pirate

Etymology

The English word "pirate" is derived from the Latin pirata ("pirate, corsair, sea robber"), which comes from Greek πειρατής (peiratēs), "brigand", from πειράομαι (peiráomai), "I attempt", from πεῖρα (peîra), "attempt, experience". The meaning of the Greek word peiratēs literally is "anyone who attempts something". Over time, it came to be used to describe anyone who committed robbery or brigandage on land or at sea. The term first appeared in English c. 1300. Spelling did not become standardised until the eighteenth century, and spellings such as "pirrot", "pyrate" and "pyrat" occurred until this period.

History

Europe

The earliest documented instances of piracy are the exploits of the Sea People who threatened ships sailing in the Aegean and Mediterranean in the 14th century BC. In classical antiquity, the Phoenicians, Illyrians and Tyrrhenians were known as pirates. In the pre-classical era, the ancient Greeks condoned piracy as a viable profession; it apparently was widespread and "regarded as an entirely honourable way of making a living". References are made to its perfectly normal occurrence in many texts, including Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and abduction of women and children to be sold into slavery was common. By the era of Classical Greece, piracy was looked upon as a "disgrace" to have as a profession.

In the 3rd century BC, pirate attacks on Olympus in Lycia brought impoverishment. Among the most famous ancient pirating peoples were the Illyrians, who inhabited the western Balkan Peninsula. Constantly raiding the Adriatic Sea, the Illyrians caused many conflicts with the Roman Republic. It was not until 229 BC when the Romans decisively beat the Illyrian fleets that their threat was ended. During the 1st century BC, there were pirate states along the Anatolian coast, threatening the commerce of the Roman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean. On one voyage across the Aegean Sea in 75 BC, Julius Caesar was kidnapped and briefly held by Cilician pirates and held prisoner in the Dodecanese islet of Pharmacusa. The Senate invested the general Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus with powers to deal with piracy in 67 BC (the Lex Gabinia), and Pompey, after three months of naval warfare, managed to suppress the threat.

As early as 258 AD, the Gothic-Herulic fleet ravaged towns on the coasts of the Black Sea and Sea of Marmara. The Aegean coast suffered similar attacks a few years later. In 264, the Goths reached Galatia and Cappadocia, and Gothic pirates landed on Cyprus and Crete. In the process, the Goths seized enormous booty and took thousands into captivity. In 286 AD, Carausius, a Roman military commander of Gaulish origins, was appointed to command the Classis Britannica, and given the responsibility of eliminating Frankish and Saxon pirates who had been raiding the coasts of Armorica and Belgic Gaul. In the Roman province of Britannia, Saint Patrick was captured and enslaved by Irish pirates.

The most widely recognized and far-reaching pirates in medieval Europe were the Vikings, seaborne warriors from Scandinavia who raided and looted mainly between the 8th and 12th centuries, during the Viking Age in the Early Middle Ages. They raided the coasts, rivers, and inland cities of all Western Europe as far as Seville, which was attacked by the Norse in 844. Vikings also attacked the coasts of North Africa and Italy and plundered all the coasts of the Baltic Sea. Some Vikings ascended the rivers of Eastern Europe as far as the Black Sea and Persia.

Southeast Asia

In thalassocratic Austronesian cultures in Island Southeast Asia, maritime raids for enslaved people and resources against rival polities have ancient origins. It was associated with prestige and prowess and often recorded in tattoos. Early European cultures recorded reciprocal raiding traditions as being prevalent throughout Island Southeast Asia.

With the advent of Islam and the colonial era, enslaved people became a valuable resource for trading with European, Arab, and Chinese slavers, and the volume of piracy and slave raids increased significantly. Numerous native peoples engaged in sea raiding; they include the Iranun and Balanguingui slavers of Sulu, the Iban headhunters of Borneo, the Bugis sailors of South Sulawesi, and the Malays of western Southeast Asia. Piracy was also practiced on a smaller scale by foreign seafarers, including Chinese, Japanese, and European traders, as well as renegades and outlaws. The volume of piracy and raids was often dependent on the ebb and flow of trade and monsoons, with pirate season (known colloquially as the "Pirate Wind") starting from August to September.

Slave raids were of high economic importance to the Muslim Sultanates in the Sulu Sea: the Sultanate of Sulu, the Sultanate of Maguindanao, and the Confederation of Sultanates in Lanao (the modern Moro people). It is estimated that from 1770 to 1870, around 200,000 to 300,000 people were enslaved by Iranun and Banguingui slavers. David P. Forsythe put the estimate much higher, at around 2 million people abducted and enslaved within the first two centuries of Spanish rule of the Philippines after 1565.

These enslaved people were taken from piracy on passing ships as well as coastal raids on settlements as far as the Malacca Strait, Java, the southern coast of China, and the islands beyond the Makassar Strait. Most of the slaves were Tagalogs, Visayans, and "Malays" (including Bugis, Mandarese, Iban, and Makassar). There were also occasional European and Chinese captives, usually ransomed through Tausug intermediaries of the Sulu Sultanate. Enslaved people were the primary indicators of wealth and status, and they were the source of labor for the farms, fisheries, and workshops of the sultanates. While enslaved people were rarely sold, they were trafficked extensively in enslaved people purchased from the Iranun and Banguingui slave markets. By the 1850s, enslaved people constituted 50% or more of the population of the Sulu archipelago.

East Asia

In East Asia, by the ninth century, populations centered mostly around merchant activities in coastal Shandong and Jiangsu. Wealthy benefactors including Chang Pogo established Silla Buddhist temples in the region. Chang Pogo had become incensed at the treatment of his fellow citizens, who in the unstable milieu of late Tang often fell victim to coastal pirates or inland bandits. After returning to Silla around 825, and in possession of a formidable private fleet headquartered at Cheonghae (Wando), Chang Pogo petitioned the Silla king Heungdeok (r. 826–836) to establish a permanent maritime garrison to protect Silla merchant activities in the Yellow Sea. Heungdeok agreed and, in 828, formally established the Cheonghae (淸海, "clear sea") Garrison (청해진) at what is today Wando island off Korea's South Jeolla province. Heungdeok gave Chang an army of 10,000 men to establish and man the defensive works. The remnants of Cheonghae Garrison can still be seen on Jang islet just off Wando's southern coast. Chang's force, though nominally bequeathed by the Silla king, was effectively under his own control. Chang became the arbiter of Yellow Sea commerce and navigation.

From the 13th century, the Wokou, based in Japan, made their debut in East Asia, initiating invasions that would persist for 300 years. The wokou raids peaked in the 1550s, but by then the wokou were mostly Chinese smugglers who reacted strongly against the Ming dynasty's strict prohibition on private sea trade.

During the Qing period, Chinese pirate fleets grew increasingly large. The effects of large-scale piracy on the Chinese economy were immense. They preyed voraciously on China's junk trade, which flourished in Fujian and Guangdong and was a vital artery of Chinese commerce. Pirate fleets exercised hegemony over villages on the coast, collecting revenue by exacting tribute and running extortion rackets. In 1802, the menacing Zheng Yi inherited the fleet of his cousin, captain Zheng Qi, whose death provided Zheng Yi with considerably more influence in the world of piracy. Zheng Yi and his wife, Zheng Yi Sao (who would eventually inherit the leadership of his pirate confederacy), then formed a pirate coalition that, by 1804, consisted of over ten thousand men. Their military might alone was sufficient to combat the Qing navy. However, a combination of famine, Qing naval opposition, and internal rifts crippled piracy in China around the 1820s, and it has never again reached that level.

In the 1840s and 1850s, United States Navy and Royal Navy forces campaigned together against Chinese pirates. Major battles were fought such as those at Ty-ho Bay and the Tonkin River though pirate junks continued operating off China for years more. However, some British and American individual citizens also volunteered to serve with Chinese pirates to fight against European forces. The British offered rewards for the capture of Westerners serving with Chinese pirates. During the Second Opium War and the Taiping Rebellion, piratical junks were again destroyed in large numbers by British naval forces, but ultimately it was not until the 1860s and 1870s that fleets of pirate junks ceased to exist.

South Asia

Bawarij were Sindhi pirates named for their distinctive barja warships who were active between 251 and 865 AD. Their frequent piracy and the incident in which they looted two treasure ships coming from Ceylon became the casus belli for the Umayyad conquest of Sindh.

Pirates who accepted the Royal Pardon from the Chola Empire would get to serve in the Chola Navy as "Kallarani". They would be used as coast guards, or sent on recon missions to deal with Arab piracy in the Arabian Sea. Their function is similar to that of the 18th-century privateers, used by the Royal Navy.

Starting in the 14th century, the Deccan (Southern Peninsular region of India) was divided into two entities: on the one side stood the Muslim Bahmani Sultanate and on the other stood the Hindu kings rallied around the Vijayanagara Empire. Ongoing wars demanded frequent resupply of fresh horses, which were imported via sea routes from Persia and Africa. This trade was frequently raided by thriving bands of pirates based in the coastal cities of Western India. One of such was Timoji, who operated off Anjadip Island both as a privateer (by seizing horse traders, that he rendered to the raja of Honavar) and as a pirate who attacked the Kerala merchant fleets that traded pepper with Gujarat.

During the 16th and 17th centuries, there was frequent European piracy against Mughal Indian merchants, especially those en route to Mecca for Hajj. The situation came to a head when the Portuguese attacked and captured the vessel Rahimi which belonged to Mariam Zamani the Mughal queen, which led to the Mughal seizure of the Portuguese town Daman. In the 18th century, the famous Maratha privateer Kanhoji Angre ruled the seas between Mumbai and Goa. The Marathas attacked British shipping and insisted that East India Company ships pay taxes if sailing through their waters.

Persian Gulf

The southern coast of the Persian Gulf was known to the British from the late 18th century as the Pirate Coast, where control of the seaways of the Persian Gulf was asserted by the Qawasim (Al Qasimi) and other local maritime powers. Memories of the privations inflicted on the coast by Portuguese raiders under Albuquerque were long-lasting, and local powers were antagonistic as a consequence of Christian powers asserting dominance over their coastal waters. Early British expeditions to protect the Imperial Indian Ocean trade from competitors, principally the Al Qasimi from Ras Al Khaimah and Lingeh, led to campaigns against those headquarters and other harbours along the coast in 1809 and then, after a relapse in raiding, again in 1819. This led to the signing of the first formal treaty of maritime peace between the British and the rulers of several coastal sheikhdoms in 1820. This was cemented by the Treaty of Maritime Peace in Perpetuity in 1853, resulting in the British label for the area, 'Pirate Coast', being softened to the 'Trucial Coast', with several emirates being recognised by the British as Trucial States.

Madagascar

At one point, there were nearly 1,000 pirates located in Madagascar. Île Sainte-Marie was a popular base for pirates throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. The most famous pirate utopia is that of the probably fictional Captain Misson and his pirate crew, who allegedly founded the free colony of Libertatia in northern Madagascar in the late 17th century, until it was destroyed in a surprise attack by the island natives in 1694.

Caribbean

The classic era of piracy in the Caribbean lasted from circa 1650 until the mid-1720s. By 1650, France, England and the United Provinces began to develop their colonial empires. This involved considerable seaborne trade, and a general economic improvement: there was money to be made – or stolen – and much of it traveled by ship.

French buccaneers were established on northwestern part of Hispaniola after the devastations of Osorio as early as 1625, but lived at first mostly as hunters rather than robbers; their transition to full-time piracy was gradual and motivated in part by Spanish efforts to wipe out both the buccaneers and the prey animals on which they depended. The buccaneers' migration from Hispaniola's mainland to the more defensible offshore island of Tortuga limited their resources and accelerated their piratical raids. According to Alexandre Exquemelin, a buccaneer and historian who remains a major source for this period, the Tortuga buccaneer Pierre Le Grand pioneered attacks on galleons returning to Spain.

The growth of buccaneering on Tortuga was augmented by the English capture of Jamaica from Spain in 1655. The early English governors of Jamaica freely granted letters of marque to buccaneers in Tortuga and to their own fellow citizens. At the same time, the growth of Port Royal provided these raiders with a far more profitable and enjoyable place to sell their booty. In the 1660s, the new French governor of Tortuga, Bertrand d'Ogeron, similarly issued privateering commissions to both his own colonists and English cutthroats from Port Royal. These conditions brought Caribbean buccaneering to its zenith.

A new phase of piracy began in the 1690s as English pirates looked beyond the Caribbean for treasure. The fall of Britain's Stuart kings had restored the traditional enmity between Britain and France, thus ending the profitable collaboration between English Jamaica and French Tortuga. The devastation of Port Royal by an earthquake in 1692 further reduced the Caribbean's attractions by destroying the pirates' chief market for fenced plunder. Caribbean colonial governors began to discard the traditional policy of "no peace beyond the Line," under which it was understood that war would continue (and thus letters of marque would be granted) in the Caribbean regardless of peace treaties signed in Europe; henceforth, commissions would be granted only in wartime, and their limitations would be strictly enforced. Furthermore, much of the Spanish Main had simply been exhausted; Maracaibo alone had been sacked three times between 1667 and 1678, while Río de la Hacha had been raided five times and Tolú eight.

Canary Islands

Due to the strategic situation of this Spanish archipelago as a crossroads of maritime routes and commercial bridge between Europe, Africa and America, this was one of the places on the planet with the greatest pirate presence.

In the Canary Islands, the following stand out: the attacks and continuous looting of Berber, English, French and Dutch corsairs sometimes successful and often a failure; and on the other hand, the presence of pirates and corsairs from this archipelago, who made their incursions into the Caribbean. Pirates and corsairs such as François Le Clerc, Jacques de Sores, Francis Drake defeat in Gran Canaria, Pieter van der Does, Murat Reis and Horacio Nelson attacked the islands and was defeated in the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife (1797). Among those born in the archipelago stands out above all Amaro Pargo, whom the monarch Felipe V of Spain frequently benefited in his commercial incursions and corsairs.

Santa Cruz de Tenerife was, especially during the first half of the 18th century, the most important corsair center in the Macaronesian region. The recent discovery of abundant documentary evidence of significant corsair activity, carried out primarily by natives, residents, and islanders, confirms this fact. At the same time, the numerous pirate ships that frequented the Canary Islands' waters used landing places along the coast. Such was the case of Valle de Salazar or San Andrés, which had acquired a reputation as a "pirate port" until the construction of its castle or defensive tower.

North America

Piracy on the east coast of North America first became common in the early seventeenth century, as English privateers discharged after the end of the Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604) turned to piracy. The most famous and successful of these early pirates was Peter Easton.

River piracy in late 18th-mid-19th century America was primarily concentrated along the Ohio River and Mississippi River valleys. In 1803, at Tower Rock, the U.S. Army dragoons, possibly, from the frontier army post upriver at Fort Kaskaskia, on the Illinois side opposite St. Louis, raided and drove out the river pirates.

Stack Island was also associated with river pirates and counterfeiters in the late 1790s. In 1809, the last major river pirate activity took place on the Upper Mississippi River, and river piracy in this area came to an abrupt end when a group of flatboatmen raided the island, wiping out the river pirates. From 1790 to 1834, Cave-In-Rock was the principal outlaw lair and headquarters of river pirate activity in the Ohio River region, from which Samuel Mason led a gang of river pirates on the Ohio River.

River piracy continued on the lower Mississippi River, from the early 1800s to the mid-1830s, declining as a result of direct military action and local law enforcement and regulator-vigilante groups that uprooted and swept out pockets of outlaw resistance.

"Roaring" Dan Seavey was a pirate active in the early 1900s in the Great Lakes region who joined the United States Marshals Service in later life, working to curb poaching, smuggling, and piracy on Lake Michigan.

Culture and social structure

Rewards

Pirates had a hierarchical system on board their ships that determined how captured money was distributed. However, pirates were more egalitarian than any other area of employment at the time. In fact, pirate quartermasters were a counterbalance to the captain and had the power to veto his orders. The majority of plunder was in the form of cargo and the ship's equipment, with medicines the most highly prized. A vessel's doctor's chest would be worth anywhere from £300 to £400, or around $470,000 in today's values. Jewels were common plunder but not popular, as they were hard to sell, and pirates, unlike the public of today, had little concept of their value. There is one recorded case in which a pirate was given a large diamond worth far more than the handful of small diamonds he gave his crewmates as a share. He felt cheated and had it broken up to match what they received.

Spanish pieces of eight minted in Mexico or Seville were the standard trade currency in the American colonies. However, every colony still used the monetary units of pounds, shillings, and pence for bookkeeping, while Spanish, German, French, and Portuguese money were all standard mediums of exchange, as British law prohibited the export of British silver coinage. Until exchange rates were standardised in the late 18th century, each colony legislated its own exchange rates. In England, 1 piece of eight was worth 4s 3d while it was worth 8s in New York, 7s 6d in Pennsylvania, and 6s 8d in Virginia. One 18th-century English shilling was worth about $58 in modern currency, so a piece of eight could be worth between $246 and $465. As such, the value of pirate plunder could vary considerably, depending on who recorded it and where.

Ordinary seamen received a part of the plunder at the captain's discretion, but usually a single share. On average, a pirate could expect the equivalent of a year's wages as his share from each ship captured while the crew of the most successful pirates would often each receive a share valued at around £1,000 ($1.17 million) at least once in their career. One of the larger amounts taken from a single ship was that by captain Thomas Tew from an Indian merchantman in 1692. Each ordinary seaman on his ship received a share worth £3,000 ($3.5 million), while officers received proportionally larger amounts according to the agreed-upon shares, with Tew himself receiving 2½ shares. It is known that there were actions involving the capture of multiple ships, in which a single share was worth almost double this.

By contrast, an ordinary seaman in the Royal Navy received 19s per month, paid in a lump sum at the end of a tour of duty, which was around half the rate paid in the Merchant Navy. However, corrupt officers would often "tax" their crews' wages to supplement their own, and the Royal Navy of the day was infamous for its reluctance to pay. From this wage, 6d per month was deducted for the maintenance of Greenwich Hospital, with similar amounts deducted for the Chatham Chest, the chaplain, and surgeon. Six months' pay was withheld to discourage desertion. That this was an insufficient incentive is revealed in a report on proposed changes to the RN, written by Admiral Nelson in 1803; he noted that since 1793, more than 42,000 sailors had deserted. Roughly half of all RN crews were pressganged, and these not only received lower wages than volunteers but were shackled while the vessel was docked and were never permitted to go ashore until released from service.

Loot

Even though pirates raided many ships, few, if any, buried their treasure. Often, the "treasure" that was stolen was food, water, alcohol, weapons, or clothing. Other things they stole were household items like bits of soap and gear like rope and anchors, or sometimes they would keep the ship they captured (either to sell off or keep because it was better than their ship). Such items were likely to be needed immediately, rather than saved for future trade. For this reason, the pirates did not need to bury these goods. Pirates tended to kill a few people aboard the ships they captured; usually, they would kill no one if the ship surrendered, because if it became known that pirates took no prisoners, their victims would fight to the last breath, making victory both very difficult and costly in lives. In contrast, ships would quickly surrender if they knew they would be spared. In one well-documented case, 300 heavily armed soldiers on a ship attacked by Thomas Tew surrendered after a brief battle with none of Tew's 40-man crew being injured.

Punishment

During the 17th and 18th centuries, once pirates were caught, justice was meted out in a summary fashion, and many ended their lives by "dancing the hempen jig", a euphemism for hanging. Public executions were a form of entertainment at the time, and people came out to watch them as they would at a sporting event today. Newspapers reported details such as condemned men's last words, the prayers said by the priests, and descriptions of their final moments on the gallows. In England, most of these executions took place at Execution Dock on the River Thames in London.

In the cases of more famous prisoners, usually captains, their punishments extended beyond death. Their bodies were enclosed in iron cages (gibbet) (for which they were measured before their execution) and left to swing in the air until the flesh rotted off them- a process that could take as long as two years. The bodies of captains such as William "Captain" Kidd, Charles Vane, William Fly, and John Rackham were all treated this manner.

Role of women

While piracy was predominantly a male occupation throughout history, a minority of pirates were female. Pirates did not allow women onto their ships very often. Additionally, women were often regarded as bad luck among pirates. It was feared that the male members of the crew would argue and fight over the women. On many ships, women (as well as young boys) were prohibited by the ship's contract, which all crew members were required to sign.

Only four female pirates are known to have been active during the Golden Age of Piracy. They were Anne Bonny and Mary Read, women who served under John Rackham in 1720, Mary Critchett, an escaped prisoner in 1729, and Martha Farley, the wife of a minor pirate in 1727.

Democracy among Caribbean pirates

Unlike traditional Western societies of the time, many Caribbean pirate crews of European descent operated as limited democracies. Pirate communities were among the first to establish a system of checks and balances similar to that used by present-day democracies. The first record of such a government aboard a pirate sloop dates to the 17th century.

Known pirate shipwrecks

To date, the following identifiable pirate shipwrecks have been discovered:

Whydah Gally (discovered in 1984), a former slave ship seized on its maiden voyage from Africa by the pirate captain Samuel Bellamy. The wreck was found off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, buried under 10 ft (3 m) to 50 ft (15 m) feet of sand, in depths ranging from 16 ft (5 m) to 30 ft (9 m) feet deep, spread for four miles, parallel to the Cape's easternmost coast. With the discovery of the ship's bell in 1985 and a small brass placard in 2013, both inscribed with the ship's name and maiden voyage date, the Whydah is the only fully authenticated Golden Age pirate shipwreck ever discovered. Since 2007, the Wydah collection has been touring as part of the exhibit "Real Pirates" sponsored by National Geographic.

Queen Anne's Revenge (discovered in 1996), the flagship of the infamous pirate Blackbeard. He used the ship for less than a year, but it was an effective tool in his prize-taking. In June 1718, Blackbeard ran the ship aground at Topsail Inlet, now known as Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina. Intersal, a private firm working under a permit with the state of North Carolina, discovered the remains of the vessel in 28 feet (8.5m) of water about one mile (1.6 km) offshore of Fort Macon State Park, Atlantic Beach, North Carolina. Thirty-one cannons have been identified to date, and more than 250,000 artifacts have been recovered. The cannons are of different origins (such as English, Swedish, and possibly French) and different sizes, as would be expected with a colonial pirate crew.

Golden Fleece (discovered in 2009), the ship of the notorious English pirate Joseph Bannister, which was found by the American shipwreck hunters John Chatterton and John Mattera in the Dominican Republic, at Samaná Bay. The discovery is recounted in Robert Kurson's book Pirate Hunters (2015).

Privateers

A privateer or corsair used similar methods to a pirate, but acted under orders of the state while in possession of a commission or letter of marque and reprisal from a government or monarch authorizing the capture of merchant ships belonging to an enemy nation. For example, the United States Constitution of 1787 specifically authorized Congress to issue letters of marque and reprisal. The letter of marque and reprisal was recognized by international convention and meant that a privateer could not technically be charged with piracy while attacking the targets named in his commission. This nicety of law did not always save the individuals concerned, however, since whether one was considered a pirate or a legally operating privateer often depended on whose custody the individual found himself in—that of the country that had issued the commission, or that of the object of attack. Spanish authorities were known to execute foreign privateers with their letters of marque hung around their necks to emphasize Spain's rejection of such defenses. Furthermore, many privateers exceeded the bounds of their letters of marque by attacking nations with which their sovereign was at peace (Thomas Tew and William Kidd are notable alleged examples). They thus made themselves liable to conviction for piracy. However, a letter of marque did provide some cover for such pirates, as plunder seized from neutral or friendly shipping could be passed off later as taken from enemy merchants.

The famous Barbary corsairs of the Mediterranean, authorized by the Ottoman Empire, were privateers, as were the Maltese corsairs, who were authorized by the Knights of St. John, and the Dunkirkers in the service of the Spanish Empire. In the years 1626–1634 alone, the Dunkirk privateers captured 1,499 ships, and sank another 336. From 1609 to 1616, England lost 466 merchant ships to Barbary pirates, and Algerians captured 160 British ships between 1677 and 1680. One famous privateer was Sir Francis Drake. His patron was Queen Elizabeth I, and their relationship ultimately proved to be quite profitable for England.

Privateers constituted a large proportion of the total military force at sea during the 17th and 18th centuries. During the Nine Years War, the French adopted a policy of strongly encouraging privateers (French corsairs), including the famous Jean Bart, to attack English and Dutch shipping. England lost roughly 4,000 merchant ships during the war. In the following War of Spanish Succession, privateer attacks continued, Britain losing 3,250 merchant ships. During the War of Austrian Succession, Britain lost 3,238 merchant ships, and France lost 3,434 merchant ships to the British.

Commerce raiders

A wartime activity similar to piracy involves disguised warships called commerce raiders or merchant raiders, which attack enemy shipping commerce, approaching by stealth and then opening fire. Commerce raiders operated successfully during the American Revolution. During the American Civil War, the Confederacy sent out several commerce raiders, the most famous of which was the CSS Alabama. During World War I and World War II, Germany also made use of these tactics, both in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Since commissioned naval vessels were openly used, these commerce raiders should not be considered even privateers, much less pirates, although the opposing combatants were vocal in denouncing them as such.

Contemporary piracy

Seaborne piracy against transport vessels is a significant issue, with estimated worldwide losses of US$16 billion per year in 2004, increased to US$25 billion over the next 20 years. Waters between the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, off the Somali coast, and also in the Strait of Malacca and Singapore, which are used by over 50,000 commercial ships a year. In the Gulf of Guinea, maritime piracy has also put pressure on offshore oil and gas production, and the security of offshore installations and supply vessels is often paid for by oil companies rather than the respective governments. In the late 2000s, the emergence of piracy off the coast of Somalia spurred a multi-national effort led by the United States to patrol the waters near the Horn of Africa. In 2011, Brazil also created an anti-piracy unit on the Amazon River. Sir Peter Blake, a New Zealand world champion yachtsman, was killed by pirates on the Amazon river in 2001.

In the European Union, vessels suffer river piracy, with attacks on the Serbian and Romanian stretches of the Danube river, an international waterway.

Modern pirates favor small boats and exploit the limited crew sizes on modern cargo vessels. They also use large vessels to supply the smaller attack/boarding vessels. Modern pirates can be successful because a large share of international commerce occurs by sea. Major shipping routes take cargo ships through narrow bodies of water such as the Gulf of Aden and the Strait of Malacca making them vulnerable to be overtaken and boarded by small motorboats. Other active areas include the South China Sea and the Niger Delta. As usage increases, many of these ships have to lower cruising speeds to allow for navigation and traffic control, making them prime targets for piracy.

Also, pirates often operate in regions of poor, developing, or struggling countries with small or nonexistent navies and along major trade routes. Pirates sometimes evade capture by sailing into waters controlled by their pursuer's enemies. With the end of the Cold War, navies have decreased in size and patrol less frequently, while trade has increased, making organized piracy far easier. Modern pirates are sometimes linked to organized crime syndicates, but are often small, individual groups.

The International Maritime Bureau (IMB) maintains statistics regarding pirate attacks dating back to 1995. Their records indicate hostage-taking overwhelmingly dominates the types of violence against seafarers. For example, in 2006, there were 239 attacks, 77 crew members were kidnapped and 188 taken hostage but only 15 of the pirate attacks resulted in murder. In 2007 the attacks rose by 10 percent to 263 attacks. There was a 35 percent increase in reported attacks involving guns. Crew members who were injured numbered 64 compared to just 17 in 2006. That number does not include instances of hostage taking and kidnapping where the victims were not injured.

Anti-piracy measures

Under a principle of international law known as the "universality principle", a government may "exercise jurisdiction over conduct outside its territory if that conduct is universally dangerous to states and their nationals." The rationale behind the universality principle is that states will punish certain acts "wherever they may occur as a means of protecting the global community as a whole, even absent a link between the state and the parties or the acts in question." Under this principle, the concept of "universal jurisdiction" applies to the crime of piracy. For example, the United States has a statute (section 1651 of title 18 of the United States Code) imposing a sentence of life in prison for piracy "as defined by the law of nations" committed anywhere on the high seas, regardless of the nationality of the pirates or the victims.

The goal of maritime security operations is "actively to deter, disrupt and suppress piracy to protect global maritime security and secure freedom of navigation for the benefit of all nations", and pirates are often detained, interrogated, disarmed, and released. With millions of dollars at stake, pirates have little incentive to stop. In Finland, one case involved pirates who had been captured and whose boat was sunk. As the pirates attacked a vessel of Singapore, not Finland, and are not themselves EU or Finnish citizens, they were not prosecuted. A further complication in many cases, including this one, is that many countries do not allow the extradition of people to jurisdictions where they may be sentenced to death or torture.

The Dutch are using a 17th-century law against sea robbery to prosecute. Warships that capture pirates have no jurisdiction to try them, and NATO does not have a detention policy in place. Prosecutors have a hard time assembling witnesses and securing translators, and countries are reluctant to imprison pirates because they would be saddled with the pirates upon their release.

The Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia was formed in November 2006.

Since the 2010s, the U.S. Navy and others have been developing artificial intelligence (AI)-based systems that generate piracy alerts based on surveillance data.

Self-defense

The fourth volume of the handbook: Best Management Practices to Deter Piracy off the Coast of Somalia and in the Arabian Sea Area (known as BMP4) is the current authoritative guide for merchant ships on self-defense against pirates. The guide is issued and updated by Oil Companies International Marine Forum (OCIMF), a consortium of interested international shipping and trading organizations including the EU, NATO and the International Maritime Bureau. It is distributed primarily by the Maritime Security Centre – Horn of Africa (MSCHOA), the planning and coordination authority for EU naval forces (EUNAVFOR).

The BMP4 encourages vessels to register their voyages through the region with MSCHOA, as this registration is a key component of the International Recommended Transit Corridor (IRTC), the navy-patrolled route through the Gulf of Aden. The BMP4 contains a chapter entitled "Self-Protective Measures" that lays out steps a merchant vessel can take to make itself less of a target for pirates and better able to repel an attack if one occurs. This list includes rigging the deck of the ship with razor wire, rigging fire-hoses to spray sea-water over the side of the ship to hinder boardings, having a distinctive pirate alarm, hardening the bridge against gunfire, and creating a "citadel" where the crew can retreat if pirates get on board. Other unofficial self-defense measures that can be found on merchant vessels include the setting up of mannequins posing as armed guards or firing flares at the pirates.

Though it varies by country, generally, peacetime law in the 20th and 21st centuries has not allowed merchant vessels to carry weapons. In response to the rise in modern piracy, however, the U.S. government changed its rules, allowing U.S.-flagged vessels to deploy a team of armed private security guards. The US Coast Guard leaves it to the ship owners' discretion whether those guards will be armed. The International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) in 2011 changed its stance on private armed guards, accepting that operators must be able to defend their ships against pirate attacks.

This has given rise to a new breed of private security companies that provide training for crew members and operate floating armouries to protect crew and cargo. This has proved effective in countering pirate attacks. The use of floating armouries in international waters allows ships to carry weapons in international waters, without having arms within coastal waters where they would be illegal. Seychelles has become a central hub for international anti-piracy operations, hosting the Indian Ocean Anti-Piracy Operation Center. In 2008, VSOS became the first authorized armed maritime security company to operate in the Indian Ocean region.

Self protection measures

The best protection against pirates is to avoid encountering them. This can be accomplished by using tools such as radar, or by using specialised systems that use shorter wavelengths, as small boats are not always picked up by radar. An example of a specialised system is WatchStander.

While the non-wartime 20th-century tradition has been for merchant vessels not to be armed, the U.S. Government has recently changed the rules so that it is now "best practice" for vessels to embark a team of armed private security guards. The guards are usually supplied from ships intended specifically for training and supplying such armed personnel. The crew can be given weapons training, and warning shots can be fired legally in international waters.

Other measures vessels can take to protect themselves against piracy are air-pressurised boat stopping systems which can fire a variety of vessel-disabling projectiles, implementing a high freewall and vessel boarding protection systems (e.g., hot water wall, electricity-charged water wall, automated fire monitor, slippery foam). Ships can also attempt to protect themselves using their Automatic Identification Systems (AIS). Every ship over 300 tons carries a transponder supplying both information about the ship itself and its movements. Any unexpected change in this information can attract attention.

Previously, this data could only be picked up if there was a nearby ship, rendering single ships vulnerable. Specialised satellites have recently been launched to detect and retransmit this data. Large ships cannot, therefore, be hijacked without being detected. This can deter attempts to hijack the entire ship or steal large portions of cargo with another ship, since an escort can be sent more quickly.

Patrol

In an emergency, warships can be called upon. In some areas, such as near Somalia, patrolling naval vessels from different nations are available to intercept vessels attacking merchant vessels. For patrolling dangerous coastal waters, or keeping costs down, robotic or remote-controlled USVs are also sometimes used. Shore- and vessel-launched UAVs are used by the U.S. Navy. A British former British chief of defence staff (David Richards), questioned the value of expensive kit procured by successive governments, saying "We have £1bn destroyers trying to sort out pirates in a little dhow with RPGs [rocket-propelled grenade launchers] costing US$50, with an outboard motor [costing] $100".

Legal aspects

United Kingdom laws

Section 2 of the Piracy Act 1837 creates a statutory offence of aggravated piracy. See also the Piracy Act 1850.

In 2008, the British Foreign Office advised the Royal Navy not to detain pirates of certain nationalities as they might be able to claim asylum in Britain under British human rights legislation, if their national laws included execution, or mutilation as a judicial punishment for crimes committed as pirates.

See section 26 of, and Schedule 5 to, the Merchant Shipping and Maritime Security Act 1997. These provisions replace the Schedule to the Tokyo Convention Act 1967. In Cameron v HM Advocate, 1971 SLT 333, the High Court of Justiciary said that the Schedule supplemented the existing law and did not seek to restrict the scope of the offence of piracy jure gentium.

See also:

Re Piracy Jure Gentium [1934] AC 586, PC

Attorney General of Hong Kong v Kwok-a-Sing (1873) LR 5 PC 179

See section 46(2) of the Senior Courts Act 1981 and section 6 of the Territorial Waters Jurisdiction Act 1878. See also R v Kohn (1864) 4 F & F 68.

See section 5 of the Aviation Security Act 1982.

The book Archbold says that in a case that does not fall within section 2 of the Piracy Act 1837, the penalty appears to be determined by the Offences at Sea Act 1799, which provides that offences committed at sea are liable to the same penalty as if they had been committed upon the shore.

William Hawkins said that under common law, piracy by a subject was esteemed to be petty treason. The Treason Act 1351 provided that this was not petty treason.

In English admiralty law, piracy was classified as petty treason during the medieval period, and offenders were accordingly liable to be hanged, drawn and quartered on conviction. Piracy was redefined as a felony during the reign of Henry VIII. In either case, piracy cases were cognizable in the courts of the Lord High Admiral. English judges in admiralty courts and vice admiralty courts emphasized that "neither Faith nor Oath is to be kept" with pirates; i.e., contracts with pirates and oaths sworn to them were not legally binding. Pirates were legally subject to summary execution by their captors if captured in battle. In practice, instances of summary justice and annulment of oaths and contracts involving pirates do not appear to have been common.

United States laws

In the United States, criminal prosecution of piracy is authorized in the U.S. Constitution, Art. I Sec. 8 cl. 10:

To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;

The Founding Fathers were at loggerheads over piracy. and the Marshall Court (1801-1835) dealt with many cases of piracy. In 1820 the penalty for piracy was death. By 1909, the penalty was life imprisonment. Title 18 U.S.C. § 1651 now states:

Whoever, on the high seas, commits the crime of piracy as defined by the law of nations, and is afterwards brought into or found in the United States, shall be imprisoned for life.

Citing the United States Supreme Court decision in the 1820 case of United States v. Smith (1820), a U.S. District Court ruled in 2010 in the case of United States v. Said that the definition of piracy under section 1651 is confined to "robbery at sea". The piracy charges (but not other serious federal charges) against the defendants in the Said case were dismissed by the Court.

The U.S. District Court for the E.D.Va. has since been overturned: "On May 23, 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued an opinion vacating the Court's dismissal of the piracy count. United States v. Said, 680 F.3d 374 (4th Cir.2012). See also United States v. Dire, 680 F.3d 446, 465 (4th Cir.2012) (upholding an instruction to the jury that the crime of piracy includes 'any of the three following actions: (A) any illegal acts of violence or detention or any act of depredation committed for private ends on the high seas or a place outside the jurisdiction of any state by the crew or the passengers of a private ship and directed against another ship or against persons or property on board such ship; or (B) any act of voluntary participation in the operation of a ship with knowledge of facts making it a pirate ship; or (C) any act of inciting or of intentionally facilitating an act described in (A) or (B) above").'" The case was remanded to E.D. Va., see US v. Said, 3 F. Supp. 3d 515 – Dist. Court, ED Virginia (2014).

International law

During the 18th century, the British and the Dutch controlled opposite sides of the Strait of Malacca. The British and the Dutch drew a line separating the Strait into two halves. The agreement was that each party would be responsible for combating piracy in their respective half. Eventually, this line became the border between Malaysia and Indonesia in the Straits.

Piracy is of note in international law because it is widely regarded as the earliest invocation of the concept of universal jurisdiction. The crime of piracy is considered a breach of jus cogens, a conventional peremptory international norm that states must uphold. Those committing thefts on the high seas, inhibiting trade, and endangering maritime communication are considered by sovereign states to hold the status of hostis humani generis (an enemy of humankind).

Because of universal jurisdiction, action can be taken against pirates without objection from the flag state of the pirate vessel. This represents an exception to the principle extra territorium jus dicenti impune non paretur ("One who exercises jurisdiction out of his territory is disobeyed with impunity").

A Convention on Piracy was adopted by the League of Nations in 1932. To this day, the Harvard Draft adds to the debate of what constitutes piracy.

Articles 101 to 103 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) (1982) contain a definition of piracy iure gentium (i.e., according to international law). They read:

Article 101

Definition of piracy

Piracy consists of any of the following acts:

(a) any illegal acts of violence or detention, or any act of depredation, committed for private ends by the crew or the passengers of a private ship or a private aircraft, and directed—

(i) on the high seas, against another ship or aircraft, or against persons or property on board such ship or aircraft;

Cultural perceptions

Pirates are a frequent topic in fiction and, in their Caribbean incarnation, are associated with certain stereotypical manners of speaking and dress, some of them wholly fictional: "nearly all our notions of their behavior come from the golden age of fictional piracy, which reached its zenith in 1881 with the appearance of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island." Hugely influential in shaping the popular conception of pirates, Captain Charles Johnson's A General History of the Pyrates, published in London in 1724, is the prime source for the biographies of many well known pirates of the Golden Age. The book gives an almost mythical status to pirates, with naval historian David Cordingly writing: "it has been said, and there seems no reason to question this, that Captain Johnson created the modern conception of pirates."

In the 1830s, Letitia Elizabeth Landon received material relating to piracy for an annual for which she was responsible; she produced two Pirate Songs, the first in 1831, "The Pirate's Song off Tiger Island" and the second, "Bona, the Pirate's Song" in 1837. This last was reproduced many times as "The Pirate's Song", often uncredited. Bona is now the city of Annaba in Algeria.

Some inventions of pirate culture, such as "walking the plank"—in which a bound captive is forced to walk off a board extending over the sea—were popularized by J. M. Barrie's 1911 novel, Peter Pan, where the fictional pirate Captain Hook and his crew helped define the fictional pirate archetype. English actor Robert Newton's portrayal of Long John Silver in Disney's 1950 film adaptation also helped define the modern rendition of a pirate, including the stereotypical West Country "pirate accent". Other influences include Sinbad the Sailor, and the Pirates of the Caribbean films have helped rekindle modern interest in piracy and have performed well at the box office. The video game Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag revolves around pirates during the Golden Age of Piracy.

The classic 1879 Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera The Pirates of Penzance focuses on The Pirate King and his hapless band of pirates.

Many sports teams use "pirate" or a related term, such as "raider" or "buccaneer", as their nickname, based on the popular stereotypes of pirates. The earliest such example was probably the Pittsburgh Pirates of Major League Baseball that acquired their nickname in 1891 after allegedly "pirating" a player from another team. Many amateur and school-based sports programs along with several professional sports franchises have also adopted pirate-related names, including the Las Vegas Raiders and Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the National Football League. In turn, the Buccaneer's name was inspired by the Gasparilla Pirate Festival, a large community parade and related events in Tampa, Florida centered around the legend of José Gaspar, a mythical pirate who supposedly operated in the area.

Economics of piracy

Sources on the economics of piracy include Cyrus Karraker's 1953 study Piracy was a Business,

in which the author discusses pirates in terms of contemporary racketeering. Patrick Crowhurst researched French piracy, and David Starkey focused on British 18th-century piracy. Note also the 1998 book The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates by Peter T. Leeson.

Piracy and entrepreneurship

Some 2014 research examines the links between piracy and entrepreneurship. In this context, researchers take a nonmoral approach to piracy as a source of inspiration for 2010s-era entrepreneurship education and to research in entrepreneurship and in business-model generation.

In this respect, analysis of piracy operations may distinguish between planned (organised) and opportunistic piracy.