First
posted: July 17th, 2011
Reposted:
January 19, 2013
John Ward or Birdy (c. 1553 – 1622), also known as Jack Ward and under his Muslim
nameYusuf Reis, was a
notorious English pirate around the turn of the 17th century who later
became a Muslim operating out of Tunis
during the early 17th century. His real name was Captain Jack Ward and he was
also known as Jack Birdy. He was on the run from the church when he
converted to Islam in the late 16th Century. His entire crew also
converted to Islam with him.
Captain Jack Birdy was obsessed with little birds during his
time in Tunisia (where he fled), so much that the locals would call him Jack
Asfur ~ asfur being Arabic for sparrow. This is where the name Captain Jack
Sparrow comes from. His Muslim name was Yusuf Reis, he was married to
another renegade from Christendom who also converted to Islam, Jessimina the
Sicilian.
Whilst Captain Jack Birdy was known as a great drunkard, he
stopped drinking alcohol when he converted to Islam. He was instrumental
in rescuing thousands of Spanish Jews and Muslims fleeing their expulsion from
their lands in the 16th and 17th centuries.
.
EARLY LIFE
Little is known about Ward’s early life. What little is
known comes from a pamphlet purportedly written by someone who sailed with him
during his pirate days. That said, Ward seems to have been born about 1553
probably in Faversham, Kent,
in southeast England.[1]
Like many born in coastal areas, he spent his youth and
early adult years working in the fisheries. Then, after the failed invasion of
England by the Spanish Armada in 1588, he found work
as a privateer, plundering Spanish ships with a license from Queen
Elizabeth I of England.
When James I of England
assumed the throne in 1603, he ended the war with Spain and in effect
put the privateers out of business. However, many of them refused to give up
their livelihood and simply continued to plunder. Those who did were considered
pirates because they no longer had valid licenses ~ called letters of marque
~ issued by the state. Ward appears not to have turned immediately to piracy
but instead once again become a fisherman, working out of Plymouth.
PIRACY
Around 1603, Ward was pressed in to the Royal Navy in
where he was placed into the Channel Fleet and served aboard a ship
named the Lyon’s Whelp. After two weeks he and a group of about 30 of his colleagues
deserted and stole a small 25-ton barque, from Portsmouth Harbour. Ward’s comrades
elected him captain, one of the earliest precedents for pirates choosing their
own leader.[2]
They sailed to the Isle of Wight and captured another
ship, the Violet, a ship rumoured to be carrying the treasure of
Roman Catholic refugees. However, the ship turned out to be empty of treasure,
but the enterprising Ward used her to cunningly capture a much larger French
ship.
Ward and his men sailed to the Mediterranean where he was able to
acquire a warship of thirty-two guns which was renamed The Gift and
began attacking merchantmen for the next two years.
While at Salé, Morocco in 1605 several English and
Dutch sailors, including Richard Bishop and Anthony Johnson,
joined Ward’s crew and the following year (August, 1606) Ward arranged
with Tunisian ruler Uthman Dey
to use Tunis
as a base of operations in exchange for one fifth of Ward’s loot. From this
base, Jack Ward was easily able to capture several valuable merchant ships,
including the 60 ton Reniera
e Soderina.
Following his return to Tunis in June of 1607, Ward was
informed during the winter that the now rotted Reniera e Soderina
had begun to sink. With several of his officers, Ward deserted the ship to one
of the French prizes he had captured. The Reniera e Soderina later
sank off Greece as 400 crew members, of which 250 were Muslim
and 150 were English, were lost. Ironically, Ward lost his own ship, as well as
two others captured by Venice, several weeks later.
While many in Tunisia were angered by Ward’s desertion of
the Muslim sailors aboard the Reniera e Soderina, Uthman Dey
offered Ward a safe haven. Ward however offered James I of England
for a royal pardon which was refused and he
reluctantly returned to Tunis. Uthman Dey kept his word and Ward was granted
protection by Tunis.
During the next year ballads and pamphleteers
condemned John Ward for turning corsair. He changed his name to Yusuf
Reis and married an Italian woman while he continued to send money to his
English wife. In 1612 a play called A Christian Turn’d
Turk was written about his conversion by the English
dramatist Robert Daborne.
LEGACY
To his contemporaries Ward was an enigmatic figure, in some
ways like a Robin Hood (Who also was Muslim, in historical background), but in
the 16th and 17th centuries many English pirates operated out of the mouth of
the Sebo River
and preyed on Mediterranean shipping.
Ward was supposed to have spared English ships while
attacking “papist” vessels. John Ward and Simon Danseker are credited with
introducing Barbary corsairs to the use of square-rigged ships of northern
Europe.
Before dying of the plague in 1622, Jack Ward (like many
other Christians who sailed North Africa [citation needed])
abandoned his religion and adopted the Muslim religion Islam.
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