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Contro ogni previsione: uno scontro navale nel Mediterraneo moderno... 547

imprisoned on Ottoman galleys. Thomas Spaight estimated the total
loss of life for the English around twenty, while about seventy sailors
were captured alive, including both captains of the English vessels.
Spaight related these events and his conditions as a captive in a letter
to the English ambassador at the Porte some days after the combat
while he was still detained «aboard galley called Patron Reall», that is,
on Admiral Cafer Pasha’s command ship .
88

7. The Aftermath of the Fight

The shock of the setback Cafer Pasha felt notwithstanding, the ex-
tent of the Ottoman casualties is ambiguous. Rycaut claimed that two
or three Ottoman galleys were burnt down along with the English
ships, with thousands of Ottoman rowers and soldiers aboard .
89
Naima, on the other hand, calculated the Ottoman death toll at six
hundred and the wounded at two hundred . Ottoman sources did not
90
allude to any loss of galleys on the Ottoman side. Nonetheless, the
failure to seize the English vessels (as there is no evidence to the con-
trary) must have been as much of a loss as the actual Ottoman casu-
alties.
Following such an eventful assault on the English merchants, the
grand admiral was unable to continue his operation. He was obliged
to release anchor around Thessaloniki for the navy to recuperate
throughout the following month. The fact that he did not directly con-
tinue the campaign reveals that the Ottoman casualties must indeed
be high enough (may be as high as Naima suggested) for him to take
a break. Furthermore, the pasha ordered the execution of the local
Ottoman subjects who were involved in the contraband trade . After
91
the admiral regathered his forces later in the summer, he continued
eastwards toward Syria in order to assist the Ottoman land forces
campaigning in the Eastern Mediterranean, taking the English cap-
tives along. It was only at the end of the year that the admiral would
return to Istanbul .
92

88 Tna, Sp, 97/15. Negroponte, 1 July (English Style) 1633, f. 204r-v.
89 P. Rycaut, The Turkish History, pp. 77-78.
90 Naima Mustafa Efendi, Tarih-i Naima, p. 783.
91 Naima Mustafa Efendi, Tarih-i Naima, p. 783; Gazette, 1634, p. 345.
92 Tna, Sp, 97/15. Constantinople, 28 December (English Style) 1633, f. 228v-
229r. That year, the Ottoman navy reinforced the land forces besieging Emir Fakhr
al-Din ibn Maan (of Sidon), who was eventually captured by the government forces,
P.N. Miller, Peiresc’s Mediterranean World, Harvard University Press, Cambridge
(Massachusetts) and London, 2015, p. 282.

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