MALTESE CORSAIRING OR CHRISTIAN CORSAIRING BASED IN MALTA?.. (Michel Fontenay) A REASSESSMENT

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1 L 'Ordre de Malte, el regne de Mallorca i la Mediterrania Ed. Roman Pifia Horns Palma de Mallorca 2001 c MALTESE CORSAIRING OR CHRISTIAN CORSAIRING BASED IN MALTA?.. (Michel Fontenay) A REASSESSMENT Dr. Carmel Vassallo University of Malta Researchers in the field of corsairing have put forward various, not unrelated, explanations to account for the persistence of Maltese corsairing to the very end of the eighteenth century. It has, for example, been suggested that this phenomenon constituted a justification for the Orders considerable property income or that it was a very late manifestation of crusading andchivilarous zeal (Fontenay 1988a: ).. On the other hand it may have endured as a consequence of the sinister manipulations of a not very Christian king who while publicly disassociating himself from the harassment and seizure of muslim shipping and the people it carried, nevertheless secretly sl).pported it, to the benefit of French caniers who dominated transport between Ottoman ports. (Fontenay 1985: and Panzac 1999: ). Be that as it may corsairing has been widely held to have been the primary, indeed, the only pursuit of Maltese shipping in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Fontenay and Tenenti cited in Lopez Nadal 1998: ). In a 1988 article Fontenay puts forward rough and ready estimates of the corso's contribution to the islandis balance of payments. (Fontenay 1988b: 1337). II! 1660, at the height of corsairing activity, prize money may have reached a figure of 220,000 scudi, two thirds to nine tenths of the estimated 250,000 to 300,000 scudi bill for the import of grain, oil and meat. But the taking of prizes was notoriously inegular, a game of poker, as Fontenay calls it l (Fontenay 1988a: 377) and it is also possible that much of corsairingfs eamings would have gone to pay for the imported war supplies required to fit out the vessels. Much more important for the local population must have been the employment opportunities made available to local men. Corsairing is indeed held to have been a major source of employment for the Maltese, (Vella 1979 VoUI: ) but one is hard put to encounter numerical evidence to justify this assertion. In a study ofprivateering in Malta during its final decade ( ), Paul Caruana Cunan has details conceming just one corsair Vessel (Caruana Curran 1973:110). Its crew was over 80% Maltese. The contrary position, namely that corsairing was a mostly foreign affair is 285

2 not a great deal stronger on hard facts and almost equally dependant on impressions, at least as far as crewing is concerned. In a 1988 article i\1ichel Fontenay, in fact, relied mainly on "., d'impressions personnelles, fruit dfune longue pratique des sources... " to argue that although the Maltese may have provided a substantial proportion of the sailors, soldiers and others who manned the vessels of the Order this was not the case for the private sector (Fontenay 1988b : 1326). More specifically. he claims that at the outset of the seventeenth century, commonly held to be the corsairingcentury par excellance, native Maltese did not constitute more than 10% of the crews of privately-fitted out corsairing vessels, even if what he referred to as "neo-maltese" were included. The withdrawal of the French from corsairing in 1679, on orders from Louis XIV, and the substantial decline in corsairing operations based in Malta led to the role of subjects of the Grandmaster becoming relatively more important. From 10% of corsairing captains in the proportion went up to 60% in but "new" Maltese made up half of this contingent (Fontenay 1988b : 1327). In a more recent article, centring this time on the last century of the Order's presence on the island, Fontenay poses the question which ~as served as the title for this paper, namely, if we should talk of a Maltese corso or of a Christian corso based in Malta (Fontenay 1997 : 221), In overall terms Fontenay once again tends towards the latter view and claims that although Maltese participation increased as the eighteenth century progressed the proportion of Maltese corsair captains amongst those whose nationality is kl'1own was still only 46%. Regarding crews, Fontenay recognizes that "on ne possede que fort peu des roles d' equipages" but relies on a proxy indicator in the form of "alla terza buscaina" liquidations of prizes to suggest that "Au sein de equipages, les Maltais de souche, tout en etant plus nombreux que par le passe, semblent cependant rarement majoritaires"... (Fontenay 1997 : 224). In contrast to Fontenay's impressions and indirect sources we have encountered details of crews on board corsair vessels arriving back in Malta in the period 1743 to 1747 in the series of quarantine booklets entitled Libretto delle Praticche de Bastimenti con la nota del loro Equipaggio e Passaggieri at the National Archives of Malta in Rabat. The series regretably has gaps but there are nevertheless details for 37 of the 45 months in the period June 1743 to February 1747 during which extraordinary quarantine measures were in force as a consequence of plague in Messina. The details include full names and place of origin of all crew members and we have identified no fewer than 14 corsairing vessels ranging from large sailing ships (vascello) like Nostra Signora del Carmine e San Giorgio, commanded by Domenico Rodriguez and with a crew of 144, to small felluccas with crews of a couple of dozen.! In addition we have also included a handful of entries relating to crewmembers who had spent quarantine after having been let off from corsair vessels or had arrived on board of captured prizes. 2 The end result is a data base of 790 people of whom only 11 fail to declare their place of origin. The information is detailed enough to even enable us to know the place of origin of foreigners established on the island, Fontenay's "new Maltese". I Entries for 18 October 1743; 28 November 1744 (2); 13 June, 31 October, 10 November, 30 November, 18 December for 1745; 21 January, 22 October, 21 November (2),10 December (2) for Entries for 28 November 1744; 13 July, 13 October 1745; 5 April, 5 October 1746; 17 January

3 A total of 71.01% of these 790 vv'ere Maltese and this figure creeps up to 75.56% if we include those foreigners who were married or resident in.malta. Domenico Rodriguezis vascello had fulty 77.77% of its crew made up of Maltese while details for two separate trips by Earle's redoubtable Corsican corsair Francesco di Natale in 1743 and 1744 show that the Ivlaltese made up 61.83% and 85.92% respectively of the 100 plus crews. Contrary to what Fontenay is claiming therefore, it would seem that, at least in the mid 1740 s, the Maltese constituted the overwhelming bulk of crew members on private corsair vessels. An analysis of the place of origin of the 563 Maltese serving on board of corsair vessels shows a markedly different pattern from that which seems to prevail on board of normall\1altese merchant vessels. A detailed study of the crews on board the 14 brigantines retuming from the Iberian Peninsula in 1746 shows that 82.02% came from Senglea (45.08%), Cospicua (22.03%) and Zejtun %) while, surprisingly, only a token 3.05% came from Valletta. 3 A perusal of the crew lists for merchant vessels arriving from other destinations indicates a similar pattem prevailed. In the case of corsair vessel crews, on the other hand, Valletta emerges as the premier source with 45.45% of the total, followed, at a considerable distance, by Cospicua 00.33%), Senglea (9.44%) and Vittorio sa (6.95%). Below these localities, in descending order of importance and with a proportion varying between approximately 5% and 1 % came Citta Pinto or Qormi, Gozo, B 'Kara, Ghaxaq, Luqa, Zejtun, ZUlTieq, Floriana, Notabile or Mdina, and Zebbug. Bringing up the rear, with less than 1 % each came, once again in descending order of importance, Ghargur, Zabbar, Tarxien, Gudja, Naxxar, Rabat, Attard, Mosta, Qrendi and Siggiewi. Corsairing seems to have attracted individuals from further afield than normal commerce but this should not be allowed to detract from the fact that the harbour towns, expecially Valletta, accounted for the overwhelming bulk. An analysis of the 218 foreigners on board of corsair vessels altiving in.malta in shows, as might be anticipated, a preponderance ofitalians who accounted for fully 62.38% of the total These came especially from Corsica, then under Genoese control, and Genoa itself. These were followed by Pantelleria, Messina, Venice, Naples and nineteen other localities all over Sicily and the Italian peninsula. Spaniards, especially Catalans, accounted for 15.13% of foreigl~ers, while Greeks and the French accounted for 11.00% and 5.96% respectively. The remaining dozen or so were from Cyprus (5), unidentified (3), England (2), Portugal (1) and Ragusa (1). Summing up it would seem that our first hand information does not bear out Fontenay's impression concerning a minor role for the Iv1altese in the manning of corsair vessels, at least as far as the mid-eighteenth century is concerned. During the latter quarter of the seventeenth century and during the course of the eighteenth century the Spanish brigantine trade, which has been described in detail elsewhere, took over from corsairing as the leading sector of Malta's mariti- 3 Brigantines returning from the Iberian Peninsula on the 26 January; 11 March; 16 and 17 April; 9 and 24 June; 26 July; 6, 16 and 26 August; 24 September; 28 October (2); 29 November and 4 December

4 me economy but the demise of the corso was a long-drawn out affair characterized by the occasional resurgence. (Vassallo 1997). The brigantine trade took over and adapted the financial structure and vessels which had emerged in corsairing but the individuals who participated in it may have belonged to a somewhat different world, at least as regards spatial origin. Valletta, the political centre, was by far the most important source of manpower for corsairing while Senglea, the commercial centre, occupied the same predominant role as the source of the seamen who were at the time the merchants, mariners and musketeers on the brigantines bound for Spain and Portugal. TABLES Table I Place of Origin of Corsairing Crewmembers No % of Total Maltese Foreigners (including 36 married or established in Malta) Unidentified Total 790 ~ Table II Place of Origin of Maltese Corsairing Crew members Place No. % of total Valletta Cospicua (Bormla) SengJea (Isla) Vittoriosa (Birgu) Citta Pinto (Qormi) 26 4,63 Gozzo 25 4,45 B'Kara 21 3,74 Ghaxaq Luqa Zejtun Floriana Notabile (Mdina) Zebbug Other * 33 5,88 Total 561 *In descending order of importance Ghargur, Zabbar, Tarxien, Gudia, Naxxar, Qrendi and Siggiewi. 288

5 Table III Place of Origin of foreigners on IVIaltese Corsairing Vessels (The terms Italy, Spain etc. correspond to present day political boundries with the exception of Corsica, in the mid-eighteen century a dependency of Genoa). No. % f Italy Corsica 28 Genoa 20 PanteHeria 16 Messina 13 Naples II Venice 11 Other 37 Subtotal Spain Greece France 1"..) 5.96 Cyprus ,., Unidentified.) 1.37 England ').L 0.91 Portugal 0.45 Ragusa I 0.45 Total 218 Table IV Place of Origin of crew members of Brigantines returning from the Iberian Peninsula in 1746 * No. % Senglea (Isla) Cospicua (Bormla) Zejtul Zabbar Valletta Vittorio sa (Birgu) Zurrieq ~ Taoden Casal Pinto (Qormi) Ghaxaq B'Kara Floriana Gozo 0.33 Lija 0.33 Total 295 *We have excluded the exceptional case of 14 Mahonese who were taken on to run a brigantine after the entire crew had abandoned the captain and his son. 289

6 '!Pr\ 'o,...{.- SENG LE A ----/---COSPICUA RABAT MALTA o i 5KM Bibliography CA,.T\UANA CURRAN, Paul (1973) The Last Years of the Maltese Corso, unpublished. BA (Hons.) History dissertation, University of Malta. FONTENAY, M. (1985) "L'empire Ottoman et Ie risque corsaire au XVIIe", in Revue dfhistoire Moderne et Contemporaine, Tome XXXII, Avril - Juin 1985, pp , Paris. FONTENAY, M. (l988a) "Corsaires de la foi ou rentiers du so!? Les chevaliers de Malte dans Ie Corso mediterraneen au XVIIe siecle." in Revue d'histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, Tome XXXV, Juillet - Septembre 1988, pp , Paris. FONTENAY, M (1988b) "La Place de la course dans!'economie portuaire: I'exemple de Malte et des ports Barbarisques", in Annales, Economies, Societes, Civilisations No.6, Novembre - Decembre 1988 pp , Paris FONTENAY, Ml (1997) "Les derniers feux du "corso" chretien a Malte ( )", in Mediterranee Mer Ouverte Tome 1, MaltaIFrance DP LOPEZ NADAL, G. (1998) "El corsarismo mediteltaneo", in proceedings Las sociedades ibericas y el mar a finales de! siglo XVI. Torno III EI area del Mediterraneo, PP , Madrid. PANZAC, D. (1999) Les corsaires barbarisques. Lafin d'une Epopee , Paris. VASS.A.LLO, C.(l997) Corsairing to Commerce: Maltese merchants in XV1l1 century Spain, Malta. VELLA, ANDREW P., (1979) Storja ta' Malta VoL II, Malta. 290