***Welcome to Beastly Tales. Each has a message, a moral. All are meant to have an element of humour. Naturally, any names included do not depict real folk but are included as part of the joke.***

***All rights reserved.
(As with Beastly Banter Beastly Tales is written and illustrated by Richard Hersel.)***

***Thank you for your following.
Richard Hersel***


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<h1>BEASTLY TALES</h1>

<h1>THE BARBARY CORSAIR</h1>


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***If sailing, fighting and riches do appeal,
And compassion, empathy and mercy you don’t feel,
Should you be a nefariously sadistic plotter,
And if you are an absolute bounder and rotter,
If you are enraptured by stealing and killing,
Enjoying a life both squalid and thrilling.
Then you could have signed up to be a Barbary Corsair,
A pirate with a particularly sadistic flair.***
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***With axe, musket and scimitar too,
Aboard their Galliots sailing near the coast will do.
Along the Mediterranean coast with both oars and sails,
The Barbary Corsair captain rants and rails,
The Barbary Coast extended along Africa’s North,
This was the area from which Corsairs set forth.
For over 300 years Corsairs dominated the Mediterranean,
Sending themselves and victims subterranean.***


***But finally the newly independent U.S.A.,
Declared war on the Corsairs, and saved the day.
By 1815 the rule of the Corsairs was over,
But it meant, by no means, they were rolling in clover.
First came the Corsairs, then English privateers,
They were not so dissimilar, they were, in fact peers.
Navigator Sir Francis Drake was the “Queens Pirate”,
Hounding Spanish Galleons, both angry and irate
Spanish Galleons comprising the Treasure Fleet,
Of around 100 ships were hard to beat,
From South America to sunny Spain,
They were attacked, their treasure to drain,
Into the coffers of the privateer ships,
Most successfully, not many slips.
These became the targets for Pirates and Corsairs,
The Spanish revoking their “graces and airs”.***


***The great age of Caribbean piracy had begun,
Treasure Galleons had to turn and run.
The English privateers had a “letter of Marque”,
Which legalized their attacks as a quite proper lark.
In the pirates code it was apparent quite soon,
That a participant could be a subject of maroon,
If they didn’t keep well to the code,
It certainly could be the end of the road!***

![barbary corsair.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmYmWZpL2JoFvAjuaC1ha8Qs3pYDbc9WhnatBZvuHAhFai/barbary%20corsair.png)

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