Pirates: Overview

Introduction

Pirates and piracy have been around as long as commerce and trade have occurred on the high seas. When speaking of pirates, people often think of what could be identified as the “golden age” of piracy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when now-familiar names like Captain Henry Morgan, Captain Kidd, and Black Beard ruled the seas. The truth of the matter is that ever since mankind had taken to using ships to transport goods and merchandise for profit, individuals have sought to make a profit from raiding those ships and stealing their cargo, while either holding the crew and passengers for ransom or selling them into slavery. Piracy is simply the theft of property on the oceans and seas.

The issue of piracy came to international attention in April 2009, when a group of Somali pirates kidnapped an American captain of the MV Maersk Alabama. An international audience learned what many involved in commercial shipping had known for years, that piracy was alive and well and living off the shores of the world’s most troubled nations. In early 2009, global hot spots for piracy included the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Aden, the Strait of Malacca, and Indonesian waters, as well as spots off the coast of Nigeria and Brazil. International organizations, such as the United Nations, have ramped up efforts to combat piracy, but successful efforts require the cooperation of neighboring nations, which sometimes are unable to coordinate the elements of a solution due to political unrest. Throughout the 2010s and into the 2020s, these areas remained of concern regarding piracy while other areas, particularly the Singapore Strait and the Gulf of Guinea, experienced inconsistent but regular incidents.

Understanding the Discussion:

Barbary Corsair: Muslim pirates, operating from about the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries, from Algeria, Tunisia, Tripoli, and Morocco.

Letter of Marque: A formal document issued by a government to private ship masters authorizing them to search, seize, or attack an enemy’s vessel.

Pirate: One who robs at sea or plunders the land from the sea without commission from a sovereign nation. The act of theft at sea is called piracy.

Privateer: A ship privately owned and crewed, but authorized by a government during war time to attack and capture enemy vessels.

Vandals: A tribe of Germanic barbarians who entered the Roman Empire in the fifth century and eventually conquered the Roman Province of North Africa.

Viking: One of a seafaring Scandinavian people who raided the coasts of Northern and Western Europe from the eighth through the tenth centuries.

History

It is no accident that both ancient Greek (peirates) and Latin (piratia) have terms for the act of robbery on the seas. Yet, it is much more than just theft of property; it includes kidnapping, ransom, and slavery, when feasible and profitable.

The ancient civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean functioned on commerce and extensive trade between societies such as Phoenicia, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, and Rome. These societies identified raiding and disruptions in their shipping trade by sea-going warriors as “piracy.” The aim of these sea raiders was to get whatever valuables were aboard the ship in cargo, sell them at market, and ransom any person of note for a hefty sum. Other captives may have been released or more likely placed into slavery. The Cilician Pirates were very noteworthy in the first century BCE for their successful sea raiding against Roman and other shipping of the time. A young Julius Caesar was held by the Cilician Pirates for such a ransom. Another Roman, Gaius Pompey, won wide acclaim and the title “Maximus” for his defeat of these pirates in 67 BCE. Rome was capable of providing a sufficient commitment of military resources to protecting seagoing commerce, and trade prospered under the Empire.

After the decline of Rome in the fifth century CE, the raiding of ship commerce on the open seas continued quite often under the Barbarian Vandals, once they acquired the Roman fleet in the North African city of Carthage. The Vandals were eventually defeated by the Eastern Roman Empire of Constantinople, providing stability in the Mediterranean. Piracy also included quick raids on coastal areas of the English Channel and Irish Sea, where seagoing warriors could easily and stealthily come upon an unprepared coastal village or monastery and strike. The goals were much the same as the piracy on the high seas—plunder any valuable commodities or precious items (gold, silver, etc.), kidnap for ransom, and enslave. The Irish raiders who took St. Patrick from his home in Roman Britain were identified as pirates. The most noted of these groups during the early Middle Ages was the Vikings or Norsemen, who would sail south from their Scandinavian homeland and raid across Europe, eventually establishing bases from the Black Sea across to Northern France (Normandy) and into England and Ireland.

Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century pirates hailed from areas of England, Ireland, Scotland, coastal France, and the Netherlands. With increasing trade via the sea, and the vast wealth of precious metals and gems found in the new world all flowing back to Western Europe, a breed of men willing to risk their lives for profit through theft grew.

These seafaring men were adept warriors, willing to engage in a fight with other sailors and ships, while looking to gain profit from the commerce on board these ships. These seafarers fought for no single nation and were simply looking for profit. Men like John Hawkins, Francis Drake, Walter Raleigh, and Thomas Cavendish were all English by nationality, but their respective attacks on Spanish treasure ships or forts in the Americas were simply for-profit ventures for themselves and investors back in England. These individuals did not consider themselves thieves—Spain was considered an enemy. These men believed they were providing their country a benefit of protection, although no state of war existed between England and Spain. The English Government, under Queen Elizabeth I, renounced any actions of piracy officially, but was very happy to accept the revenue from these private ventures without any question of its source. Since England had little or no navy in the sixteenth century, it relied on these private captains for naval protection, as well as for revenue. It was these men that later sailed out to meet and defeat the Spanish Armada in 1588.

They, and their descendants, eventually separated themselves from other seafaring bandits by identifying themselves as “privateers.” Being a privateer suggested some degree of legitimacy, since these individuals were carrying some form of “Charter” or “Letter of Marque” from a government to conduct their military action against an enemy’s ships. These privately owned ships may not be of the nation granting the Charter, but these privateers were paid with the goods and wealth of their respective prey. Pirates, then, became those completely free of alliance or recognition by any government, who paid no duty to a government agent, nor cared to have a charter for their actions.

The British focused on developing their own standing naval force in the latter seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, as it moved away from its reliance on the use of privateers against its enemies. As British colonial interests grew globally, so did its shipping interests. The Royal Navy focused on protecting these shipping interests, especially in the waters around North America. It worked to curb the impact of piracy in general, focusing on destroying its base of operations in the Caribbean during this period of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is during this time period that pirates such as Edward Teach, the notorious “Black Beard,” would meet their end. The Royal Navy was successful at containing piracy but never totally eliminated it.

In the beginning of the nineteenth century, pirates operating out of the South Mediterranean, from their bases in North Africa along the Barbary Coast, raided regional shipping. This was a practice dating back for nearly a century, where these Barbary Corsairs would raid European shipping and even ports, capturing goods and either enslaving or ransoming the various crews. With Europe in the middle of the Napoleonic wars, most European governments found it easier to pay a tribute to these various Barbary rulers as a preemptive means to protect their nations’ merchants and commerce interests. Even the British, with their vast naval superiority, found it more cost effective to pay tribute, rather than draw their much needed warships from their duties against the French.

The United States had followed the lead of the Europeans in dealing with these Barbary Pirates. In 1801, under newly elected president Thomas Jefferson, the US refused to pay any tributes to these Barbary states. Jefferson ordered the very young US Navy into the Mediterranean for patrols, and over the next four years, the US Navy conducted a blockade and a number of military actions against the Barbary Pirates and their rulers. The war culminated with the assault and conquest of the Tripolitan coastal city of Derna, by a unit of seven US Marines under Presley O’Bannon and a number of mercenaries. In 1805, Bashaw Hamet Karamanli agreed to a peace treaty with the US, ending the conflict.

As European powers developed their naval forces in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, attempts to curb piracy were stressed at various times, with government naval attacks of the pirates’ home bases of operation. The British and US Navies took the lead in the operations against piracy. The British Empire was the largest and encompassed the globe in the nineteenth century, and the US became one of two superpowers in the middle of the twentieth century. These efforts contained piracy and relegated it to small pockets of coastal areas, where local governments held insufficient resources to contain them.

Pirates Today

In the twenty-first century, piracy and pirates remained a reality in many areas of the world. Even with the stretch and scope of modern military technology, piracy has occurred at a variety of levels globally. It may be a vulnerable family yacht or small cruise ship, or a cargo ship if the pirates possess sufficient weapons to threaten its crew. The instability of local governments has created a safe haven for these pirates, due to civil war or chaos. The area of the Gulf of Aden and the coast of Somalia gained the international community’s attention largely beginning in the 2000s, with increasing attacks on ships passing through the region to the Suez Canal. There remained no formal, impactful central governing authority in Somalia itself, providing a fertile ground for a pirate refuge.

Pirates are said to carry out fairly sophisticated operations, using technology such as global positioning systems and satellite phones. Getting tips from informants stationed in areas such as the Gulf of Aden, many pirates operate from mother ships, which direct operations, sending off high-speed motor boats to stop vessels as they travel. Pirates are known to use powerful weapons, threatening crews of ships that have no vested interest in sacrificing their lives for the cargo on board. (Crews generally earn an hourly wage.) The pirates board ships using grappling hooks, ladders, and ropes, and begin the process of ransom negotiations for both the individuals and cargo. Most shipping companies have found it more economically feasible to pay the ransom for the ship and crew, rather than risk confrontations with these pirates by arming their crews or hiring mercenary protection. It was reported that $80 million in ransom was paid out in 2008.

As a result of increased activity, though, nations have begun to take stronger action in such regions, deploying naval ships and quick response special units to deal with the growing crisis. In December 2008, the United Nations Security Council approved a resolution that allowed authorities to pursue Somali pirates on land as well as sea, an expansion of earlier powers. Additionally, the Chinese government initiated a military operation against Somali pirates in 2008.

In the spring of 2009, the rescue of the American cargo ship the MV Maersk Alabama caught attention worldwide. The vessel was recovered, but its captain was kidnapped by four Somali pirates, forcing an international incident that was ended when US Navy Seals rescued the captain, killed three of the pirates, and took a fourth into custody. The International Maritime Bureau (IMB)’s Piracy Reporting Centre reported that incidents of piracy off the coast of Somalia in early 2009 increased twofold, with 114 attempted attacks as of May 2009 and 29 successful hijackings. (2008 numbers totaled 111 attempted attacks and forty-two successful hijackings.) In February 2011, Somali pirates hijacked two oil takers in the Indian Ocean. Following the incidents, Joe Angelo, director of the International Association of Independent Tanker Owners, stated that pirates were beginning to threaten the global oil industry.

Other areas of concern in the early twenty-first century have included Indonesia and the Strait of Malacca, a stretch of water that lies between the Malaysian peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra. In 2006, the Strait of Malacca had the highest number of attacks in the world behind Indonesia. Combined efforts from Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia reduced attacks to an extent in the Strait, with coordinated sea and air surveillance, along with political and economic stability in troubled areas of Indonesia. However, in the 2010s, spikes in pirate activity in the highly trafficked waters (especially for the transport of oil) around southeastern Asia became some of the most significant piracy threats. With frequent incidents, such as that upon the tankers Orapin 4 and the Ai Maru in 2014, attacks in the Strait of Malacca as well as the Singapore Strait proved highly organized and dangerous as pirates targeted expensive fuel cargoes.

At the same time, by the early 2020s, the Gulf of Guinea off of the west coast of Africa had been deemed by international organizations such as the IMB as a hotspot for piracy, often also at a more sophisticated level. In 2019, the executive director of the United Nations' Office on Drugs and Crime had emphasized the need to address the issue of high seas crime in this area with the body's Security Council. Representatives of countries in the region called for increased, organized international intervention as such crimes, including piracy as well as drug and human trafficking, occurring in the gulf's heavily traversed—particularly for trade and commercial purposes—waters resulted in grave economic consequences for surrounding nations. With reports of piracy attacks in the gulf including high numbers of violence and kidnappings perpetrated against vessels' crews, in 2019 the IMB found that 90 percent of the 121 crew taken in 2019 were taken from the Gulf of Guinea, and in 2021 it reported that in the first three months of 2021, the Gulf of Guinea accounted for 43 percent of the 38 incidents of piracy recorded up to that point; the area was also the site of every one of the forty kidnapped crew incidents so far. Though this same period in 2022 saw a decline in reported piracy incidents in this gulf, the IMB and other agencies maintained that the Gulf of Guinea and the waters around southeastern Asia were still considered some of the most vulnerable to attacks. According to the IMB, 79 incidents of piracy were reported between January and September 2024. Of those incidents, only 12 occurred in the Gulf of Guinea, the lowest number of reports since 1996. Meanwhile, 17 incidents were reported in the Indonesian Archipelago, which is a steady increase from previous years.

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