Baltimore to recall night the pirates struck

IT WAS, at the time, the worst mass kidnap in the Christian world.

And this evening, a west Cork coastal village will recall, in unique surroundings, the terrifying events of that night in the 17th century when more than 100 of their ancestors were carried off by marauding pirates. Captive, the first play by former Baltimore-based Gda Pat Flaherty, recalls the Sack of Baltimore on June 20, 1631, when 108 villagers were captured by a heavily-armed gang of Algerian pirates and shipped off to a life of slavery.

It was at the time one of the biggest single captures of innocents by pirates anywhere in Europe. The night-time raid was also seen as an audacious incursion on what was the King’s territory.