32  The Seamans Song of Captain Ward the famous Pyrate of the world, and an/ English man born [Euing 327]

In 1609, bookseller John Busby Senior registered ‘The seamens songe of Captayne Warde’ and ‘The seamens songe of Danseker the Dutchman’ as two distinct ballads, suggesting that at this early stage they were issued on separate sheets (Rollins). All surviving issues date from later in the seventeenth century, and they invariably present the two songs side by side, as on our featured edition. The Seamans Song remained successful into the 1660s and 1670s but was subsequently displaced by a different song about Captain Ward (see Related texts).

John Ward’s life-story has been pieced together by historians from references in dozens of different sources, most of them hostile. He originated in Faversham (Kent) and it seems to have escaped the notice of most scholars that he may well have been the John Ward, son of Robert and Elizabeth, who was baptised there on 20 December 1563 (see Ancestry).

In adult life, he became a fisherman, got married and moved to Plymouth (Devon). According to his literary critics, he failed to raise the tone of the town, being poor, drunk, cowardly and morally dissolute. His vocabulary is also said to have consisted almost exclusively of swear-words. It seems certain that during the last decade of the sixteenth century he became a privateer, sailing out of Plymouth to harry and rob the ships of other nations - preferably Spain - with the tacit approval of Elizabeth I's government (see Bak). Was he perhaps the 'Captain Ward' who, at an unspecified date in the queen's reign, was rewarded for his services with the right to collect a levy on all pilchards exported from Dorset, Devon and Cornwall (Calendar of State Papers)?

In 1603, James I succeeded Elizabeth and set about the business of bringing England's long war with Spain to an end. As a direct result, opportunities for semi-licensed privateering in the Caribbean and elsewhere were severely curtailed. This change of circumstance probably explains Ward's decision to join the crew of a royal ship named the ‘Lion’s whelp’. Service did not suit him, however, and before long he gathered a gang of fellow malcontents, stole another ship and began the piratical career that was to make him an international celebrity. Ward and his men used trickery to take vessels of varying size and value as they made their way to Algiers (he renamed a stolen French ship the ‘Little John’, perhaps with a respectful nod towards Robin Hood’s brawny sidekick).

In the years that followed, Ward steadily added further stolen ships and crews to his developing fleet. He is said to have had as many as 500 men under his command, and he conducted numerous raids off the north African coast, targeting merchant ships of all nationalities. By 1606, Ward had established a base in Ottoman Tunis, after forming a close alliance with Uthman Dey (also known has Cara Osman) who, as captain of the Janissaries (Turkish soldiers), was the city’s effective ruler.

Ward had to split his profits with Uthman’s regime but in return he was permitted to sell his stolen goods in the local markets and recruit local men to bolster his English crews. In this manner, he is also said to have played an important role in introducing native Barbary corsairs to the square-rigged fighting ships, sailing techniques and navigational know-how that were well established in northern Europe.

Ward’s arrangement with Uthman Dey enabled him to grow exceptionally wealthy between 1606 and 1609. He did particularly well from the taking of several Venetian merchant ships, all laden with an array of spices, gold and other materials. With such triumphs behind him, the fisherman from Faversham built a private palace in Tunis, consuming the finest foods and employing a personal bodyguard. Ward’s lifestyle at this time was described by his critics as violent, decadent and debauched (‘sodomy’ is mentioned more than once).

It was not all plain sailing, however, and Ward also suffered several setbacks in this period. He attempted to win a pardon from James I – this was often possible for reformed corsairs who bolstered their applications with deal-sweetening gold – but his efforts were rejected. Some of Ward’s own men fled with one of his ships, and a Venetian vessel that he had adopted and re-fitted as his flagship began to leak and had to be abandoned. To make matters worse, a former passenger on one of Ward’s ships informed the English ambassador to Venice that the pirate king was almost bald, constantly drunk or asleep, and ‘a fool and an idiot’ who boasted that he would rob his own father if they were to meet at sea.

These disappointments, particularly the ruling out of a pardon, probably help to explain Ward’s decision in 1609 or 1610 to convert to Islam, or ‘turn Turk’ in English Jacobean parlance. He also married again, this time to an Italian woman who lived in Tunis. Ward continued pirating until c. 1612 but hereafter seems to have entered a state of semi-retirement, living off his illicit gains and indulging his hobby of incubating chickens’ eggs in camel dung.

In 1615, the Scottish traveller, William Lithgow, stopped in Tunis for ten days and spent some time in Ward’s palace. He ‘dyned and supped’ with the pirate on several occasions, finding ‘old Ward’ a generous and ‘placable’ host. Ward died of the plague in 1622 and, several decades later, was remembered in a Tunisian source as the famous corsair, Captain Wardiyya, who became a Muslim and served the rulers of Tunis (see Ransome).

In English sources, Ward is frequently paired with the Dutchman, Simon Danseker (the name was spelt in several different ways), and it seems that the two men operated for a time in a sort of alliance in the Mediterranean, before falling out in c. 1609. This narrative is reflected in the second song on our featured edition.

Danseker was a Dutch counterpart of John Ward, operating from a base in Algiers, rather than Tunis. He came originally from Flushing and had served in the army of the States General of the Netherlands before moving to Marseille and then turning to piracy around 1607. Danseker’s subsequent attempt to switch back to a more conventional life was more successful than Ward’s, and he eventually returned to Marseille, under the protection of the French crown. In c. 1615, however, Louis XIII sent him to Tunis on a diplomatic mission and, while there, his past came back to haunt him. The local regime tricked and trapped him, then beheaded him for his previous crimes. As the ballad had earlier warned, ‘Such as live by theeving/ Have seldom times good ending’.

As far as we can tell, The Seamans Song enjoyed particular phases of popularity around 1609 and then again during the 1650s and 1660s (though the song may well have been in print throughout the intervening period). Both phases coincided with episodes of particular concern over the dangers posed to English shipping by Barbary corsairs. James I, in the early years of his English reign, repeatedly issued proclamations to address the threat and, on a single day in 1609, fifteen captured pirates were hanged in Wapping.

Not surprisingly, news of Ward’s activities stimulated considerable interest at this time, and authors spoke of ‘many flying fables’ and ‘much talke’ about the pirate. He was still topical in 1612 when the playwright, Thomas Dekker, imagined a group of spirits in the underworld anticipating the arrival of Ward and Danseker.

Piracy was similarly problematic in the years around 1660, and the regimes of Cromwell and Charles II were deeply concerned at the threat posed by Barbary corsairs to English interests. In fact, the situation had grown worse since 1609 and North African privateers regularly attacked English vessels in English waters and even raided southern English communities to abduct hostages. There were said to be thousands of English captives in Algiers and Tunis, where they lived as slaves while hoping to be freed on the payment of ransoms.

English governments, whether revolutionary or royal, were constantly preoccupied with the need to place relations with the Barbary states on a more sustainable footing, and this headache continued to throb into the late seventeenth century. It cannot have escaped notice that the capacity of the Barbary corsairs to operate in English waters was due in part to men like Ward and Danseker, who had taught an earlier generation sailing techniques that now helped them to operate far beyond the Mediterranean. The success of the song before and after the Restoration of 1660 is thus readily comprehensible.

It is noticeable, however, that The Seamans Song is not by any means consistent in its criticism of Ward and Danseker. There must, therefore, have been other reasons for its success. In fact, the song-writers oscillate between condemnation and admiration. Overall, the English pirate is denounced for his deeds but the song also includes references to ‘Lusty Ward’, his men ‘of courage and of might’, and the manner in which ‘His name and state so mounteth’. The title refers, apparently with something very like pride, to ‘the famous Pyrate of the world, and an English man born’. Danseker’s ‘gallant mind’ has also ‘won him great renown’ and both pirates participate in ‘proud adventures every day’. Such remarks are constantly qualified by the acknowledgement that the pirates are directing their manly prowess towards reprehensible ends but the tone of celebration is nevertheless unmistakable.  In Bernard Capp's words, the corsair of the ballad is 'an ambivalent figure, part hero, part villain'.

Clearly, there was something appealing about the ‘rover’ who could not be contained by land or by the social and political structures that necessarily constrained conventional humans. David Vitkus has dubbed such individuals ‘rogue cosmopolitans’ who transcended their low birth-status by ‘gaming those elite systems of trade, patron-client relations, war, diplomacy, and so on’.

In various ways, the ballad offered the singer, listener or reader a vicarious escape from normality. It facilitated a range of imaginative journeys: from land to sea, from England to Turkey, from lawfulness to criminality, from religion to irreligion, from poverty to riches, and from a sexually mixed society to a world of men (the ballad-makers’ intention of attracting male consumers in particular is also suggested by the title, the opening  appeal to ‘Gallants’, and the fact that the only women mentioned in the ballad are the widows created by the pirates' violence). English society was intensely hierarchical in the early modern period, and this is a song that glorifies rebels even while condemning them.

Ward’s abandonment of his homeland also raised interesting questions in an era characterised by a developing sense of English national identity. The second line of the ballad calls him ‘Captain Ward of England’ but the subsequent song describes a man who has, through his own personal efforts, become something else entirely.

As with so many hit ballads, The Seamans Song provided much matter for debate. Moreover, the possibility that ordinary English people might identify with such an extraordinary character was probably enhanced by the fact that Ward’s Kentish origins were clearly known and verifiable. Numerous individuals from seventeenth-century Faversham shared his surname, and one wonders whether the antics of their relative brought them guilt or glory.

According to contemporary sources, John Ward was also known as ‘Jack’ and as ‘Birdy’, ‘Sharky’ and ‘Sparrow’. He has therefore been identified as the inspiration for ‘Jack Sparrow’, the character played by Johny Depp in the Pirates of the Caribbean films (see Milton). Some characters simply cannot be kept out of popular culture!

Christopher Marsh

References

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/

Anon, The famous sea-fight between Captain Ward and the Rainbow. To the Tune of Captain Ward (late seventeenth century?)

Anon, Newes from sea, of two notorious pyrats Ward the Englishman, and Danseker the Dutchman. With a true relation of all or the most piraces by them committed unto the sixt of Aprill 1609 (1609). Reissued in the same year as Ward and Danseker, Two notorious pyrates.

Greg Bak, Barbary pirate. The life and crimes of John Ward (Stroud, 2006).

Andrew Barker, A true and certaine report of the beginning, proceedings, overthrowes, and now present estate of Captaine Ward and Danseker, the two late Pirates: from their first setting foorth to this present time (1609)

Broadside ballads from the Bodleian Library: http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series. Charles I. 1625-26 (1858), p. 259.

Bernard Capp, British slaves and Barbary corsairs 1580-1750 (2022).

Robert Daborne, A Christian turn’d Turke: Or, The tragicall lives and deaths of the two Famous Pyrates, Ward and Dansiker. As it hath been publickly Acted (1612).

Thomas Dekker, If it be not good, the Divel is in it (1612), L4r.

English Broadside Ballad Archive: https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/

English Short Title Catalogue.

Sila Şenlen Güvenç, ‘A foe to all Christians’, Çanakkale Araştırmaları Türk Yıllığı [The Turkish yearbook of Çanakkale studies] 29 (2020), pp. 35-54.

James I, By the King. A proclamation for the search and apprehension of certaine pirats (1604).

James I, By the King. A proclamation against pirats (1609).

William Lithgow, The total discourse, of the rare adventures, and painefull peregrinations of long nineteene years travailes from Scotland (1634; edition of 1640), pp. 359 and 380-81.

Christopher Lloyd, ‘Captain John Ward: Pirate’, History today 29.2 (February 1979), pp. 751-55.

Nabil Matar, Turks, moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York, 1999).

Giles Milton, ‘Pirate John Ward: the real Captain Sparrow’: https://www.historyextra.com/period/elizabethan/pirate-john-ward-the-real-captain-jack-sparrow/

David R. Ransome, ‘Ward, John [called Issouf Reis, Captain Wardiyya] (c. 1553-1623?), Oxford dictionary of national biography

Hyder E. Rollins, An analytical index to the ballad-entries (1557-1709) in the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London (1924; Hatboro, Pennsylvania, 1967), nos. 2390, 2393 and 2394.

Adrian Tinniswood, Pirates of Barbary (2010).

Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, https://www.vwml.org/ [search for Roud numbers 224 and V30770 – there are references to The Seamans Song under both numbers].

David Vitkins, ‘Rogue cosmopolitans on the early modern state: John Ward, Thomas Stukeley, and the Sherley brothers’ in Claire Jowitt and David McInnis (eds.), Travel and drama in early modern England (Cambridge, 2019), pp. 128-49.

The Seamans Song was closely related to two pamphlets about John Ward, both published in 1609. The first of these, Newes from sea, was registered with the Stationers in June by John Busby Senior, the same publisher who entered the ballad a month later, and it seems clear that the song was based on the longer publication. Busby was evidently hoping to cover all possible markets during the phase in which Ward had such topical value.

Essentially, Newes from sea presented a much more detailed account of Ward’s life and actions than the ballad could provide. We are told, for example, about Ward’s unsuccessful attempts to send money home to his wife in Faversham, and the book includes letters supposedly written by the masters of two London ships, the Charity and the Pearl, both of which had recently been attacked by Ward and his men.

Other details that appear in the ballad can be traced directly to News from sea. Ward, for example, commands twenty-four ships, has a Turkish bodyguard, and has recently attacked not only the Charity and the Pearl but also the Trojan, the Elizabeth and the Bonaventure of Hull. It is noticeable, however, that the pamphlet account seems to lack much of the admiring counter-text that is a feature of the ballad. In News from sea, Ward is hardly ever spoken of as a kind of hero. This perhaps tells us something about the perceived differences in taste between ballad-consumers and book-buyers.

A consistently critical tone also characterises the second pamphlet, Andrew Barker’s True and certaine report. The Busbys were clearly keen to keep the profits from Ward’s story in the family, and this text was entered by John Junior in October 1609, several months after the registrations of Newes from sea and the ballad.

If the composition of A true and certaine report did indeed follow that of the song, then certain references – the allegation that Ward practised ‘sodomy’ in Tunis, for example – may have been added to the new pamphlet because of the success of the ballad (this particular sexual practice is not mentioned in Newes from sea).

Not surprisingly, A true and certaine report also contains a great deal of detail that is not in the ballad, some of it made possible by the fact that Barker was himself one of Ward’s victims and could claim first-hand experience. There is clearer information, for example, on Ward’s status as a corsair who serves the political and military leaders of Tunis, and many of the pirate’s English accomplices are mentioned by name. Barker, the captain of a merchant ship, is also keen to point out that London’s losses at Ward’s hands already amount to £200,000. In addition, the author provides fuller information on Ward’s background in Plymouth, and his reputation among his former neighbours. Barker claims that the future renegade was regarded as ‘a fellow, poore, base, and of no esteeme’.

In 1612, Ward was also the subject of Robert Daborne’s play, A Christian turn’d Turke. The pirate’s conversion to Islam did not feature in the pamphlets or the hit song, though Barker did refer at one point to ‘our apostate countriman’. News of Ward’s decision to ‘turn Turk’ may not have reached England until c. 1610, and Daborne claimed novelty value by placing it at the heart of his narrative.

In other respects, Daborne had clearly learned from the earlier sources and he skilfully dramatises some of the detail. One of Ward’s early victims, for example, warns him to moderate his conduct with the words, ‘A little calmer sir, you are not now in Kent,/ Crying herrings seven a penny’. There is not much evidence, however, of a direct link to the ballad, and Daborne’s text stands apart from the pamphlets in sometimes presenting Ward as thoughtful and eloquent, rather than mono-syllabically foul-mouthed.

Daborne's most striking innovation comes, however, at the end of the play when Ward kills himself in order to avoid death at the hands of Uthman Dey, his former ally. His dying wish is that other pirates will learn the lessons of his demise and do battle with Islam. Given that Ward still had over a decade to live at the time of composition, this was wishful thinking on the author’s part.

The Seamans Song was clearly the source that came closest to celebrating Ward’s lawlessness, though it also condemned him for it. At the opposite end of the spectrum was a poem written by Samuel Rowlands in c. 1613. This was addressed ‘To a reprobate pirate that hath renounced Christ and is turn’d Turke’ and its final line hinted at the identity of the intended recipient: ‘Perpetuall flames is reprobates Re-ward’.

As these words suggest, Rowland’s poem was uncompromisingly critical and it presented no hints of admiration, whether sneaking or otherwise. Ward is described as a ‘wicked lumpe of onely sin’, a ‘villaine’, a ‘Hellish Beast’, a ‘cursed Theife’ and a ‘devouring monster’. He is further charged with simultaneously serving the Turk and the Devil, and with luring others along same path. Rowlands accuses Ward of ‘Having a garment ready in thy hall,/ For him that next from Christian faith doth fall’.

Last but not least, we must mention another ballad about Ward, entitled The famous sea-fight between Captain Ward and the Rainbow. This does not seem to have been registered but was probably composed in the middle decades of the seventeenth century (an earlier date of origin cannot, however, be ruled out).  It is not closely related to The Seamans Song, although it focuses on the same individual and can probably be understood as an attempt to tap into the success of the original while moving the tale in a bold new direction. The famous sea-fight seems to draw its inspiration loosely from Ward’s attempt, in c. 1608, to obtain a pardon from the king, and it builds a fictional narrative upon this foundation.

In the ballad, Ward requests an audience with the monarch and promises to pay thirty tons of gold as a ransom (a reference to the fairly common piratical practice of effectively buying royal pardons). The king is unimpressed and sends his mighty ship, the Rainbow, to deal with Ward, once and for all (the Rainbow would also have been remembered as one of the ships used by Francis Drake in his famous raid on Cadiz in 1587).

Having located Ward, presumably off the Barbary coast, the Rainbow opens fire but the bombardment has no effect upon the pirate vessel. Ward, unruffled, tells the Rainbow’s captain to deliver a message to the king: ‘If he reign King of all the Land,/ I will reign King at Sea’. The Rainbow duly returns home, and its captain advises James that Ward’s ship is ‘so strong,/ it never will be tane’.

The famous sea-fight also appropriates certain imagery from another hit pirate-ballad, A True Relation of the Life and Death of Sir Andrew Barton. ‘Shoot on, shoot on, says Captain Ward’ when the Rainbow fires on his ship, recalling Barton’s words of encouragement, ‘Fight on, fight on, my merry Men all’. And the captain of the Rainbow’s reluctant conclusion that his opponents ‘were brass on the out side/ yet Ward was steel within’ is clearly intended to call to mind the earlier description of Barton as ‘brass within, and steel without’.

The famous sea-fight between Captain Ward and the Rainbow clearly took over as the most popular ballad about Ward in the closing years of the seventeenth century. It was also printed regularly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and it survived as a folk-song into the twentieth (it is Child Ballad number 287).

Christopher Marsh

Texts (in chronological order)

Anon, Newes from sea, of two notorious pyrats Ward the Englishman, and Danseker the Dutchman. With a true relation of all or the most piraces by them committed unto the sixt of Aprill 1609 (1609). Reissued in the same year as Ward and Danseker, Two notorious pyrates.

Andrew Barker, A true and certaine report of the beginning, proceedings, overthrowes, and now present estate of Captaine Ward and Danseker, the two late Pirates: from their first setting foorth to this present time (1609)

The Seamans Song of Captain Ward the famous Pyrate of the world, and an English man born, The tune is, The Kings going to Bulloign (registered 1609 and printed regularly thereafter).

Robert Daborne, A Christian turn’d Turke: Or, The tragicall lives and deaths of the two Famous Pyrates, Ward and Dansiker. As it hath been publickly Acted (1612).

Samuel Rowlands, ‘To a reprobate pirate that renounced Christ and is turn’d Turke’, in his More knaves yet? The knaves of spades and diamonds. With new additions (1613), B1r.

Anon, The famous sea-fight between Captain Ward and the Rainbow. To the Tune of Captain Ward (mid-seventeenth-century?)