If La Valette, Romegas and Juan de Austria could be considered the best commanders that the Christian forces could bring to the sea, the forces of Islam were able to call on the equally outstanding maritime and leadership skills of admirals such as Barbarossa and Dragut.
Hayreddin Barbarossa or Red Beard (1478–1546), privateer and Ottoman admiral
Operation Barbarossa | Hayreddin Barbarossa | Barbarossa | SMS ''Barbarossa'' | Frederick I "Barbarossa" | Barbarossa (Ottoman admiral) | Barbarossa (disambiguation) |
The name Kurtoğlu means Son of Kurt (Wolf) in Turkish, a family name which Muslihiddin inherited from his father, Kurt Bey, a Turkish seaman from Anatolia who went to northwestern Africa for privateering together with the other Ottoman corsairs of that period such as the Barbarossa brothers, Aruj and Hayreddin Barbarossa.
Danseker and the English pirate John Ward were the two most prominent renegades operating in the Barbary coast during the early 17th century, both of whom were said to command squadrons in Algiers and Tunis equal to their European counterparts, and represented a formidable naval power as allies (much like Aruj and Hayreddin Barbarossa the previous century).