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which had humbled Sidonia lay rotting at their moorings, with grass growing on their decks. Such men-of-war as were commissioned, were manned by vagrants and thieves, who deserted when they could. In these circumstances, any sailor who had seen the "daies of bickering," and had a passion for glory in him, was strongly tempted to turn pirate. A very great number of them did so. During the first years of the reign of James I the seamen who had made Elizabeth's navy what it was, brought their skill and craft to the making of a pirate navy, which can only be compared to the buccaneer fleets of Morgan, Mansvelt, Sawkins, and Edward Davis, some seventy years later. In the Mediterranean, they made themselves bases among the Turks and Moors. They settled in hordes at Algiers, at Safi, and at Tunis. They taught the Moors the use of square sails, and filled the gaps in their crews with Mussulmans and renegades to whom piracy was a second nature and an honourable calling. From the crook of the Algerine mole, and from the sharp gut of the Goletta, these English seamen sailed out against the merchants