________________
APRIL, 1924]
NOTES ON PIRACY IN EASTERN WATERS
61
English.
232. In September 1617 the. Bee (Captain John Hatch), one of a fleet under Captain Martin Pring in the service of the East India Company, captured two Interlopers (or unlicensed traders), viz., the Francis (Captain Samuel Newse, sent out by Sir Robert Rich) and the Lion (Captain Thomas Jones, sent out by Philip Bernardoe of London), together with a great Surat ship belonging to the Mother of the Great Mughal, which they had chased and were preparing to plunder (Kerr, IX, 453, and Pring to the Company, dated Royal James, Swally Road, 12th November 1617, Ind. Off., O.C. 564).
233. On the 4th March 1618 the Reverend Patrick Copland wrote home that his ship the Royal James had taken two English pirates (evidently the Francis and the Lion just mentioned) in the act of chasing a junk off Gogo. On the 23rd February 1621 John Byrd wrote to the Company that the Commanders of the Company's ships had taken three rich China junks and had sold the booty on their own account instead of that of the Company (Cal. State Papers, East Indies). Apparently at this time the Company expected their commanders to cruise as well as trade.
Barbary Rovers.
234. I have already mentioned (see para. 192 above) that the trade between Portugal and India was harassed in one part of its course by the Barbary Pirates. These latter, by the way, were often called Turkish pirates, for Barbary was under the suzerainty of Turkey, and the chief part of the Turkish fleet was recruited from the Barbary corsairs, who, under their own or under the Turkish flag, attacked the vessels of the Christian nations. On the 10th July 1620 Sir Dudley Carleton wrote to Secretary Naunton that the Dutch East India Company's ship the Devil of Delft had, in a fight with seven pirates of Algiers, sunk two and driven off the rest but, having lost 100 men in the struggle, had been compelled to return to Holland. On the 25th October 1621, Sir Walter Aston wrote from Madrid that two Portugueso carracks, when nearing home, had been attacked by seventeen sail of Turkish pirates. One escaped into Lisbon, but the other, valued at three million ducats, after sinking two of the pirate vessels, had herself been set on fire and sunk with all on board by the Turks, when they had given up all hopes of taking her (Cal. State Papers, East Indies; Faria, III, 305). The Red or Bloody Flag.
235. From the very earliest times the colour red appears to have been associated with blood and fighting, and the use of the colour in any form by fighting men has denoted either resistance to the death (i.e., No Surrender) or the refusal, if victorious, to show any mercy to the conquered (i.e., No Quarter). When used by a particular officer in the presence of others, it (like the Imperial purple) denoted supreme command, but when displayed only on occasion, it was the signal for attack. From Roman times we have as signs of attack the purple cloak of Romulus with which he gave the signal for the rape of the Sabine women, and also the red tunic displayed over the tent of a gencral on the morning of battle. As signs of supreme command we have the Imperial purple, which dates even earlier, and was used in other countries, and the purple sails of the galleys which carried the chiefs of a Roman fleet. The earliest mention of the colour as a sign of No Quarter with which I am acquainted is in the case of the rebel Fan-chung or Fan tsung, during the reign of the usurper Wang Mang (9-23 A.D.) in the Province of Shantung in China. He made his followers, as a sign of their ferocity, dye their eyebrows red, so that they were known as Chih Mei, i.e., Red or Carnation Eyebrows (Macgowan, pp. 111-114; Staunton in China Review, XXI, 159),53 The earliest
52 It was used apparently in this way at the Fort of Spin Baldak on the Afghan frontier, when recently attacked by the British. Almost the whole of the garrison were killed (Times, 2nd June 1919).
