Various - Piracy: A History

The traditional " Jolly Roger " of piracy.

Capture of the Pirate Blackbeard, 1718 depicting the battle between and Lt. Maynard in Ocracoke Bay.

Piracy is typically an act of robbery or criminal violence at sea. The term can include acts committed on land, in the air, or in other major bodies of water or on a shore . It does not normally include crimes committed against persons traveling on the same vessel as the perpetrator (e.g. one passenger stealing from others on the same vessel). The term has been used throughout history to refer to raids across land borders by non-state agents.

Piracy is the name of a specific crime under customary international law and also the name of a number of crimes under the municipal law of a number of States. It is distinguished from privateering , which is authorized by national authorities and therefore a legitimate form of war-like activity by non-state actors. Privateering is considered commerce raiding , and was outlawed by the Peace of Westphalia (1648) for signatories to those treaties.

Those who engage in acts of piracy are called pirates. Historically, offenders have usually been apprehended by military personnel and tried by military tribunals .

In the 21st century, the international community is facing many problems in bringing pirates to justice .

The English "pirate" is derived from the Latin term pirata and that from Greek "" (peirats), "brigand", in turn from "" (peiromai), "I attempt", from "" (pera), "attempt, experience". The word is also cognate to peril.

Mosaic of a Roman Trireme in Tunisia.

It may be reasonable to assume that piracy has existed for as long as the oceans were plied for commerce. The earliest documented instances of piracy are the exploits of the Sea Peoples who threatened the Aegean and Mediterranean in the 14th century BC. In classical antiquity , the Illyrians and Tyrrhenians were known as pirates, as well as Greeks and Romans . During their voyages the Phoenicians seem to have sometimes resorted to piracy, and specialized in kidnapping boys and girls to be sold as slaves .

In the 3rd century BC, pirate attacks on Olympos (city in Anatolia ) brought impoverishment. Among some of the most famous ancient pirateering peoples were the Illyrians , populating the western Balkan peninsula. Constantly raiding the Adriatic Sea , the Illyrians caused many conflicts with the Roman Republic . It was not until 168 BC when the Romans finally conquered Illyria and made it a province 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 finally invested 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.

Many pirates had roles in Chinese history since the Three Kingdoms period. An example includes of Eastern Wu .

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.

Early Polynesian warriors attacked seaside and riverside villages. They used the sea for their hit-and-run tactics a safe place to retreat to if the battle turned against them.

Cartagena ( Colombia ) is the city most associated with pirates in the Caribbean, and the world.

French pirate looting and burning Havana in 1555

French pirate was nicknamed Flail of the Spaniards and had a reputation for brutality offering no quarter to Spanish prisoners. L'Olonnais cannibalized a number of his victims, only to find the same fate at the hands of the Kuna tribe in Darin

In 1523, .

Another famous pirate of this era was , who fought for hours to acquire Cuban gold, becoming mortally wounded in the process. He died of his wounds hours after having transferred the booty to his ship. Most pirates were eventually hunted down by the Royal Navy and killed or captured; several battles were fought between the brigands and the colonial powers on both land and sea.

Piracy in the Caribbean declined for the next several decades after 1730, but by the 1810s many pirates roamed American waters though they were not as bold or successful as their predecessors. Throughout the first quarter of the 19th century, the United States Navy repeatedly engaged pirates in the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and in the Mediterranean. Several warships were designed specifically for the task. The most successful pirates of the era were and Roberto Cofresi . Lafitte's ships operated primarily in the Gulf of Mexico but Cofresi's base was in Puerto Rico where he was considered a type of Robin Hood by many Puerto Ricans. Eventually he was defeated by the schooner USS Grampus and captured in 1825. The United States landed shore parties on several islands in the Caribbean in pursuit of pirates; Cuba was a major haven. By the 1830s piracy had died out again, and the navies of the region focused on the slave trade .

In 1827, Britain declared that participation in the slave trade was piracy, a crime punishable by death. The power of the Royal Navy was subsequently used to suppress the slave trade, and while some illegal trade (mostly with Brazil and Cuba) continued, the Atlantic slave trade was eradicated by the middle of the 19th century.

In the 20th century, one notable pirate active in the Caribbean was Boysie Singh . He operated off northern South America. He and his pirate gang killed several people and plundered their ships from 1947 to 1956. He was convicted for murder and hanged in the Royal Gaol at Trinidad , on 20 August 1957.