My Ancestor was Captured by Barbary Pirates

My Ancestor was Captured by Barbary Pirates

www.tree-sleuths.co.uk

Where it all started

My ancestor was a rating in the Royal Navy in 1760, what else can be discovered about him?

This blog post is about some recent research that took an unexpected turn. It all began when I looked at the Marriage Register from Stoke Damerel (just outside Plymouth), Devon, for September 1760. It recorded  the marriage of Nicholas Phillips, who was my ggggg grandfather, and Mary Davey. There was a family legend that an ancestor in this family line had had connections with the Royal Navy, but this was the first documentary evidence of this I had found: he was described as “of His Majesty’s Ship Portland”.

Stoke Damerel, Marriage Register [1] (image: www.findmypast.co.uk)

Was there a story to be uncovered here? The year 1760 was around the time that Royal Navy muster lists were changed to show the age and origin of each rating when they joined the ship so it may be worth looking at these at TNA to see if I could find out more about him, even if only to learn when he had joined the ship and where the ship had been. The muster lists for HMS Portland around this time are held in ADM 36/6339-6345. These muster lists can be informative though time consuming to use, but a trip to the archives turned out to be an invaluable use of my time.

What is Ann Galley?

It turned out that Nicholas Phillips first appeared on HMS Portland on 17 Nov 1756 as an ordinary seaman, eventually leaving as an able seaman (by deserting in Plymouth) at the end of December 1760. But strangely, in the column of the muster list intended to show the name of the ship or city he came from were the words “Saffe taken in the Ann Galley” (some later muster entries had this as “Saffee”), suggesting he may have come from a ship called the “Ann Galley” (or even “Ann, a galley”), but the meaning of “Saffee” was a puzzle.

 

 HMS Portland, Muster List [2]; note the words in the fifth column (Nicholas Phillips’ number on HMS Portland was 408)

First stop: to try to identify this Ann Galley. A quick search of ThreeDecks.org revealed there had been a Royal Navy fireship called the HMS Anne Galley, but it had been burned twelve years before in 1743/4 at the Battle of Toulon, so he would not have come from there. Other online searches revealed there had been another Anne Galley, a slaver, reported wrecked in the Americas in 1763. But nothing about an Ann Galley closer to Europe. Maybe no records have survived?

What is Saffe?

Where was HMS Portland when he first mustered on board? Fortunately the Table of Musters in the Portland muster list book has the answer: the ship was at “Saffe Road” - there is that word again. Looking at the locations of other musters around the same time, Saffe Road was not far from Gibraltar.

HMS Portland, Muster List Table of Musters [3]; the first muster after 17 Nov 1756 was on 21 Nov 1756

Why 17 Nov 1756?

What was so special about 17 Nov 1756, that seven new crew members came on board in Saffe Road that day? Maybe the Portland Captain’s log would shed some light on exactly what the ship was doing.

HMS Portland, Captain's Log [4], around 17 Nov 1756

According to this log, on 17 Nov 1756 HMS Portland was “At single anchor in Saffee Road”, approx 32 deg 23 min N (it's worth noting as an aside here that some of the longitude measurements in this log were badly off, as would be expected in 1756 before the invention of accurate maritime timepieces). Checking neighbouring log entries this was just outside the modern Moroccan port of Safi (أسفي). In summary, HMS Portland had left Gibraltar Bay on 7 October 1756, travelling via “Sallee” (سلا, near modern day Rabat), arriving in Saffee Road on 7 Nov. And on the crucial day of 17 Nov 1756 the log reads: “At 10 came on board 4 boats wth an Embassador from Morroco from the Prince of Saffee he brought the captures wth him viz 11 men and one woman that was taken in the Ann Galley the 8 of August last”.   

“Captures”? “Taken”? “8 of August last”? Curiouser and curiouser

Time to check back with the muster lists. Sure enough there are six other men listed together with Nicholas Phillips as new crew joining on 17 Nov 1756: Wm Robinson, Thos Searle, Wm Parker, Nichs Phillips, David Maoys, Jno Blackwell, and Mich Welsh. There are also four listed as supernumeraries (they were effectively passengers) who joined at the same time (their origin was recorded as ”Saffee belonging to the Ann Galley”): Jams Crisp, Mattw Lions, Josph Popham, and William Popham. That makes eleven, the same number as recorded in the captain's log. Interestingly, despite the words in the log, no woman appeared on the muster list, but this may simply be because she was a woman. All four of the named supernumeraries later left the ship in Gibraltar on 26 Nov 1756, but the seven crew members didn’t, they were now crew.

8 August 1756

What on earth had happened here? Specifically, what had taken place on 8 August 1756?

Here I had a stroke of luck.

A general Google search for “Captured 8 August 1756” led me to an intriguing webpage titled “Elizabeth Marsh, Female Captive” [5] about a woman captured by Barbary pirates in 1756. This web page tells the story (but without sources) of a woman called Elizabeth Marsh who had been captured by Barbary pirates on 8 Aug 1756 along with the ship she was on and its crew. The article named the ship as the Ann. This seemed as though it could be the same event, so I just had to follow it up.

Searching for the name Elizabeth Marsh led me to a book: in 2007 the historian Linda Colley published a biography of Elizabeth Marsh, called "The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh" [6]. This well sourced book identifies many source documents at TNA and NMM, as well as an autobiographical work by Elizabeth Marsh herself called “The Female Captive” [7]. The Female Captive provides Elizabeth’s perspective on being captured, held (and, by her own account, being treated much more kindly than the captured crew), and finally released, giving some evidence that could be compared with other perspectives, if any could be found. Fortunately Colley’s book quickly led to a host of evidence confirming these events were one and the same. 

To cut a long story short, Elizabeth Marsh’s father was Milbourne Marsh, who held a senior post at Gibraltar Dockyard. Once it was clear his daughter (and the ship and crew) had been captured, he lobbied the First Lord of the Admiralty to secure her release. This coincided with the need for a chance to normalise British relations with Morocco, leading to the despatch of HMS Portland in October 1756.

Further confirmation of events

The captain of HMS Portland in 1756 was Jervis Maplesden (who was later captured by the French at Saint Cast in 1758 during the Seven Years War). There are some copies of letters dating to 1756 between him and Sidi Mohammed, the Prince of Safi, in the National Archives [8] that confirm the negotiations that took place over a few weeks between Britain and Morocco in which the captives were clearly pawns in a strategic power game. Earlier in 1756 the behaviour of the envoy sent by the British to negotiate a treaty with Morocco had insulted the Prince and he was determined to use this as leverage. In particular they show that, although the captives came ashore in Sallee the Moroccans proposed to release them to a British Man of War in Safi; the alternative would be an overland trip back to Sallee in which case their safety could not be guaranteed (Sallee was a Barbary Corsair port and the letters imply that Sidi Mohammed was not entirely in control of the region).

On 1 Dec 1756 Captain Maplesden sent a report of the events back to the Admiralty naming everybody who had been on the Ann Galley when it was captured [9]. In addition to those in the muster list above, he named three more: the Master Thomas Stevens, Boatswain John Hamstrong, and a passenger called Elizabeth Marsh. Reading between the lines it appears that the Master and Boatswain were not released along with the others.

Meanwhile, back in England, the capture of the Ann Galley was syndicated across newspapers. For example, The Leeds Intelligencer on 19 Oct 1756 published: “Ships taken from the English. […] The Anne Galley, [captain] Crispe, from Barcelona, is taken and carried into Saloe”, confirming the name of the captain.

Leeds Intelligencer, 19 October 1756, Page 3, list of ships taken from the English (image www.findmypast.co.uk)

What future could they have expected as captives, had they not been rescued? In short, their future would most likely have been bleak. Elizabeth Marsh could have expected to end up in Sidi Mohammed’s harem. According to FC this is exactly what she feared. As for the male captives, they would have had a future of slavery ahead of them but with a chance (if they were still alive at the time) of taking part in later exchanges of captives. In other words, the fact they got out was down to Elizabeth Marsh’s father influencing events by pulling strings.
 
What happened to Nicholas Phillips after he joined the crew of HMS Portland? Clearly being a crew member on a Royal Navy ship, harsh though the conditions would have been, suited him. Analysing the muster lists more completely has shown that, although HMS Portland had stayed at Plymouth or Portsmouth on four separate occasions between 1756 and 1760, giving him chances to desert it, he stayed with the ship. He finally deserted at the fifth opportunity. It is most likely that his change of circumstance, newly married and with a child on the way, led to this decision. He didn’t go far though, settling in Millbrook, just the other side of the Hamoaze from the dockyard.

Conclusion

This work has been quite a voyage of discovery, yielding up far more about this eighteenth century Royal Navy rating than I had any expectation of finding. Starting from a record of a parish marriage in 1760, we can now be certain that the Nicholas Phillips who married Mary Davey in Stoke Damerel had, just four years earlier, been captured by Barbary pirates, been held (and mistreated according to The Female Captive) in Morocco for four months, and then released onto HMS Portland along with Elizabeth Marsh and others. These events changed the course of his life: he could only have married Mary Davey because his ship was in Plymouth Royal Naval dock at the same time that she was in Plymouth; and this only happened because he had been captured and then rescued by a Royal Navy ship; and he was only picked up by that ship because Elizabeth Marsh was also captured at the same time and her father pulled strings. 

So I am only here because of Elizabeth Marsh; without her, Nicholas Phillips would not have married Mary Davey and my gggg grandfather would not have been born.
 

Julian Luttrell

The Tree Sleuths, 2022. The Tree Sleuths website.

 

Sources: 

[1] Stoke Damerel, Marriage Register, 1760, Page 185, Entry 797, Plymouth and West Devon Record Office, 166/22

[2] HMS Portland, Muster List, 1756, The National Archives, ADM 36/6339 Folio 261

[3] HMS Portland, Muster List Table of Musters [3], 1756, The National Archives, ADM 36/6339 Folio 239 

[4] HMS Portland, Captain's Log [4], The National Archives, ADM 51/3941 

[5] https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Elizabeth-Marsh-Female-Captive-Barbary-Pirates/

[6] Colley, Linda, The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh, Harper Collins, 2007, ISBN 9780007192199

[7] The Female Captive, a narrative of facts which happened in Barbary in the year 1756, written by herself. Published in two volumes in 1769. Digital images, British Library, General Reference Collection DRT Digital Store 1417.a.5

[8] Letters from Commanders-in-Chief, Mediterranean, The National Archives, ADM 1/383 Folios 505-520 

[9] Letters from Captains, The National Archives, ADM 1/2108/9