Salé and the Sallee Rovers

Where is Salé, and what is its link to Rabat?

Salé stands on the north bank of the Bou Regreg, where the river meets the Atlantic Ocean. Rabat, today Morocco’s capital, sits on the opposite bank. The two towns grew up side by side. Now Salé is part of greater Rabat, and many of its people commute across the river to work.

English sailors spelled the name “Sallee”, and the raiders who sailed from both towns became known as the Sallee Rovers. A corsair was a licensed sea raider who attacked the ships of enemy nations with a ruler’s permission, rather than an outlaw who attacked anyone. Salé faces the Atlantic, so its corsairs could sail far out into the open ocean as well as into the Mediterranean, like those of Algiers.

What was the corsair republic of Salé?

The story begins in Spain. From 1609 King Philip III expelled the Moriscos, families of Muslim descent who had been forced to become Christians. About 3,000 of them came from the town of Hornachos. They were well off, and they settled in the old fortress, or kasbah, of Rabat, which still overlooks the river. Thousands of other Moriscos from southern Spain followed and built a walled quarter below.

The newcomers had money to build and arm ships, and every reason to strike back at Spain. In 1624 the sultan made Jan Janszoon, a Dutch sailor who had become a Muslim, governor and admiral. In 1627 the Hornacheros threw out the sultan’s governor and ran the towns themselves through a council called the diwan. This semi-independent “republic” sent raiders as far as Ireland and Iceland in the 1620s and 1630s.

It did not last. Quarrels between groups, attacks by European fleets and wars with Moroccan rivals weakened it, and in the late 1660s the new Alaouite dynasty took control. By 1715 the republic was half a century in the past.

Who ruled Salé in 1715?

Sultan Moulay Ismail ruled Morocco from 1672 to 1727, one of the longest reigns in its history. He built a huge palace city at Meknes and kept a large army called the Abid al-Bukhari, made up of enslaved men from Africa south of the Sahara along with free Black recruits.

The corsairs of Salé and Rabat now served the sultan. The historian Leïla Maziane, who studied the port from 1666 to 1727, found that corsairing from Salé grew under these sultans, and the state took a large share of what the raiders captured. Britannica notes that Moulay Ismail was “not above encouraging piracy”. He also kept Morocco’s foreign trade in his own hands. Among the country’s best-known exports were hides and the soft, dyed goatskin that Europeans called morocco leather.

Why did the Sallee Rovers use small ships?

A shifting sandbar lay across the mouth of the Bou Regreg. Ships could cross it only near high tide, and only if they sat shallow in the water, drawing less than about three metres. Big warships could not follow the corsairs in, and the bar and nearby rocks made the river a safe hiding place.

The same bar limited what the corsairs could sail. They used small, fast vessels, such as tartanes, polaccas and snows. A few larger frigates sailed on long cruises. Over the whole corsair period, ships from Salé ranged from the Canary Islands and the Azores in the south to the Faroe Islands and Iceland in the north. In later centuries the river silted up and Salé’s harbour closed.

What happened to captives taken by Salé corsairs?

Corsairs wanted people as much as cargo. Captured sailors and passengers were taken ashore and sold, put to work, or held until their families, churches or governments paid a ransom. Many of Moulay Ismail’s captives worked on his buildings at Meknes. Visitors at the time claimed enormous numbers, but modern historians think there were a few thousand at most, beside many paid labourers.

Thomas Pellow, from Penryn in Cornwall, was about 11 when corsairs seized his uncle’s ship off the coast of Spain. His own account says this was in 1715, though some modern accounts date it to 1716. He was taken to Salé and handed to the sultan. Under heavy pressure he became a Muslim, and he grew up to serve as a soldier. He escaped in 1737 and reached Cornwall in 1738, where, after 23 years away, he and his parents hardly recognised one another. His book about his captivity appeared around 1740.

Captivity ran both ways. Spanish, Italian and other Christian states also captured Muslims at sea and on the coast, including Moroccans, and sold or held them for ransom. On both shores, ransom brought together rulers, merchants, religious orders and anxious families.

What did the 1721 treaty between Britain and Morocco do?

Britain needed peace with Morocco. Its fortress at Gibraltar, held since 1704, relied on food from the Moroccan port of Tetuan, and British ships kept losing crews to the corsairs. In late 1720 Commodore Charles Stewart arrived at Tetuan with a small naval squadron. A treaty was signed there in January 1721 and later confirmed by the sultan. It made peace between the two countries, and merchants on each side gained the right to trade in the other’s lands.

In July 1721 Stewart travelled to Meknes, where 296 British captives were released. Men who had become Muslims, such as Pellow, were not freed. The released captives sailed home, and on 4 December 1721 they walked through the City of London to a service of thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral. John Windus, who went with Stewart, described the journey in a book published in 1725.

Was Robinson Crusoe captured by Sallee Rovers?

Yes, but only in fiction. In Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719, the young Crusoe is taken by a rover of Sallee and kept as the captain’s slave for about two years, until he escapes in a small boat with a boy named Xury. Defoe’s readers already knew the name Sallee as a real danger. Thomas Pellow’s true story was not published until about 20 years later.