In February 1613 an extraordinary mock sea-fight (naumachia) was staged on the River Thames to celebrate the marriage of Princess Elizabeth Stuart to Frederick, Count Palatine. I discuss this form of civic entertainment in a recently published article, which explores how a formidable array of naval and civic vessels were deployed to perform an imitation of a sea-fight between Christian forces represented by Spanish, Venetian, and English ships, and Islamic forces represented by ‘Turk’ ships. The performance lasted for hours, taking place on the section of the river Thames between Temple Stairs and Westminster. While much of the action occurred on the water and centered on the hurly-burly of (unloaded) cannon shots and musket fire between the ships, an important element of the entertainment was an artificially-constructed ‘fort and haven of Argier’ (i.e. Algiers) that was erected in Lambeth, across the river from Westminster. In this blog post I would like to offer some thoughts about what this structure might have looked like.

It is unsurprising that a representation of Algiers should have featured in a civic show of this type; after all, Algiers, like other locations in the Maghreb was synonymous with piratical activity in the minds of many English people. The ‘Algiers’ fortification erected for the 1613 wedding entertainment is variously described in different contemporary accounts of the performance. One description identifies it in somewhat vague terms that conflate national, geographical, and religious identities: a ‘Turkish or Barbarian Castle of Tunis, Algiers, or some other Mahometan fortification’.¹ Other accounts are more specific in describing it as ‘a Turkish castle, which represented and bare the name of the castle of Argier’.² The latter description implies that a locality board must have been attached on the structure to help spectators and passersby identify it, which would have been useful given that the structure was put together some weeks before the performance took place.

Figure 1. Detail of a pyrotechnic ‘castle’ used in a European coronation entertainment. Image credit: SLUB Digitale Sammlungen.

There are no surviving sketches or detailed descriptions of the ‘fort’ or ‘castle’ built for the 1613 water show, so it is impossible to know exactly how this structure actually looked. It is unclear whether the craftsmen responsible for its design or construction made any attempt to imitate, however vaguely, any North African architectural styles, or whether the locality board on the fortification was the only feature that specifically identified the structure as representing ‘Argiers’. We know that the intended conclusion of the mock sea-fight was for the fort to be conquered by English forces and ‘blown up’ in the grand finale, since this is described in detail in Magnificent Marriage (sigs. A4v-B1r). This particular account was, however, written before the performance actually took place; it represents the intended course of the show, not how things actually turned out. We learn from other sources, which were written after the event, that the intended ending never actually occurred in the performance, and the blowing up of the castle was abandoned.³

Regardless of the show’s anticlimactic conclusion, the ‘castle of Argier’ built in Lambeth was clearly intended to serve as a platform for the firing of ordnance and pyrotechnic display. It was most certainly constructed in a similar way to pyrotechnic ‘blockhouse’ fortifications that were typically made from wood, plaster, and cloth, and frequently used in European fireworks displays (Fig 1). Given the anxiety about both Ottoman power and Mediterranean piracy in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, it is no surprise that ‘Turks’ were featured as the antagonists in royal entertainments such as fireworks shows and naumachia, both of which enacted imaginative, vicarious shows of might against foreign enemies.⁴ Turks featured in a number of important European royal entertainments, where they were identifiable through costumes, banners, and sometimes by the architectural features of the large temporary structures created for those entertainments. For example, Ottoman mock fortifications were used in a Florentine naumachia in 1589 (Fig. 2), which were attacked and conquered by the Christian victors.

Figure 2. Detail from an engraving of the 1589 Florentine naumachia. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons.

For this reason, it is tempting to imagine that some features of Ottoman architectural design might have been incorporated, even if loosely or inaccurately, into the 1613 ‘fort and haven of Argier’ that was constructed in Lambeth. Indeed, depictions of Algiers and its topographical features would no doubt have been familiar to many of the royal, aristocratic, and ambassadorial spectators of the 1613 sea fight. The involvement of naval personnel in the organisation of this event might likewise have prompted a representation of ‘Argier’ that was informed by a knowledge of the city obtained from reports or published sources. For instance, cartographic representations, such as Braun and Hogenburg’s map (Title Image), might have served as the basis for the design of the temporary structures constructed on and near the Thames in order to turn a section of London into an imitation of the Mediterranean world.⁵ While it is impossible to uncover precisely how the 1613 representation of Algiers took shape, its presence in the entertainment undoubtedly offered spectators a sensational glimpse into a fictional representation of the Mediterranean world.

Title Image: Map of Algiers from Georg Braun and Frans Hodenberg’s Civitates orbis terrarum. De praecipuis totius universi urbibus. Liber secundus (Cologne, 1575). Image credit: Wikimedia Commons.

________________________________

[1] John Taylor, Heauens Blessing, and Earths Joy (London, 1613), sig. A3v.

[2] Anon., The Marriage of the Two Great Princes, sig. A4v (London, 1613), sig. A4v.

[3] Taylor, Heauens Blessing, sigs. A4r-A4v. An eyewitness report of the show’s anticlimactic conclusion is given by John Chamberlain in one of his letters. See N. E. McClure (ed.), The Letters of John Chamberlain, 2 vols (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1939), vol 1: p. 423.

[4] A number of European pyrotechnic shows featuring Turks are discussed in Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, ‘Firework Displays, Firework Dramas an Illuminations – Precursors of Cinema?’, German Life and Letters, 48 (1995), 338-52.

[5] Georg Braun and Frans Hogenberg, Civitates orbis terrarum. De praecipuis totius universi urbibus. Liber secundus (Cologne, 1575). This book, which was originally published in six parts, underwent multiple subsequent editions, and many of the illustrations (including the view of Algiers) were also copied for other publications.