History

     Piracy was a problem thousands of years before the Spanish began to bring gold, silver, and other treasures from the New World back to Spain.  Men sailed the seas as pirates when countries began to cross the Oceans and Seas to trade goods with each other.  There were powerful pirates that sailed the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas.  These pirates set up a large pirate nation in Cilicia.  Cilicia is now part of the country of Turkey.  Barbary corsairs controlled the western part of the Mediterranean.  Vikings were brave and strong pirates.  They sailed all over the Atlantic Ocean, but especially terorized the European coastlines.  Piracy was also active in the waters surrounding Asia.  As ships were built bigger and better and men became braver, piracy began to spread into the New World.  

Names of Piracy

Pirate:  A pirate is really a robber who steals from other ships out at sea.  

Privateer:  A privateer was a captain of a ship that attacked and captured other ships and stole valuable items from them.  A privateer was not considered to be a true pirate because they were given special licenses called a Letter of Marque from a nations government.  Of course they were hunted down and punished as pirates by the countries who they stole from.  Many of these captains who were sent out to capture pirates soon became pirates themselves.  They saw how much money a pirate made and could not resist the chance of getting rich.

Corsair:  A corsair is a French seaman or privateer who sailed mostly in the South Mediterranean Sea.

Sea robbers:-  These pirates roamed the open seas and were not loyal to any particular government, but only wanted to capture riches for themselves.

Ruthless robbers: -  Most pirates who earned this nickname were very cruel and did not care if they killed their victims.  They just wanted to be rich and tried to get rich by stealing as much as they could and left no witnesses.

Buccaneers:  These pirates were made up of a group of men from Holland, England,  France, and another group of pirates called the Barbary corsairs who were chased out of the Barbary Coast when  merchant captains from France and England got tired of being captured and robbed by the French Corsairs.  They went to the island of Hispaniola and lived with the Indians there.  The Indians used special knives called "boucans"  The pirates began to sail the Caribbean Sea and used the boucan knife as a weapon.  It became the favorite weapon of these pirates of the Caribbean and they were eventually given the name of buccaneer.  The name buccaneer came from them using the boucan knife.  The Caribbean Sea became known as the Spanish Main.  The time between 1519 and 1780 was known as the Golden Age of Piracy.  

Mediterranean Pirates:  These pirates sailed from many different countries that bordered the Mediterranean Sea.  Some of theses pirates had an agreement with their home countries to share any treasure that they captured.  In return, they would not be arrested.  Some pirates were not loyal to any country and lived on the Barbary Coast which was along the North African coast.  These pirates were known as the Barbary Pirates and they were very cruel and took a lot of goods from any ship that passed their way. The merchants became tired of having their goods taken and asked their governments to help stop the pirates.  England and France offered to forgive the pirates of their bad deeds if they would stop piracy.  Some pirates did accept this forgiveness, but most just laughed and kept on stealing and capturing ships.  Finally these pirates were chased out of the Mediteranean Sea by the French and went to live in the Caribbean on the island of Hispaniola.    

Map of Mediterranean Sea

Vikings:  When the Roman Empire was destroyed, the people from Scandinavia became the pirates in power.  These were the Vikings which means "pirate men".  Vikings were very talented.  They were called poets, storytellers, ruthless conquerors, explorers, plunderers and barbarians.  Vikings lived in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.  They sailed the seas between the eighth to the eleventh centuries and most countries were afraid of them.  Some people called them Northmen or Norsemen.  The Viking ships were called a longship and was a long thin ship.  This longship moved through the water either by sail and wind, or by slaves who rowed the boat quickly through the water when they were chasing another ship.    

     These pirates sailed out of North African ports and were a close group of men.  They even created the Barbary States, a pirate empire.  A government was established by these Barbary corsairs to help control the pirates who lived there.  Pirate kings called "raises" commanded ships called pirate cruiser as well as the Barbary States.  These pirates were known for making slaves out of the crews of ships captured from Christian countries like England and France.
    Two famous Barbary corsairs were the two Barbarossa brothers.  They paid the sultan of Tunisia to let them build a pirate headquarters there and paid one-fifth of their captured booty to the sultan.  These Barbary corsairs were a very strong group of pirates and were like terrorists to the shipping industry.  The merchants became angry because they couldn't find a country who was willing to help stop these pirates, so they armed their ships with cannons.  Finally the government of France agreed to help and went to war against the Barbary corsairs.  In 1830 France captured the Barbary corsair bases and this put an end to the reign of these pirates in the Mediterranean Sea.  Some of the Barbary corsairs sailed to the West Indies and set up a pirate base on the island of Haiti.  They became members of the group of pirates called  buccaneers and began to sail the waters of the Caribbean Sea as pirates once again. 

Barbary Coast Map

     Piracy was strong in the Pacific and Indian Oceans too.  These pirates sailed the waters near Japan and India.  Not too much is known about these pirates other than there was a popular pirate refuge on the island of Formosa until the 17th century

Map of India

Pirates of the Spanish Main

     The most successful buccaneer was Sir Henry Morgan.  He came to the West Indies when he was very young and plundered the Spanish settlements of Puerto del Principe, Puerto Bello, and Maracaibo.  In 1671 Morgan completely destroyed the city of Panama and then took all of their valuable goods. 
     In 1701 the war of Spanish Succession began and the buccaneers stopped capturing ships and went to war with France and Britain against their enemy, the Spanish.  When the War of Spanish Succession was over the buccaneers had no jobs, so they became pirates again.  They began to attack Spanish fleets of treasure ships that brought supplies from Europe and treasure back home.  In 1714 the buccaneers were chasing a treasure fleet called The Plate Fleet off of the tip of Florida when a hurricane hit.  Most of the Plate Fleet's treasure was saved and taken to shore, but a pirate named Henry Jennings heard about the treasure and sailed there and took it.
     The buccaneers became so strong that the merchant ship captains insisted that their countries put a stop to the pirates.  They did not offer much help, but did offer what is called amnesty to all pirates if they would stop being pirates.  That means that they would be forgive of their crimes without being punished.  Most pirates just laughed and dared the countries to come stop them.  In 1717 British Captain Woodes Rogers was sent to defeat the pirates.  He played a trick on the buccaneers by trapping them in their harbor at New Providence.  New Providence is in the Bahamas.  Over one thousand pirates were trapped there and a big battle began.  In  the end Captain Woodes Rogers defeated the pirates.
     Jean Lafitte who lived off of the coast of Louisiana in a sheltered Bay named Barataria Bay.  He was often called a gentleman pirate and walked around New Orleans without being afraid of capture.  He also had a pirate base on the Island of Padre Island off of the coast of Texas. 
     In the early eighteen hundreds the Golden Age of Piracy was over.

Pirate History Continued