Battle of the Gulf of Tunis

In 1624, the spies of Viceroy of Sicily, Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, spies found out that a Tunisian fleet had sailed off from Bizerte and joined another fleet from the Regency of Algiers, gathering 13 galleys which hounded around the North African coast. On May 21, Álvaro de Bazán y Benavides came out from Palermo in their search with 14 galleys, nine from Sicily, one from Spain and four from the Order of St. John,^[1] the latter commanded by Nicolo della Marra.^[2] After reaching Cape Bon in Tunis, he found in 24 May a 20-gun Dutch galleon coming from trading with Candia, which he captured and brought to Palermo before resuming his mission.^[1][3]

He headed for Tunis again, and after leaving behind Cape Bon, he sent two scouts to La Goulette and Cape Farina, at the other sides of the gulf of Tunis, to learn about local privateering activity.^[1] Bazán then ran into three ships owned by Barbary corsair Ali Arraez Rabazin, known by the war name of "Samson",^[4] a Ferrarese renegade converted to Islam who harassed the coasts of Sicily, Naples and Spain. Rabazin had been a galley slave in Bazán's own ship, and now sailed in the service of Yusuf Dey of Tunis,^[5][1] having allegedly crammed a 30-ship fleet.^[6] The battle would be an inversion of the 1616 Battle of Cape Gelidonya, where a small Spanish galleon fleet faced a large Ottoman galley armada.^[7]

On June 4, Bazán sighted a galleon sport Tunisian flag, and two other galleons joined it, turning out to be Rabazin's ships. The corsair accepted battle despite his large disadvantage in numbers, trusting the size and artillery of his three galleons, composed by a 40-gun Danish ship, a 28-gun French one and a 18-gun Flemish one, all of which he ordered to open fire.^[2] Bazán knew his own artillery pieces were fewer, but superior in quality, caliber and range, therefore he eschewed boarding and, forming his fleet in a half moon, opened fire on the Tunisians while keeping distance, so they would be rendered unable to hit him back.^[5][8] Bazán ordered the galleys to row forward into range to fire their cannons and back to reload.^[8]

Increasingly punished, Rabazin on against the encircling Bazán on the hope of ramming his way out of the gulf, but the Christian galleys surrounded him and overwhelmed his flagship with artillery fire, killing 100 of his 300-men crew.^[1] After six hours of battle, the Tunisian ships ran aground in the coast, where the enemy gunfire had pushed them while targeting their rigging and vulnerable sterns to leave them adrift. The crews started evacuating them against the orders of Rabazin, who urged them to stand firm and threatened them.^[8] Meanwhile, Bazán boarded the immobile ships with his galleys and launched skiffs and feluccas to capture the escapees on the beaches.^[9] During the boarding, Rabazin was captured by the knights of St. John after a duel against Spanish captain Diego Duque de Estrada, who got his rondache broken but capitalized on the range of his rapier to wound Rabazin in the head.^[10] The Christian crews overcome all the ships.^[10]

The galleons were taken along with the booty from their previous captures, which numbered around 300,000 pieces of eight without counting treasure and valuable cargo.^[11] Bazán ordered his captain Simón Costa to repair the galleons to take them back to Sicily, and distributed the corsair ships' booty among his crews as a prize for the victory. They freed 200 Christian hostages and made 212 prisoners, among them Rabazin, who was chained again, while the rest of his men either drowned or died in battle.^[1] They also found three Russian slavewomen whom Rabazin kept for himself.^[11] Bazán returned on June 9 to Palermo.^[1]