attacked and the crew and passengers taken to Algiers, modern day Algeria, or other places of the Barbary Coast to be sold as slaves.

[4] Jack Ward,[4] Henry Mainwaring,[4] Robert Walsingham and Peter Easton were among such English pirates in the service of the deys of the Barbary Coast.

[7] A contemporary letter from an English writer complained: "The infinity of goods, merchandise jewels and treasure taken by our English pirates daily from Christians and carried to Allarach, Algire and Tunis to the great enriching of Mores and Turks and impoverishing of Christians"Beyond the shared religious antagonism towards Catholicism, the Barbary States probably offered economic advantages as well as social mobility to Protestant pirates, as the Barbary States were a very cosmopolitan environment at that time.