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pirates must suffer was provided by the plague, which paid
one of its regular visits to North Africa in 1623. Aged about
seventy, Ward died in bed and was buried at sea just as he'd
always expected and hoped.
Ward's contemporaries in England wasted a
great deal of vitriolic language on him and
other English renegades, whom they saw in an
almost medieval light, as having forsaken
Christianity to espouse Islam. Yet one cannot
but sympathize with the pragmatism of the
pirates against the dogmatism of their day.
Certainly Ward waged war on Christian shipping,
making no exception of English vessels,
but stories that he would have robbed his own
father if he met him at sea seem simply malicious.
There was certainly another side to his
nature. On at least two occasions he is known
to have freed Englishmen who found themselves
enslaved at Tunis, and Lithgow, who
actually met the man, referred to him as
"Generous Waird." [Senior. p. 94]
C.M. Senior, the author of this epitaph. obviously cannot
help a feeling of sympathy for Ward, despite his cruelty,
bungling, and apostasy. The would-be Little John. the rather
dimwitted old salt who no doubt continued to ramble on
about the good old days over the dinner table,16 makes an
odd fit with the Tunisian gentleman, sometimes abstemious,
16. Once in 1608, Ward sailed into Algiers with a Spanish prize
laden with a cargo of "alligant wines", and there met another pirate
(one John King of Limehouse) who'd just captured a ship canying
beer. Ward traded him a tun ofwine for a tun of beer, losing money
on the deal, and revealing his working-class taste! [Ewen, 1939: 9]
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"generous", and-who knows? -perhaps even a little pious.
(It's interesting to note that Ward only converted rather late
in his Tunisian career, which suggests he may have done so
entirely voluntarily and even sincerely.) This almost adds up
to a convincing character study; it has almost enough contradictions
and paradoxes in it to sound psychologically
authentic. No other Renegado comes across the gulf of time
as such a fully-realized personality - with the possible exception
of Murad Reis of Sale, whom we'll meet later on.
Indeed. one can't help liking Ward-although. like Wdliam
Lithgow. one might hesitate to spend a night at his alabaster
palace, for fear of missing one's watch and wallet in the
morning!
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