Murad Reis the Younger

On this day, the village of Baltimore in West Cork, Ireland, was attacked by pirates from the Barbary Coast of North Africa. The raid, known as “The Sack of Baltimore”, was carried out by Dutch, Algerian and Turkish slave traders, under the command of a Dutch captain, Murad Reis the Younger. Murad’s men were led to the village by John Hackett, the captain of a fishing boat, who had been captured by Murad shortly before the raid – presumably in exchange for his release. Baltimore was mostly inhabited by settlers from England who had arrived some years earlier to work in the lucrative pilchard fishery. During the raid more than 100 villagers, men, women and children, were put in irons and taken to a life of slavery in Algiers. It was the worst attack ever by Barbary corsairs on the mainland of Ireland or Britain.