Raïs Hamidou

Hamidou ben Ali , known as Raïs Hamidou (Arabic: الرايس حميدو), or Amidon in American literature, born around 1770, and died on June 17, 1815, near Cape Gata off the coast of southern Spain, was an Algerian corsair.[1] He captured up to 200 ships during his career.[2] Hamidou ensured the prosperity of the Deylik of Algiers, and gave it its last glory before the French invasion. His biography is relatively well known because the French archivist Albert Devoulx has found important documents, including a precious register of prizes opened by the authorities of the Deylik in 1765.[3] Songs and legends have also taken hold of this charismatic character.

For other uses, see Raïs Hamidou (disambiguation).
For the location, see Raïs Hamidou, Algeria.
Raïs

Hamidou ben Ali
رايس حميدو بن علي
Statue of Hamidou in the Central museum of the Army in Algiers
Born1770
Died1815
Cape Gata, Near of Spain
Resting placeMediterranean Sea
NationalityAlgerian
Piratical career
NicknameAmir el bihar (prince of the seas)
Other namesAmidon
Hamuda
TypeCorsair
AllegianceDeylik of Algiers
Years active1795 - 1815
RankCaptain, then Admiral
Base of operationsOran, Algiers
CommandsMeshuda

Portuguesa

Stedio
Battles/warsAmerican-Algerian War (1785-1795)
French campaign in Egypt and Syria
Algerian-Tunisian naval war (1811)
Second Barbary War

Origins

He was the son of a man named Ali.[4] According to some sources his father was an artisan tailor in Algiers.[5]

According to documents discovered by the archivist Albert Devoulx, Hamidou "belonged to a class of Arabs settled in the cities for a more or less long time, which the Europeans called Moors".[6] Despite this, after the battle off Cape Gata, his captured officers and crew said that he was Kabyle during an interview with their American captors.[7] He is also described as a “native Algerian” by European sources.[8]

At age 10 he started working aboard a pirate ship commanded by Raïs Memmou as a cabin boy.[7] There he learned many different things, and he gained much experience from it.[9]

Career as Rais

There are no documents on the activity of Raïs Hamidou during the first years of his functions as a pirate captain in Algiers, but we can assume that he was under the tutelage of an older privateer, and that he was doing his apprenticeship.[10] After passing the exam set by the Taifa of the Raïs (a council of the pirate captains of Algiers), he was allowed to become a raïs himself.[11] His first success came shortly after his appointment, when he successfully guided his ship from seemingly certain defeat at the hands of a much larger Spanish foe.[11]

After Oran was recaptured in 1792,[12][13] the then Bey of Oran, Mohammed el-Kebir appointed Hamidou as the chief of the Oranese navy, which was used both as a privateer fleet, and a defence one. During that time the navy around Oran consisted of three Xebecs, and several Feluccas. The Dey Sidi Hassan also granted him another three-masted Xebec.[14]

In 1795 or 1796 after returning from a raid in Italy he got into a storm and decided to anchor at La Calle, a French outpost in nominally Algerian territory. His anchors broke and his ship, carried by a storm, was smashed against the rocks of the shore. This event nearly ruined Hamidou's career. The loss of a ship entrusted to a raïs was most often very severely punished. He decided not to make his report, and he was caught and brought back by force to Algiers. But he was able to calm the anger of the Dey and soon, he had a frigate built by the Spanish Maestro Antonio, a renegade carpenter in Algiers.[15]

In 1797 a corvette of the Dey of Algiers returned to the port without displaying the Algerian flag or saluting the mosque of Sidi Abderrahman, patron of the city of Algiers. This symbolic act meant the loss of its captain either in battle, or desertion. In fact, the latter, having many misdeeds and serious navigation errors to be forgiven, had preferred to desert, and went to take refuge in Morocco. The Dey, wishing to reward Hamidou for his recent successes, appointed him to the command of the vessel.[10] Hamidou is mentioned regularly in the register of catches, especially involving Genoese, Venetian, Neapolitan and Greek vessels.[16]

On March 8, 1802,[17] after a few days of cruising, Hamidou commanding a Xebec of 40 guns met a Portuguese warship of 44 guns. Aware of the military superiority of the Portuguese frigate, he employed cunning. He hoisted an English flag to approach the Portuguese. The Portuguese let themselves be approached by the Algerians, as they realize far too late that they are facing pirates. The Algerians boarded and devastated the ship. 282 Portuguese were taken prisoner. The corsairs captured the ship.[18][19]

The frigate would become a unit of the Algerian fleet under the name of La Portugaise. Hamidou was given an honorary Yatagan, and was received in solemn audience.[20] The Portuguese frigate was not the only one that the Algerians or Hamidou captured.[21] On 28 May the same year, Hamidou captured another Portuguese war frigate of 36 guns.[22] These successes earned the Rais the title of the admiral of the Algerian fleet, and his own villa in El Biar from Hussein Khodja who would later become Dey.[23]

For nearly two years, Hamidou's name ceased to appear on the prize register because of internal problems and rivalry with the Odjak, and the jealousy of the new Dey. In 1808, one of the first acts of the new Dey, Ali III ar-Rasul was exiling Hamidou whose popularity he saw as a threat.[24] Hamidou was sent into exile in Beirut but Hadj Ali Dey who came to power in 1809, reinvited him into the country and reappointed him into all of his previous positions.[25]

Back in Algiers, he received the command of a division of four ships, a 44-gun frigate commanded by himself, a 44-gun frigate commanded by the Raïs Ali Gharnaout, La Portugaise, the aforementioned 44-gun frigate commanded by the Raïs Ahmad Zmirli, a brig of 20 guns, commanded by Raïs Mustapha, a Maltese renegade. The dey authorized him to cross in the Atlantic Ocean which Raïs Hamidou did under the cover of night . The Algerian squadron captured three Portuguese ships.[26] The Portuguese signed a peace treaty with the Algerians in 1810, paying heavy compensation.[27]

In 1811, a war broke out between the Deylik of Algiers and The Beylik of Tunis. On 10 October 1811, Hamidou captured an English ship containing Tunisian goods. On May 22, with a fleet of six warships, and four gunboats, he captured a Tunisian frigate which he brought back to Algiers after a tough fight against a fleet of twelve Tunisian warships in the Action of 22 May 1811.[28][29]

Following this naval battle, Hamidou received an ovation after the Dey complimented him in open court. Hamidou recorded a number of other successes between 1812 and 1815. He took part in attacks against ships from Greece, Sicily, Sweden, Holland, Denmark, and Spain.[30] According to some sources, during his career, he seized a total of more than 200 sailboats.[31]

Death

He died in 1815 after being ambushed by an American fleet during the US-Algerian war.

References
  1. de Courcy, J. (1974). "RAÏS HAMIDOU: THE LAST OF THE GREAT ALGERIAN CORSAIRS". The Mariner's Mirror. Informa UK Limited. 60 (2): 187–196. doi:10.1080/00253359.1974.10657964. ISSN 0025-3359.
  2. BEAUCARNOT, Jean-Louis; DUMOULIN, Frédéric (2015-06-11). Dictionnaire étonnant des célébrités (in French). edi8. ISBN 978-2-7540-7767-5.
  3. Devoulx 1859.
  4. Devoulx 1859, p. 17.
  5. Devoulx 1859, p. 25.
  6. Devoulx 1859, p. 16.
  7. Leiner, Frederick C. (2006). The End of Barbary Terror: America's 1815 War Against the Pirates of North Africa. Oxford University Press. p. 208. ISBN 978-0-19-532540-9.
  8. Leiner, Frederick C. (2006-05-01). The End of Barbary Terror: America's 1815 War against the Pirates of North Africa. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-804095-8.
  9. Havu, Eva (1996). De l'emploi du subjonctif passé (in French). Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia. ISBN 978-951-41-0818-1.
  10. Rais Hamidou: Le dernier corsaire barbaresque d'Alger (2007); p. 13.
  11. Akyeampong, Emmanuel Kwaku; Gates (Jr.), Henry Louis (2012-02-02). Dictionary of African Biography. OUP USA. ISBN 978-0-19-538207-5.
  12. Murray (Firm), John; Playfair, Sir Robert Lambert (1887). Handbook for Travellers in Algeria and Tunis, Algiers, Oran, Constantine, Carthage, Etc. J. Murray.
  13. FEY, Henri Léon (1858). Histoire d'Oran, etc (in French).
  14. Desprès, Paul (2007-04-02). Rais Hamidou (in French). Editions L'Harmattan. ISBN 978-2-296-16788-9.
  15. Souidi, Djamel (2005). Grands personnages de l'histoire ancienne de l'Algérie: des origines à 1830 (in French). Editions du Tell. ISBN 978-9961-773-29-1.
  16. Devoulx 1859, pp. 38–39.
  17. algérienne, Société historique (1869). Revue africaine (in French).
  18. Devoulx 1859, pp. 86–90.
  19. Courtinat, Roland (2003). La piraterie barbaresque en Méditerranée: XVI-XIXe siècle (in French). SERRE EDITEUR. ISBN 978-2-906431-65-2.
  20. Devoulx 1859, p. 81.
  21. Hubac, Pierre (1949). Les Barbaresques (in French). Berger-Levrault.
  22. Panzac, Daniel (1999). Les corsaires barbaresques: la fin d'une épopée, 1800-1820 (in French). CNRS. ISBN 978-2-271-05688-7.
  23. Sabrina L., Le Soir d'Algérie, 9 février 2011
  24. Devoulx 1859, p. 97.
  25. Devoulx 1859, p. 102.
  26. Devoulx 1859, pp. 103–104.
  27. Panzac, Daniel (2005). The Barbary Corsairs: The End of a Legend, 1800-1820. BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-12594-0.
  28. Rousseau, Alphonse (1864). Annales tunisiennes: ou, Aperçu historique sur la régence de Tunis (in French). Bastide.
  29. Mercier, Ernest (1891). Histoire de l'Afrique septentrionale (Berbérie) depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu'à la conquête française (1930) (in French). Ernest Leroux.
  30. Devoulx 1859, pp. 110–112.
  31. BEAUCARNOT, Jean-Louis; DUMOULIN, Frédéric (2015-06-11). Dictionnaire étonnant des célébrités (in French). edi8. ISBN 978-2-7540-7767-5.

Sources
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