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546 Mahmut Halef Cevrioğlu

bastarda’s spur found its way through one of the portholes. Once the
Ottoman galley’s spur was inside their porthole, the English personnel
quickly nailed the protruding parts of the bastarda to the wooden fur-
nishing of their ship. In short, Admiral Cafer Pasha’s galley was now
stuck with the English vessel .
82
From then on, Cafer Pasha and the English merchants were on the
point of no return: since the two vessels were pinned together, there
was no possibility to repel the Ottoman galley now and the fight had
to continue until one of the parties emerged victorious. The English
resumed loading their guns with shots and continued firing upon the
assailants. When they ran out of shots and iron pellets, narrated
Rycaut, they charged their stern chase guns with Spanish silver coins
(pieces of eight) : the stern chasers, it must be emphasised, were the
83
strongest armament of the English merchant ships and therefore in-
84
curred great casualties on the Ottomans. However, outnumbered by
their opponents, the English were soon once more reminded that they
were waging a battle impossible to win. Accordingly, they felt com-
pelled to resort to the last measure: in Naima’s words, they chose to
«burn rather than know shame» (en-nâr velâ el-‘âr) and set their own
vessels on fire .
85
So, while the Ottoman and English sailors were still fighting on
board, the Hector was getting quickly consumed by fire. Being stuck
with it, the Ottoman admiral’s bastarda did also start to catch fire
from the prow backward. Katip Çelebi noted that the admiral saved
himself in a lifeboat and got on a nearby Ottoman galley . Only with
86
the great effort of the Ottoman sailors that the admiral’s burning bas-
tarda was detached from the Hector and towed away by other Ottoman
galleys .
87
Simultaneous with Cafer Pasha’s attack on the Hector, the remain-
ing Ottoman galleys were still fighting the William and Ralph. And half
an hour after the Hector, the crew of the William and Ralph set their
ship on fire, too. The total duration of the combat was around two-
and-a-half hours, at the end of which both English vessels fell prey to
self-inflicted blazes and sank. The English sailors who saved their lives
by jumping into the sea were fished out by the Ottoman lifeboats and

82 P. Rycaut, The Turkish History, p. 77; Naima Mustafa Efendi, Tarih-i Naima,
p. 783; Tna, Sp, 97/15. Negroponte, 1 July (English Style) 1633, f. 204r.
83 P. Rycaut, The Turkish History, p. 77; Naima Mustafa Efendi, Tarih-i Naima,
p. 783.
84 N.A.M. Rodger, The Development of Broadside Gunnery, p. 314-315.
85 P. Rycaut, The Turkish History, p. 77; Naima Mustafa Efendi, Tarih-i Naima,
p. 783.
86 Kâtip Çelebi, Tuhfetu’l-Kibar, p. 192.
87 Naima Mustafa Efendi, Tarih-i Naima, p. 783.

Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XX - Dicembre 2023
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)