![]() ![]() The English were scandalized, especially after Ward converted to Islam rumors spread that Jews offered their sons for his sexual pleasure. Hailed in ballads and poems, Ward settled down and lived semi-peacefully, pirating in season and living in cheerful sin the rest of the year until he died of the plague. Unhappy with Navy life, Ward jacked his first ship, used it to capture a larger French vessel, then sailed to Tunis. The profane, unapologetically bloodthirsty John Ward quickly became the best-known English pirate of the 17th-century. He later retired into private life to dictate five volumes of memoirs years later, he’d get perhaps his most suitable namecheck from another red-headed stranger when Willie Nelson played an outlaw with his nickname in 1982’s Barbarosa. It sounded like “Barbarossa” to the Europeans, and as luck would have it Barbarossa did actually have a red beard, so the tag stuck as he continued his brother’s successful serial dressing-down of European ships. After his death in 1518, his younger brother acquired his older brother’s nickname, Baba Oruc (Father Aruj). On their behalf, he proceeded to systematically embarrass every European naval attempt to stop him from raiding their ships while establishing Turkish control of the Mediterranean (laying the steps for their later domination). He quickly graduated to privateering and worked his way up the influence scale, eventually offering his services to the Ottoman Empire. The Barbarossa Brothers (1474-1546)īorn Oruc Reis in 1474, the elder Barbarossa began working in the legitimate sailing business with his brothers. Here’s a list of the fifteen bloodiest, unluckiest or simply most fashionably dressed. Though they’ve been with us from the ancient world to the present wave of Somalian ship hijackings, most pirates were a 17th-century phenomenon whose short careers ended bloodily, leaving behind rumors of their fearsome beards as much as of their actual material gains. ![]() Pirates! They weren’t all Johnny Depp-swaying, dainty and witty denizens of the sea. ![]()
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