Elizabeth First I heard of this but Interesting, I wonder if Sallymen was a corruption of one of the great Turkish leaders name "Suleiman the Great", leader of the Ottoman Empire? -----Original Message----- From: elizabeth howard Sent: Monday, February 03, 2014 1:30 PM To: devon@rootsweb.com Subject: [DEV] Devon petition re Pirate activity - Newfoundland fishery &VANSTONE Hi, just to add my two ignorant pennyworth ....to a great extent all "pirates" were called Turks or the Sallymen. This doesn`t mean in my opinion that they were pirates as in Johnny Depp or from Turkey or from Sale in Morocco . As a child my grandmother threatened me with the Sallymen if I strayed out of the garden, we lived not far from the sea on the south coast. And arabic lettering has been found on artefacts from a arab dhow type ship just off Sidmouth So these were ocean going ships , and Portugal like Ireland like Morocco were well within their strike range. See Linda Colley`s wonderful book Captives. And don`t forget the at Weymouth too was a port for ocean going ships, the sadly misnamed Happy Return took some of the Monmouth rebels to Barbados from Weymouth in 1685/8. I have now discovered a Vanstone website. just by chance.........try googling Vanstone web. And they seem to have found the name from the 15th C and perhaps intitially not Van but Fanston , but Devon and Cornwall for sure.