Why a Booktrail?
1625, 2000s: There be pirates in Cornwall..and a story of embroidery across the ages
The Tenth Gift
What you need to know before your trail
In an exclusive London restaurant, Julia Lovat is given a gift that will change her life. The antique book of Jacobean embroidery delights her, but when she looks more closely, she discovers within its faded pages the extraordinary diary of a young Cornish girl, calling to her from across the centuries.
On a Sunday morning in July 1625, Barbary pirates sail into a quiet Cornish bay and storm the church. Their loot: sixty men, women and children, bound for northern Morocco where they will be sold as slaves. Amongst them is Cat Tregenna, a talented young embroiderer. But as her diary reveals, Cat is anything but the compliant slave her captors were expecting…
Locations
Reset- England - London
- A: Putney Bridge
- B: Seven Dials
- C: Old Compton Street
- England - Cornwall
- D: Penzance
- E: The Cornish Museum of Pirates
Travel Guide
Booktrail the history of the Barbary pirates in The Tenth Gifts
The Barbary corsair raids on the south coasts of England which took place intermittently over the course of more than two hundred years during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, have been increasingly well documented over the past few years, although when I grew up in Cornwall they were never mentioned, and most people are still ignorant of this particular bloody chapter in England’s history.
The majority of corsair attacks targeted shipping, both mercantile and fishing vessels, the corsairs often gulling their victims by flying false colours before revealing their true identity only when it was too late for the unfortunate target to flee or defend itself.
The violent theft of cargoes and crews, and the concomitant sale of captives into slavery, was a common peril faced by those at sea, and was certainly not confined to attacks on British shipping by Muslims and renegades: many of England’s finest made fortunes by attacking foreign shipping, whether legally, under official Letter of Marque (announcing the proceeds and splitting the value with the Admiralty in much the same way the Barbary corsairs regulated their own trade) or as pirates, for purely private profit.
However, the Barbary corsairs proved bolder than most, raiding as far and wide as Newfoundland, Iceland, Ireland and southern England as well as Spain, Portugal and the Mediterranean coasts.
The historical document prefacing this novel, that is, the letter from the Mayor of Plymouth to the new king’s Privy Council in the spring of 1625, warning of the likelihood not only of corsair raids (which had become a regular summer threat to shipping) but for the first time of attacks on coastal settlements, does not, in the usual bureaucratic fashion, appear to have resulted in raised security.
The attack I have described on the church in Penzance is based on a reference in the state papers to an event in July 1625 when “sixtie men, women and children were taken from the church of Munnigesca in Mounts Bay”
BookTrail Boarding Pass: The Tenth Gift
Destination/location: London, Cornwall Author/guide: Jane Johnson Departure Time: 2000s, 1625
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