Original subtitles

[Narrator] This is the story of John Ward,

an aging English sailor who rose to become

one of the most infamous pirates of the era,

terrorizing the waters of the Mediterranean

in the service of the Barbary corsairs of North Africa.

[Expert 1] It's a pretty remarkable situation

to go from essentially nothing to becoming a powerful figure.

[Expert 2] He was increasing in wealth all the time,

in power, he had hundreds of men working for him.

[Narrator] Four centuries later,

his story lives on in popular culture

as inspiration for the most famous

fictional pirate of the 21st century,

Captain Jack Sparrow.

[Expert 2] He did what he did for himself.

He wasn't bowing to any authority.

[Narrator] So, how did a penniless fisherman

leave a legacy that reached

across the Mediterranean and beyond

to become the pirate king?

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

John Ward is born near the small town of Faversham

on the southeast coast of England.

As a commoner and a fisherman, his days are spent at sea,

scraping a grueling, dangerous living

to provide a meager existence for he and his wife.

[Jo Esra] Fishing was quite a hard life,

quite hard work for seasonal returns.

It wasn't always guaranteed that you would have enough fish

even to feed your family, let alone sell and make profit.

[Narrator] In 1585, Ward spots an opportunity.

War with Spain is brewing.

And Queen Elizabeth I lacks the resources to build a navy

to defeat the powerful Spanish Empire.

Her solution?

Outsource her fleet, allowing any English sailor

to ravage Spanish ships, seizing their cargo.

A share of the plunder must go to the Crown,

but the rest, the men are allowed to keep.

[Esra] Conditions for those taking to sea,

ordinary seafarers, if you will, was incredibly harsh.

It was not guaranteed that you would get money.

It was a hard life. It was very risky.

Of course, it was very dangerous.

You were away for a long time from your families.

[Narrator] Despite this, thousands of civilians

take to the sea in search of their fortune--

seasoned fishermen, experienced sailors,

but also many men who had never left dry land.

English law defines these adventurers as legal raiders,

private men of war.

But to the Spanish merchants who feared attack,

they were simply pirates.

[Esra] The attraction of privateering or even piracy,

the risks of that were worth it.

[Narrator] John Ward is amongst those willing

to take such a perilous risk.

Leaving behind an arduous and unreliable fishing trade,

he spends 18 years at sea thriving as a privateer.

♪ ♪

Queen Elizabeth's death in 1603

brings Ward's rise to an abrupt halt.

Her successor, King James I,

is determined to restore peace with Spain.

[Mark Hanna] James was not a fan of privateering.

In fact, when he was king of Scotland,

he was constantly annoyed by the harassment

against Scottish shipping.

And so when he took over as king,

he made a clear decision that he was going to eradicate

privateering from England.

[Narrator] Overnight, private men of war

are redefined as criminals,

outlawed by the English Crown.

[Esra] Spain's ships are to operate unhindered

by privateers,

and he introduces quite severe punishments for that.

[Hanna] There was no longer support by the Crown anymore

to perform acts of violence at sea.

[Connie Kelleher] You now had official captains

and commanders and men who were legitimate sailors

now out of, out of work.

And while some of them were able to find employment elsewhere,

the majority of them had no recourse but to turn to piracy.

[Narrator] Ward is unemployed and now age 50.

The battle-scarred sailor's options are limited--

join the king's navy on the promise of a small salary,

continue raiding the Spanish as a pirate

and risk the gallows if caught,

or return to the hard graft of life as a fisherman.

Ward chooses the navy and is placed aboard a ship,

the Lyon's Whelp.

[Esra] Naval conditions aren't great.

The rations are poor.

Pay is low or non-existent.

Discipline is very harsh.

[Richard Blakemore] For some sailors,

especially young and inexperienced ones,

going into the navy might have had advantages.

The ships spent a lot of time in port

because they were so expensive that the monarch didn't want

to send them out unless it was totally necessary,

and the labor was shared out

because naval ships often had very large crews.

But for an experienced sailor like Ward,

it would have been less than ideal.

He could have earned much higher wages in a merchant ship

or in a plundering ship.

And he could have had opportunities

to trade or enrich himself

that he wouldn't get in a naval ship.

♪ ♪

[Narrator] Almost immediately,

Ward seems to seriously regret his decision.

[Esra] Two weeks on, and Ward really isn't happy.

[Narrator] Ward hits breaking point.

In a nearby tavern, a plot is hatched.

He rallies his shipmates,

urging them to abandon the navy and flee the country.

He's clearly persuasive,

convincing them that they will be free men

upon reaching the high seas.

Led by Ward, the deserters decide to steal a small ship

from Portsmouth Harbor.

[Esra] This is quite a risky endeavor.

If they're caught, there would be severe punishment.

[Blakemore] Desertion is a crime in martial law

and seizing a barque and sailing off is piracy.

But Ward knows there are great opportunities out there.

[Narrator] Ward and his men creep through the harbor,

overpower two watchmen, and seize control of the ship.

Weighing anchor, they set out to sea--

these deserters from the English Navy

now seafaring criminals labeled by the authorities as pirates.

[Blakemore] Shortly after setting sail,

Ward is chosen as captain by the men who've accompanied him.

So, pirates certainly had more say over who is in charge

than you would get on a navy ship

where the commanders were appointed by the state.

To be chosen so quickly shows that Ward must have been able

to persuade and lead those who had followed him.

And indeed, he apparently persuaded them

to steal the barque in the first place.

And I think it also speaks to his experience

as a navigator and as a sailor.

They must have respected that he would be able to take them

where they wanted to go.

♪ ♪

[Esra] They steal a ship called the Violet.

And then they decide to sail off to the Mediterranean.

♪ ♪

[Narrator] By 1603, the area is made up of a patchwork

of feuding states and societies with high levels of piracy.

Conflict rages between the Muslim states

of the Ottoman Empire

and the Christian principalities

of southern Europe,

with much of the fighting taking place at sea.

Because of this,

the region offers

major opportunities for Ward.

[Blakemore] He knows that the Mediterranean is a center

of really lucrative trade between cities like Venice

and Genoa, Aleppo, Izmir.

And he knows that there are plunderers already active

in the Mediterranean.

There is the corso, the conflict between Islam and Christianity

from which we get the word "corsair,"

and various ports in the Mediterranean

are sending out raiders to capture shipping.

So, Ward knows that if he heads for the Mediterranean,

he's going to be able to get in on this scene.

[Harcourt Fuller] If you look

at the geography

of the Mediterranean world

and North Africa,

you have areas where pirates could have found a safe haven.

[Blakemore] By the time Ward arrives in the Mediterranean,

certain ports have become particular centers

for maritime raiding.

Places like Salé

on the Atlantic coast of Morocco,

Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis on the north coast of Africa.

And also Malta.

[Narrator] To survive, Ward needs ships.

He begins to build his fleet,

stealing a 32-gun Dutch flyboat.

Rather than killing the crew,

Ward forces them to sail home in his own far smaller vessel.

He renames the captured ship the Gift.

His career as a Mediterranean pirate is under way.

[Esra] Pirates took ships through shock-and-awe tactics,

so they might battle with the ship,

but quite often, it was drawing up alongside

and just being so violent and so aggressive,

you know, the hope was that people would surrender.

[gunfire]

So, he's off pirating around the Mediterranean,

taking an increasing number of ships.

And these ships have cargo-- luxury goods, textiles, cotton,

velvet, silk, spices, dyes.

Anything that is being traded

through the Mediterranean region, Ward is taking.

So, the ships that were used in the Mediterranean region

were fast sail ships, xebecs, for example,

so, square rigged lateens.

And these also had people on oars; it wasn't just sail power.

[Narrator] After months at sea

and with a small fleet at his command,

Ward now searches for a friendly port

to unload his stolen cargo.

[Blakemore] Ward heads first for Algiers,

which he knows is one of these major centers for plundering.

The problem is that an English pirate

has very recently attacked ships in the harbor of Algiers,

so English sailors are not particularly popular.

And when Ward sails in,

he's arrested and threatened with the death penalty.

♪ ♪

He manages to talk or, indeed, buy his way out

by offering the plunder that he already has in his hold,

so he loses everything that he's got from the voyage so far

except the ships themselves.

That means he can keep on going, and he sails on to Tunis,

where he gets a much more favorable reception

from the local ruler.

♪ ♪

[Narrator] 1605.

Ward sails into Tunis,

a city ruled over by the feared former soldier Kara Osman Dey,

leader of a powerful guild of corsairs,

elite North African pirates

who prey on ships across the Mediterranean.

[Blakemore] When Ward sails into Tunis,

the dey sees an opportunity.

[Esra] Kara Osman pays a quarter towards stocking Ward's ship,

puts some of his own men on the ship,

and the agreement is that Ward

will sell the stolen goods to Kara Osman,

who will store them and then sell them back

to English merchants at a huge profit.

[Narrator] Ward and Kara Osman have a deal.

The dey would take a percentage of any goods captured.

And with the former soldier's backing,

Ward could begin to establish his name

as one of the most notorious pirates in the Mediterranean.

Ward and his fleet set sail

alongside North African corsairs,

attacking and seizing vulnerable ships.

[Esra] Ward confines his activities

to the Mediterranean region.

He doesn't venture out of the Mediterranean

to go further afield to pirate.

He has rich pickings where he is.

He's ideally situated for Christian shipping.

[Blakemore] The corsairing vessels, the xebecs,

are well-known in the Mediterranean.

But here is a European ship with a European crew,

so he may be able to approach target vessels

without arousing suspicion.

And this is a really useful advantage

when plundering in these shipping lanes.

[gunshot]

[Esra] Ward would have a small fleet of ships,

but these would have been, you know,

merchant ships that he would capture,

that they would have then put ordnance on them

and armed them and made them into his men of war.

♪ ♪

[Narrator] 1606.

Having left Tunis, Ward spots and seizes a merchant vessel.

♪ ♪

[Blakemore] He encounters a ship called the John the Baptist,

which he renames the Little John,

almost certainly a reference to Robin Hood,

that great hero of the oppressed and the downtrodden,

who was very popular in this era.

Just as he did with his naval shipmates in Plymouth,

Ward now persuades the crew of the Little John

to stay with him.

He must have had a great style of talking.

He must have been able to compel and encourage these people

to follow him in his piratical career.

[Narrator] Yet again, Ward uses his powers of persuasion,

convincing the crew of this merchant ship

to join him in a life of piracy.

[Esra] This feeds into a sort of latent narrative about Ward

that he is an outlaw, an antihero,

somebody who is taking on authority

and actually to the benefit of the poorer sections of society.

And what we certainly have is evidence

that he was paying to release captives.

He would help out poor English sailors

that found themselves in difficulty.

And he was recruiting and making wealthy ordinary sailors.

Ordinary seafarers would have seen his successes

as well as heard about them.

He would have had English sailors,

he would have had Dutch sailors,

and he would have had Islamic sailors.

There is, of course, evidence that he is a leader,

that he is keeping his crew together.

His life really is focused on his ships, his crew, his men,

gathering more wealth, and his pirating activity.

[Narrator] Only a few years have passed

since his flight from the navy,

but Ward is now rich and successful,

and yet he still wants more.

♪ ♪

[Blakemore] Once he's captured the Little John,

Ward goes on to capture several other ships,

including the Rubi and the Carminati,

both Venetian ships, both very valuable.

And he brings these back to Tunis,

and this only raises his standings with the dey.

With the support of the dey, Ward fits out four ships--

the Little John, the Rubi, the Carminati and the Gift.

He's provided with cannons, with swords, with muskets,

with all of the tools of the pirating trade.

While these preparations were ongoing,

Ward and his men would have been leading

something of a high life in Tunis.

This was a cosmopolitan port.

It was a trading port as well as supporting corsairs.

There would have been merchant ships.

There would have been people from all over the Mediterranean

rubbing shoulders on the docks.

And so these sailors would have found it very easy

to get along in this society.

They were used to places like this,

and they just got a lot of plunder,

so they had cash in their pockets.

There were lots of different things

they could have found to do with that cash.

There would have been taverns, there would have been brothels,

there were probably other kinds of intoxicant drugs

available as well.

But that's not the whole story, because they may have

established links with the local community.

They may have made friends. Some of them may have married.

Ward builds up his position in Tunis

through his relationship with the dey.

The dey gives him a place to stay

and also a role in the treasury,

which might to us seem like a strange job to give to a pirate,

but the economy of these cities

was so heavily involved in maritime raiding

that actually it probably made a lot of sense

because Ward was contributing to the treasury

on each voyage where he brought back more plunder.

[Narrator] Ward and Kara Osman Dey grew close.

To his friends,

Captain John Ward goes by "Jack."

But legends say the dey had another nickname for him.

Ward has a tattoo on his arm,

the classic mariners' image of a swallow given to sailors

when they've traveled 5,000 nautical miles.

But the swallow is unknown to the dey,

so instead, he calls him Sparrow,

Captain Jack Sparrow.

♪ ♪

Following months of preparation,

Ward sails from Tunis with a fleet of four ships.

They're headed for a busy Adriatic Sea,

on the promise of merchant ships

bound to or from Venice,

one of the wealthiest states on the globe.

But they're hit by a ferocious storm.

Two boats are lost.

Ward and the survivors press on.

April 26, 1607.

Ward spots an enormous vessel.

It's the Reniera e Soderina,

one of the finest and largest ships in the Venetian fleet,

carrying passengers and a huge cargo of valuables.

[Esra] Cargo from the Soderina was estimated to be worth

up to two million pounds.

This consisted of textiles, luxury goods, cotton, silk,

indigo, you know, dyes, spices such as cinnamon.

Clearly this was a huge amount of cargo for Ward.

It was a huge coup for Ward.

[Narrator] Designed to be pirate-proof,

the sheer size and firepower of the mighty Soderina

is a deterrent to those used to preying

on smaller, lighter vessels.

But Captain John Ward is not your average pirate.

Despite having lost half his fleet, he opts to attack.

♪ ♪

A gentle wind blows that day,

not enough to shift the massive Soderina,

but plenty to move Ward's ships to within firing range.

[Esra] This was quite easy for Ward

to kind of draw up alongside.

[Narrator] Ward opens fire.

Cannonballs splinter the hull.

The Venetians fire back,

but Ward is already on the move,

skillfully traversing the waves,

shifting his ships out of range.

For three bruising hours, he pummels the Soderina,

before ordering his men to stand by to board.

In a desperate dash to the quarterdeck,

the Soderina's survivors prepare to repel the pirates.

A moment before he issues the command to attack,

Ward calls for his gunners to fire off a round of chain shot.

[Blakemore] A chain shot is two cannonballs

combined with a chain, and it's a particular weapon

used to damage masts and rigging.

[cannon fire]

[Narrator] Tearing through the Soderina's rigging,

its men are thrown 30 feet to their deaths.

Others are ripped to pieces in an instant.

Terrified survivors are cut down by the pirates,

who now board the disabled ship.

John Ward has just become master and commander

of one of the finest ships

ever to grace the Mediterranean Sea...

...as well as the sole possessor

of the substantial wealth it holds.

He has no sense of the political tempest

he's just unleashed.

[Oliver Finnegan] That is, in a way, his biggest success.

But it might be the start of his downfall as well.

♪ ♪

[Finnegan] Ward really seems to achieve a degree of notoriety

when he captures the Reniera e Soderina.

But the problem he has,

and this is something you often find with piracy,

is he creates a diplomatic crisis.

♪ ♪

[Narrator] When the Venetians learn

that their precious Soderina

has been stolen by an English pirate,

they furiously turn their gaze to King James,

demanding compensation for their stolen treasures.

♪ ♪

James still fancies himself the great peacemaker of Europe,

but this renegade fisherman turned Barbary corsair

has sullied the king's mission.

To prevent a war with Venice, the exasperated monarch

sends a fleet of pirate hunters into the Mediterranean

in search of Ward.

♪ ♪

Sensing danger, Ward sends a share of goods

stolen from the Soderina back to England

in an attempt to negotiate a royal pardon.

[Finnegan] This is common in a lot of cases of piracy.

If you've got the goods,

you can negotiate if they give you a pardon.

If you don't have the goods, then you have absolutely nothing

to negotiate with if they try and prosecute you.

[Narrator] In Tunis, Ward finds a ship called the Husband

that's bound for London.

The captain has no idea

his ship is being loaded with stolen goods.

[Finnegan] While the ship is in Tunis,

many bundles of goods are put onto the ship,

along with a lot of different passengers,

which seem to, a lot of them, be English,

and they're bringing a lot of money.

[Narrator] The Husband departs Tunis on a course for England.

But the Venetians have figured out Ward's plan.

As the ship nears port, it's suddenly stopped in its tracks.

[Finnegan] The Venetians effectively arrange

for the ships to be seized,

and that completely destroyed any negotiating position

that Ward had with the cargo.

[Narrator] With Ward's leverage now in the custody

of his Venetian enemies,

King James refuses his pardon,

unwilling to risk war with Venice.

Ward knows he can never again return home to England.

♪ ♪

Despite this setback, Ward plans a spree of raids

across the Mediterranean with one of the region's

mightiest weapons now at his disposal, the Soderina.

Sparing no expense,

he transforms the merchant vessel

into a deadly battleship,

carving new ports into her hull to accommodate 70 brass guns.

Ward goes on a recruitment drive, bringing together

a fighting force of over 400 sailors and soldiers.

They set sail in early 1608,

soon capturing two English ships

and a French merchant vessel.

But then a storm hits.

[thunder]

The expensive alterations Ward made have fundamentally

weakened his prized ship's timbers.

As rain and waves batter the Soderina,

it begins to break apart.

[Esra] Unfortunately, the Soderina does sink

with a great loss of life,

so 250 Englishmen and 150 Muslims actually perish

on that ship when it sinks.

♪ ♪

[Narrator] Ward is assumed dead amongst the wreckage.

♪ ♪

[waves crashing]

[oars creaking]

But the pirate is very much alive,

making his careful escape

in one of the smaller vessels of his fleet.

Returning to Tunis, he faces a reckoning.

The men who perished aboard the Soderina are the husbands,

fathers, uncles, and brothers of many Tunisians.

How did the captain miraculously survive

whilst their loved ones perished?

Ward seals himself in his mansion

to avoid the outrage of the people,

increasingly dependent on Kara Osman Dey for protection.

But rather than flee the city under the cover of darkness,

Ward makes a bold decision.

In 1610, he converts to Islam.

As is custom, he selects a new Muslim name, Yusuf Reis.

Ward's Christian English life is over for good.

[Hanna] Essentially, one just simply

had to renounce one's religion

and could change their name to become Muslim.

In England, this was considered one of the worst things

you could ever do to your community.

You became known as an apostate,

meaning you gave up your religion,

you gave up your people, your community, your monarch.

[Blakemore] When Ward converts to Islam,

this is a really significant step for him.

It's a rejection of the culture that he grew up with in England,

and it would have made it difficult for him

to return to England.

Those sailors who did return to England

after converting to Islam were treated with deep suspicion.

Apostasy was a sin against the Church under Church law,

and so those sailors had to undergo

a very public humiliation and penance in order

to reestablish themselves within English society.

[Narrator] In England,

these converts were known as renegades,

and John Ward was one of the most notorious.

[Finnegan] Renegades are Christians

who've converted to Islam,

and they came to hold some relatively prominent positions

within the Ottoman Empire.

A lot of them became ship's captains.

A lot of them became sailors

based out of Ottoman territories,

like in Algiers or Tunis.

And then they would convert to Islam.

Second, conversion would perhaps allow them to enjoy

a degree of prominence locally,

or indeed some of those conversions

would have been genuine.

[Esra] I don't think he was doing it for religious purposes.

I don't think he was doing it to please the Dey of Tunis.

I think he's doing it to survive.

And he's somebody who is not willing to accept

his place in life.

You know, he's had 50 years of pretty much living in poverty,

and that is not the end for him.

[Fuller] In general, this goes for both

the Islamic world and the Christian world.

Whenever you're trying to make inroads

into a civilization or a culture,

usually in order for you to conduct business

without much hassle, you have to convert.

If you were not a Muslim, in this case,

that means that you, of course, could be raided,

you could be captured, and you could even be sold into slavery

depending on the context.

[Finnegan] By the 1580s, around 50% of the population of Algiers

were renegades, formerly Christians.

Native Algerians made up a much smaller section

of the population.

Renegades were a central part of what we can describe

as corsairing or piracy, depending upon your perspective,

in the Mediterranean in that period.

And Ward was one of these.

He gets this interesting title bestowed on him of Arch-Pirate.

[Narrator] Ward's decision to convert becomes a source

of speculation, outrage, and even entertainment in England.

In 1612, a popular English dramatist

composes a play about the notorious pirate.

Its title-- A Christian Turned Turk.

[Esra] The play actually portrays his conversion

not for economic gain or for social status,

which was quite often why English sailors

would, would convert to Islam.

But it's actually in the play portrayed as something romantic,

so he wants to marry a Muslim woman.

[Hanna] The moment of significance in the play itself

is Ward's circumcision.

And we know that the audience at the time would have been

really just taken aback by this moment.

And it was John Ward's sort of symbolic gesture

of throwing off his religion.

And in some ways, it would have been horrifying

to an English community to see this happen.

[Esra] It would have been something

that would have enthralled the audience.

It would have been something quite taboo to witness.

[Narrator] To some, Ward is an object of scorn.

But to others, he's an inspiration.

Hordes of English pirates set sail for the Mediterranean

in search of the opulent lifestyle

enjoyed by their hero.

Some even follow Ward into Islam.

[Esra] The fact that conversion was seen

as quite a simplistic thing for somebody to do

over in the Islamic world

would have been terrifying for the authorities.

It would have been another form

of the Ottoman Empire taking over, you know,

encroaching on territory by taking souls.

[Hanna] He kills himself in the play in a very dramatic fashion.

And what's interesting is clearly this was written

by the playwright to sort of

dispel the legend of Ward himself,

to convince people maybe to not join him

and to realize it's a, it's a worthless task.

[Narrator] As Ward's legend grows,

so does his fleet of corsairs.

[Esra] He was increasing in wealth all the time, in power.

He had hundreds of men working for him.

[Finnegan] Really he becomes a kind of admiral

of a private fleet.

[Esra] And I think, you know, the nature of seafaring

at the time was very much

that his reputation would spread by word of mouth.

He's very successful.

♪ ♪

[Narrator] Ward takes on an unlikely new career...

...as a teacher.

He operates what is essentially an academy for pirates,

instructing the next generation of Barbary corsairs

on the finer points of gunnery and navigation.

[Esra] His men look up to him,

and the younger men are being recruited.

They are learning from Ward,

they are learning from his years at sea,

and also his operations with piracy in the region.

[Hanna] One reason why John Ward

is one of the most infamous pirates in English history

was the fact that he provided the technology

to North African city-states

that allowed them to transform ships

that were more coastal-oriented

to actually be able to sail out into the ocean.

And for the first time, corsairs sailed in the Atlantic.

Before John Ward,

North African communities not only used galleys,

which were ships that required oars or sweeps,

but one of the reasons why they plundered for

and to enslave people

was to actually keep manning those ships,

to be able to provide the labor to allow those ships

to cruise along coastlines.

[Blakemore] He introduces North Atlantic sailing ships

to Tunis and the North African corsairs.

These square rigged round ships that are so much more effective

in the North Sea and the Atlantic.

And as a sailor who had spent much of his career at sea,

as a sailor who's in his 50s before he becomes a pirate,

Ward would certainly have been very knowledgeable

about the workings of these ships.

[Narrator] By 1612, Ward has retired from piracy

and is enjoying the fruits of his illicit labor.

He settles into a life of opulence

in his Tunisian palace, surrounded by servants

and liberal supplies of strong alcohol.

The elderly pirate can now enjoy the hobbies and luxuries

unimaginable for a poor fisherman from Kent.

[Esra] In 1616, the Scottish traveler William Lithgow

meets Ward and describes him living in this amazing palace,

beautified with alabaster and marble.

And his reputation is of somebody

who's incredibly successful at what he does.

He has got an unimaginable wealth and riches.

It's been said that he sent money home to his English wife,

but also it seems that he also married when he was in Tunis,

so had a wife in Tunis as well.

There's reports towards the end of his life

that he's puttering around in his palace with his chickens,

and he was obsessed with trying to incubate eggs in camel dung.

[Narrator] But peace hasn't come easy.

Hunted for the past two decades,

the aging arch-pirate has seen off

assassination attempts from sea captains, diplomats,

and trained killers.

None succeed.

Instead, it's a faceless enemy,

the plague, which finally captures Ward.

In 1622,

he dies in his palace at the age of 70,

having enjoyed one of the longest, most remarkable lives

of any pirate of the era.

[Narrator] Even in death,

Captain John Ward's legacy continues on.

The North African pirates he helped train

are more than capable of sailing

beyond the Mediterranean,

hard-nosed Barbary slave traders

now operating as far afield

as Northern Europe.

[Fuller] When it comes to the study of slavery

in the modern world,

a lot of emphasis is placed on the transatlantic slave trade

because of the impact that it had on the Americas

and also on the European powers that were involved in the trade.

However, there was an Arab slave trade that took place

long before the transatlantic slave trade,

which really sort of takes off in the 16th century,

going into the 17th century.

[Hanna] They would capture these people and send them

back to the North African city-states to be enslaved,

to work as labor either on the forts

or in the harbor itself.

Between 1530 and 1780,

we know there were about 1 to 1.25 million Europeans

enslaved in North Africa.

I think this is important

because it highlighted it for many

the hypocrisy of African slavery within England.

Many were aware that as people complained bitterly

about their brethren being enslaved to Africans,

that they themselves were enslaving Africans.

We also know that there are stories of corsairs

sailing up the Thames as far as London,

apparently stealing someone and kidnapping them from their bed.

[Esra] Many people died. Many people were enslaved.

Some captives escaped.

Some converted to Islam like Ward.

[Narrator] In June 1631,

corsairs sail their square rigged ships to Ireland.

They storm the small harbor village of Baltimore

in County Cork in one of the largest,

boldest seizures of European slaves in history.

♪ ♪

[Kelleher] As for the raid on Baltimore,

they captured roughly 109 individuals

who were living in the village at that stage.

Many of them were English settlers,

and they were taken off into the slave markets,

essentially, of Algiers.

White slavery and white captives

was very much the cargo of choice

by the corsairs at that stage.

They went in search of human cargo,

and they captured them, and they took them back

to feed the slave markets of North Africa.

♪ ♪

[Narrator] In his 70 years, John Ward lived many lives--

a simple fisherman, a private man of war,

a deserter,

a Barbary corsair, a teacher,

an Englishman, an Ottoman,

a Christian, and a Muslim.

In the eyes of his countrymen,

he was the most infamous infidel of the age.

But to the men he commanded,

Ward was a marvel of reinvention,

the ageless pirate who defied fate and died like a lord.

[Hanna] I think what's important to understand with John Ward

was the opportunity that was presented to him,

which was that he could remain a poor sailor

on the coast of England, or he could go to North Africa

where you become head of a navy.

It's a pretty remarkable situation to go

from essentially nothing to becoming a powerful figure.

He knew how to sail in the ocean.

He had an understanding of how to actually

build and construct ships.

It made sense for them to raise him up

to a position of authority.

It's something he never would have been able to possess

or probably ever obtain if he stayed home in England.

He's famous as a renegade apostate,

someone who left his community and his religion

for greed, for power.

He was willing to join a community that represented

the sort of worst of all piracy.

This is one reason why John Ward was so famous and legendary.

He's not remembered, I think, today as much,

but during his own time period, it was, he was extremely famous.

[Narrator] The legend of John Ward grew

through the work of playwrights and poets,

whose work was inspired by the pirate king

for decades to come.

One of the most famous ballads

depicts Ward at the height of his power and ambition.

In it, he defeats a mighty English ship,

then gloats in characteristic fashion,

"Go tell the king of England.

Go tell him thus from me.

If he reigns king of all the land,

I will reign king at sea."