Today I write about a structure in my little town of El Campello, Spain. It is a small stone fortification on a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. It was built at least 60 years before Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock, but it reminds me of an often overlooked chapter of American history.
My American friends will recall the Barbary Wars. These wars were fought against the Berbers, people settled along the Barbary Coast of North Africa, which is just a stone’s throw from Spain.
Berber pirates had been demanding tribute from American merchant vessels in the Mediterranean Sea. The pirates didn’t kid around. Failure to pay resulted in ships being attacked, goods stolen and sailors being enslaved. Thomas Jefferson (in 1801) sent naval ships to attack the Barbary Coasts. American Marines landed in Tripoli (hence the first line in the Marine’s hymn, “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli”). The attacks ultimately forced the Berbers to grant American ships free passage.
My American friends also will recall that it was Spain who sent the Italian, Christopher Columbus, to the New World. Riches from the New World helped make Spain, in the 1500’s, the predominant European power. Despite that power, however, its southern coast was frequently raided by Berber pirates.
More than anything else, the pirates came for slaves. Between 1580 and 1680 the Berbers may have taken as many as 850,000 slaves. The scourge was so bad that people refused to settle in many coastal regions.
Spain addressed the problem by building watchtowers. The El Campello watchtower, pictured below, was built between 1554 and 1557.
Over a hundred similar watchtowers still dot Spain’s southern coast.
Each watchtower would have four men: two horsemen and two footmen. When they spotted a pirate ship the horsemen would gallop off to warn townspeople so that they could hide. The footmen would use smoke signals (during the day) or bonfires (at night) to alert other towers of the danger.
You see the red arrow in the picture above? That is the watchtower entrance. You needed a rope ladder to reach it. The point was to secure the watchmen so that they could remain in the tower and moon the invading pirates.
I made up that last part, about the mooning. However, it is a well established historical fact that mooning did not begin when you were in high school. It was a known practice as far back as the Middle Ages. One of the first known instances of mooning happened during the Fourth Crusade. This would have been around 1203, when Western Europeans attempted to take Constantinople. As the crusaders’ ships pulled away after the failed attack, the Byzantines hooted and hollered and “showed their bare buttocks in derision to the fleeing foe.”
Based upon this rich history I posit that it is highly unlikely that a watchman never mooned a pirate. As I walk by the tower I imagine an infuriated Berber taking aim at the bare butt of some wiseass Spaniard.
I hope that he misses.