Europe Antiquity of a
Roman trireme in Tunisia The earliest documented instances of piracy are the exploits of the
Sea Peoples who threatened the ships sailing in the Aegean and Mediterranean waters 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 in 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 some of the most famous ancient pirateering peoples were the Illyrians, a people populating 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.
Middle Ages , painted mid-12th century 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. In the Late Middle Ages, the
Frisian pirates known as
Arumer Zwarte Hoop led by
Pier Gerlofs Donia and
Wijerd Jelckama, fought against the troops of the
Holy Roman Emperor Charles V with some success. Toward the end of the 9th century, Moorish pirate havens were established along the coast of southern France and northern Italy. In 846 Moor raiders
sacked the
extra muros Basilicas of
Saint Peter and
Saint Paul in Rome. In 911, the bishop of
Narbonne was unable to return to France from Rome because the Moors from
Fraxinet controlled all the passes in the
Alps. Moor pirates operated out of the
Balearic Islands in the 10th century. From 824 to 961
Arab pirates in the
Emirate of Crete raided the entire Mediterranean. In the 14th century, raids by Moor pirates forced the Venetian Duke of Crete to ask
Venice to keep its fleet on constant guard. After the
Slavic invasions of the former
Roman province of Dalmatia in the 5th and 6th centuries, a tribe called the
Narentines revived the old Illyrian piratical habits and often raided the Adriatic Sea starting in the 7th century. Their raids in the Adriatic increased rapidly, until the whole Sea was no longer safe for travel. The Narentines took more liberties in their raiding quests while the Venetian Navy was abroad, as when it was campaigning in Sicilian waters in 827–882. As soon as the Venetian fleet would return to the Adriatic, the Narentines momentarily outcast their habits again, even signing a Treaty in Venice and baptising their Slavic pagan leader into Christianity. In 834 or 835 they broke the treaty and again they raided Venetian traders returning from Benevento. All of Venice's military attempts to punish them in 839 and 840 utterly failed. Later, they raided the Venetians more often, together with the
Arabs. In 846, the Narentines broke through to Venice itself and raided its lagoon city of
Caorle. This caused a Byzantine military action against them that brought Christianity to them. After the
Arab raids on the
Adriatic coast circa 872 and the retreat of the Imperial Navy, the Narentines continued their raids of Venetian waters, causing new conflicts with the Italians in 887–888. The Venetians futilely continued to fight them throughout the 10th and 11th centuries.
Domagoj was accused of attacking a ship which was bringing home the papal legates who had participated in
the Eighth Catholic Ecumenical Council, after which
Pope John VIII addresses to Domagoj with request that his pirates stop attacking Christians at sea. in the
Middle Ages because of the
Victual Brothers. In 937, Irish pirates sided with the Scots, Vikings,
Picts, and Welsh in their invasion of England.
Athelstan drove them back. The
Slavic piracy in the Baltic Sea ended with the
Danish conquest of the
Rani stronghold of
Arkona in 1168. In the 12th century the coasts of western Scandinavia were plundered by
Curonians and
Oeselians from the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea. In the 13th and 14th century, pirates threatened the
Hanseatic routes and nearly brought sea trade to the brink of extinction. The
Victual Brothers of
Gotland were a companionship of privateers who later turned to piracy as the
Likedeelers. They were especially noted for their leaders
Klaus Störtebeker and
Gödeke Michels. Until about 1440, maritime trade in both the
North Sea, the Baltic Sea and the
Gulf of Bothnia was seriously in danger of attack by the pirates. H. Thomas Milhorn mentions a certain Englishman named William Maurice, convicted of piracy in 1241, as the first person known to have been
hanged, drawn and quartered, which would indicate that the then-ruling King
Henry III took an especially severe view of this crime. The
ushkuiniks were
Novgorodian pirates who looted the cities on the
Volga and
Kama Rivers in the 14th century. As early as
Byzantine times, the
Maniots (one of Greece's toughest populations) were known as pirates. The Maniots considered piracy as a legitimate response to the fact that their land was poor and it became their main source of income. The main victims of Maniot pirates were the
Ottomans but the Maniots also targeted ships of European countries.
Zaporizhian Sich was a pirate republic in Europe from the 16th through to the 18th century. Situated in
Cossack territory in the remote
steppe of Eastern Europe, it was populated with Ukrainian peasants that had run away from their feudal masters, outlaws, destitute gentry, run-away slaves from Turkish
galleys, etc. The remoteness of the place and the rapids at the
Dnieper river effectively guarded the place from invasions of vengeful powers. The main target of the inhabitants of the Zaporizhian Sich who called themselves "Cossacks", were rich settlements at the Black Sea shores of Ottoman Empire and
Crimean Khanate. By 1615 and 1625,
Zaporozhian Cossacks had even managed to raze townships on the outskirts of
Istanbul, forcing the
Ottoman Sultan to flee his palace.
Don Cossacks under
Stenka Razin even ravaged the Persian coasts.
Mediterranean corsairs Though less famous and romanticized than Atlantic or Caribbean pirates, corsairs in the
Mediterranean equaled or outnumbered the former at any given point in history. Mediterranean piracy was conducted almost entirely with galleys until the mid-17th century, when they were gradually replaced with highly maneuverable sailing vessels such as
xebecs and
brigantines. They were of a smaller type than battle galleys, often referred to as
galiots or
fustas. Pirate galleys were small, nimble, lightly armed, but often crewed in large numbers in order to overwhelm the often minimal crews of merchant ships. In general, pirate craft were extremely difficult for patrolling craft to actually hunt down and capture.
Anne Hilarion de Tourville, a French admiral of the 17th century, believed that the only way to run down raiders from the infamous corsair Moroccan port of
Salé was by using a captured pirate vessel of the same type. in North Africa Using oared vessels to combat pirates was common, and was even practiced by the major powers in the Caribbean. Purpose-built galleys, or hybrid sailing vessels, were built by the English in Jamaica in 1683 and by the Spanish in the late 16th century. Specially-built sailing frigates with oar-ports on the lower decks, like the
James Galley and
Charles Galley, and oar-equipped sloops proved highly useful for pirate hunting, though they were not built in sufficient numbers to check piracy until the 1720s. The expansion of Muslim power through the Ottoman conquest of large parts of the eastern Mediterranean in the 15th and 16th century resulted in extensive piracy on sea trading. The so-called
Barbary pirates began to operate out of North African ports in Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, Morocco around 1500, preying primarily on the shipping of Christian powers, including massive slave raids at sea as well as on land. The Barbary pirates were nominally under Ottoman
suzerainty, but had considerable independence to prey on the enemies of Islam. The Muslim corsairs were technically often privateers with support from legitimate, though highly belligerent, states. They considered themselves as holy Muslim warriors, or
ghazis, carrying on the tradition of fighting the incursion of Western Christians that had begun with the
First Crusade late in the 11th century. by the Anglo-Dutch fleet in 1816 to support the ultimatum to release European slaves Coastal villages and towns of Italy, Spain and
islands in the Mediterranean were frequently attacked by Muslim corsairs, and long stretches of the Italian and Spanish coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants. After 1600, the Barbary corsairs occasionally entered the Atlantic and struck as far north as Iceland. According to Robert Davis between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary corsairs and sold as slaves in North Africa and the
Ottoman Empire between the 16th and 19th centuries. The most famous corsairs were the Ottoman
Albanian Hayreddin and his older brother
Oruç Reis (Redbeard),
Turgut Reis (known as Dragut in the West),
Kurtoglu (known as Curtogoli in the West),
Kemal Reis,
Salih Reis and
Koca Murat Reis. A few Barbary corsairs, such as the Dutch
Jan Janszoon and the English
John Ward (Muslim name Yusuf Reis), were renegade European privateers who had converted to Islam. The Barbary pirates had a direct Christian counterpart in the military order of the
Knights of Saint John that operated first out of
Rhodes and after 1530
Malta, though they were less numerous and took fewer slaves. Both sides waged war against the respective enemies of their faith, and both used galleys as their primary weapons. Both sides also used captured or bought
galley slaves to man the oars of their ships. The Muslims relied mostly on captured Christians, the Christians used a mix of Muslim slaves, Christian convicts and a small contingency of
buonavoglie, free men who out of desperation or poverty had taken to rowing. This conflict of faith in the form of privateering, piracy and
slave raiding generated a complex system that was upheld/financed/operated on the trade in plunder and slaves that was generated from a low-intensive conflict, as well as the need for protection from violence. The system has been described as a "massive, multinational protection racket", the Christian side of which was not ended until 1798 in the Napoleonic Wars. The Barbary corsairs were quelled as late as the 1830s, effectively ending the last vestiges of counter-crusading
jihad. was one of the most famous corsairs of the
Golden Age of Piracy Piracy off the
Barbary coast was often assisted by competition among European powers in the 17th century. France encouraged the corsairs against Spain, and later Britain and Holland supported them against France. By the second half of the 17th century the greater European naval powers began to initiate reprisals to intimidate the Barbary States into making peace with them. The most successful of the Christian states in dealing with the corsair threat was England. From the 1630s onwards England had signed peace treaties with the Barbary States on various occasions, but invariably breaches of these agreements led to renewed wars.
Albanian piracy, mainly centered in the town of
Ulcinj (thus came to be known as
Dulcignotti), flourished during the 15th to the 19th century. France, which had recently emerged as a leading naval power, achieved comparable success soon afterwards, with bombardments of Algiers in 1682, 1683 and 1688 securing a lasting peace, while Tripoli was similarly coerced in 1686. In 1783 and 1784 the Spaniards bombarded
Algiers in an effort to stem the piracy. The
second time,
Admiral Barceló damaged the city so severely that the Algerian
Dey asked Spain to negotiate a peace treaty. From then on, Spanish vessels and coasts were safe for several years. Until the American
Declaration of Independence in 1776,
British treaties with the
North African states protected American ships from the
Barbary corsairs.
Morocco, which in 1777 was
the first independent nation to publicly recognize the United States, became in 1784 the first Barbary power to seize an American vessel after independence. While the United States managed to secure peace treaties, these obliged it to pay tribute for protection from attack. Payments in ransom and tribute to the Barbary states amounted to 20% of United States government annual expenditures in 1800, leading to the
Barbary Wars that ended the payment of tribute. Algiers broke the 1805 peace treaty after only two years, and refused to implement the 1815 treaty until compelled to do so by Britain in 1816. In 1815, the sacking of Palma on the island of
Sardinia by a Tunisian squadron, which carried off 158 inhabitants, roused widespread indignation. Britain had
by this time banned the slave trade and was seeking to induce other countries to do likewise. This led to complaints from states which were still vulnerable to the corsairs that Britain's enthusiasm for ending the trade in
African slaves did not extend to stopping the enslavement of Europeans and Americans by the Barbary States. boarding a Tripolitan gunboat during the
First Barbary War, 1804 In order to neutralise this objection and further the anti-slavery campaign, in 1816
Lord Exmouth was sent to secure new concessions from
Tripoli,
Tunis, and
Algiers, including a pledge to treat Christian captives in any future conflict as
prisoners of war rather than slaves and the imposition of peace between Algiers and the kingdoms of
Sardinia and
Sicily. On his first visit he negotiated satisfactory treaties and sailed for home. While he was negotiating, a number of Sardinian fishermen who had settled at
Bona on the Tunisian coast were brutally treated without his knowledge. As
Sardinians they were technically under British protection and the government sent Exmouth back to secure reparation. On August 17, in combination with a Dutch squadron under Admiral Van de Capellen, he bombarded Algiers.
Southeast Asia pirate In
thalassocratic Austronesian cultures in
Island Southeast Asia, maritime raids for slaves and resources against rival polities have ancient origins. It was associated with prestige and prowess and often recorded in tattoos. Reciprocal raiding traditions were recorded by early European cultures as being prevalent throughout Island Southeast Asia. in Skerang river of a late 18th-century
Iranun lanong warship. The
Malay word for "pirate",
lanun, originates from an
exonym of the Iranun people
cannons, kalasag shields, armor, and various swords (including kalis, panabas, and kampilan'') used by
Moro pirates in the Philippines (c. 1900) With the advent of
Islam and the
colonial era, slaves became a valuable resource for trading with European, Arab, and Chinese slavers, and the volume of piracy and slave raids increased significantly. of the southern Philippines in 1848 These slaves 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 who were usually ransomed off through
Tausug intermediaries of the
Sulu Sultanate. Slaves 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 personal slaves were rarely sold, they trafficked extensively in slaves purchased from the Iranun and Banguingui
slave markets. By the 1850s, slaves constituted 50% or more of the population of the Sulu archipelago. The scale was so massive that the word for "pirate" in
Malay became
lanun, an
exonym of the Iranun people. The economy of the Sulu sultanates was largely run by slaves and the slave trade. Male captives of the Iranun and the Banguingui were treated brutally, even fellow Muslim captives were not spared. They were usually forced to serve as
galley slaves on the
lanong and
garay warships of their captors. Female captives, however, were usually treated better. There were no recorded accounts of rapes, though some were starved for discipline. Within a year of capture, most of the captives of the Iranun and Banguingui would be bartered off in
Jolo usually for rice, opium, bolts of cloth, iron bars, brassware, and weapons. The buyers were usually Tausug
datu from the
Sultanate of Sulu who had preferential treatment, but buyers also included European (
Dutch and
Portuguese) and Chinese traders as well as
Visayan pirates (
renegados). Some provincial capitals were also moved further inland. Major command posts were built in
Manila,
Cavite,
Cebu,
Iloilo,
Zamboanga, and
Iligan. Defending ships were also built by local communities, especially in the
Visayas Islands, including the construction of war "
barangayanes" (
balangay) that were faster than the Moro raiders and could give chase. As resistance against raiders increased,
Lanong warships of the Iranun were eventually replaced by the smaller and faster
garay warships of the Banguingui in the early 19th century. The Moro raids were eventually subdued by several major naval expeditions by the Spanish and local forces from 1848 to 1891, including retaliatory bombardment and capture of Moro settlements. By this time, the Spanish had also acquired
steam gunboats (
vapor), which could easily overtake and destroy the native Moro warships. Several famous pirates, such as
Intjeh Cohdja and
Wassingrana, were hunted by the VOC for hijacking their merchant ships in the
Eastern salient of Java. Aside from the Iranun and Banguingui pirates, other polities were also associated with maritime raiding. The Bugis sailors of
South Sulawesi were infamous as pirates who used to range as far west as Singapore and as far north as the Philippines in search of targets for piracy. The
Orang laut pirates controlled shipping in the Straits of Malacca and the waters around Singapore, and the
Malay and
Sea Dayak pirates preyed on maritime shipping in the waters between Singapore and Hong Kong from their haven in
Borneo.
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 countrymen, 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 () to establish a permanent maritime garrison to protect Silla merchant activities in the
Yellow Sea. Heungdeok agreed and in 828 formally established the Cheonghae (, "clear sea") Garrison () 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 arbiter of Yellow Sea commerce and navigation. From the 13th century, 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. pirate raids During the
Qing period, Chinese pirate fleets grew increasingly large. The effects large-scale piracy had 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 the same status. 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. Chinese Pirates also plagued the Tonkin Gulf area.
Piracy in the Ming dynasty Pirates in the
Ming era tended to come from populations on the geographic periphery of the state. They were recruited largely from the lower classes of society, including poor fishermen, and many were fleeing from obligatory labor on state-building projects organized by the dynasty. These lower-class men, and sometimes women, may have fled taxation or conscription by the state in the search of better opportunities and wealth, and willingly joined local pirate bands. These local, lower class individuals seem to have felt unrepresented, and traded the small amount of security afforded them from their allegiance to the state for the promise of a relatively improved existence engaging in smuggling or other illegal trade. Originally, pirates in the coastal areas near Fujian and Zhejiang may have been Japanese, suggested by the Ming government referring to them as "
wokou (倭寇)", but it is probable that piracy was a multi-ethnic profession by the 16th century, although coastal brigands continued to be referred to as
wokou in many government documents. Most pirates were probably
Han Chinese, but Japanese and even Europeans engaged in pirate activities in the region.
Illegal trade and authority Pirates engaged in a number of different schemes to make a living. Smuggling and illegal trade overseas were major sources of revenue for pirate bands, both large and small. As the Ming government mostly outlawed private trade overseas, at least until the overseas silver trade contributed to a lifting of the ban, pirates basically could almost by default control the market for any number of foreign goods. The geography of the coastline made chasing pirates quite difficult for the authorities, and private overseas trade began to transform coastal societies by the 15th century, as nearly all aspects of the local society benefitted from or associated with illegal trade. The desire to trade for silver eventually led to open conflict between the Ming and illegal smugglers and pirates. This conflict, along with local merchants in southern China, helped persuade the Ming court to end the
haijin ban on private international trade in 1567. Larger pirate bands could act as local governing bodies for coastal communities, collecting taxes and engaging in "protection" schemes. In addition to illegal goods, pirates ostensibly offered security to communities on land in exchange for a tax. These bands also wrote and codified laws that redistributed wealth, punished crimes, and provided protection for the taxed community. The political structures tended to look similar to the Ming structures. Members of these pirate groups did not tend to stay longer than a few months or years at a time. These "pirates in gowns and caps" directly or indirectly sponsored pirate activity and certainly directly benefitted from the illegal private trade in the region. When Zhu Wan or other officials from the capital attempted to eliminate the pirate problem, these local elites fought back, having Zhu Wan demoted and eventually even sent back to Beijing to possibly be executed. The gentry who benefitted from illegal maritime trade were too powerful and influential, and they were clearly very invested in the smuggling activities of the pirate community. In addition to their relationship with the local elite class on the coast, pirates also had complicated and often friendly relationships and partnerships with the dynasty itself, as well as with international traders. When pirate groups recognized the authority of the dynasty, they would often be allowed to operate freely and even profit from the relationship. There were also opportunities for these pirates to ally themselves with colonial projects from Europe or other overseas powers. Both the dynasty and foreign colonial projects would employ pirates as mercenaries to establish dominance in the coastal region. Because of how difficult it was for established state powers to control these regions, pirates seem to have had a lot of freedom to choose their allies and their preferred markets. Included in this list of possible allies, sea marauders and pirates even found opportunities to bribe military officials as they engaged in illegal trade. They seem to have been incentivized mostly by money and loot, and so could afford to play the field with regards to their political or military allies. Because pirate organizations could be so powerful locally, the Ming government made concerted efforts to weaken them. The presence of colonial projects complicated this, however, as pirates could ally themselves with other maritime powers or local elites to stay in business. The Chinese government was clearly aware of the power of some of these pirate groups, as some documents even refer to them as "sea rebels," a reference to the political nature of pirates.
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 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. Continuous wars demanded frequent resupplies of fresh horses, which were imported through sea routes from Persia and Africa. This trade was subjected to frequent raids 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 carried out on the coast by Portuguese raiders under Albuquerque were long and local powers antipathetic as a consequence to Christian powers asserting dominance of 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.
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 looting and burning Havana in 1555 being sacked in 1668 by Henry Morgan 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 madeor stolenand 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 on this period, the Tortuga buccaneer
Pierre Le Grand pioneered the settlers' attacks on galleons making the return voyage 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 Tortuga buccaneers and to their own countrymen, while 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 provided privateering commissions both to his own colonists and to English cutthroats from Port Royal. These conditions brought Caribbean buccaneering to its zenith. is shown selling his loot in this engraving by Howard Pyle. Every's capture of the Grand Mughal ship
Ganj-i-Sawai in 1695 stands as one of the most profitable pirate raids ever perpetrated. A new phase of piracy began in the 1690s as English pirates began to look 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. from the yardarm of his ship. At the same time, England's less favored colonies, including
Bermuda, New York, and
Rhode Island, had become cash-starved by the
Navigation Acts, which restricted trade with foreign ships. Merchants and governors eager for coin were willing to overlook and even underwrite pirate voyages; one colonial official defended a pirate because he thought it "very harsh to hang people that brings in gold to these provinces." Although some of these pirates operating out of New England and the Middle Colonies targeted Spain's remoter Pacific coast colonies well into the 1690s and beyond, the Indian Ocean was a richer and more tempting target. India's economic output was large during this time, especially in high-value luxury goods like silk and calico which made ideal pirate booty; at the same time, no powerful navies plied the Indian Ocean, leaving both local shipping and the various East India companies' vessels vulnerable to attack. This set the stage for the famous pirates,
Thomas Tew,
Henry Every,
Robert Culliford and (although his guilt remains controversial)
William Kidd. In 1713 and 1714, a series of peace treaties ended the
War of the Spanish Succession. As a result, thousands of seamen, including European
privateers who had operated in the West Indies, were relieved of military duty, at a time when cross-Atlantic colonial shipping trade was beginning to boom. In addition, European sailors who had been pushed by unemployment to work onboard
merchantmen (including
slave ships) were often enthusiastic to abandon that profession and turn to pirating, giving pirate captains a steady pool of recruits from various coasts across the Atlantic. In 1715, pirates launched a major raid on Spanish divers trying to recover gold from a sunken treasure galleon near Florida. The nucleus of the pirate force was a group of English ex-privateers, all of whom would soon be enshrined in infamy:
Henry Jennings,
Charles Vane,
Samuel Bellamy, and
Edward England. The attack was successful, but contrary to their expectations, the governor of Jamaica refused to allow Jennings and their cohorts to spend their loot on his island. With Kingston and the declining Port Royal closed to them, Jennings and his comrades founded a new pirate base at
Nassau, on the island of
New Providence in the Bahamas, which had been abandoned during the war. Until the arrival of governor
Woodes Rogers three years later, Nassau would be home for these pirates and their many recruits. Shipping traffic between Africa, the Caribbean, and Europe began to soar in the 18th century, a model that was known as
triangular trade, and was a rich target for piracy. Trade ships sailed from Europe to the African coast, trading manufactured goods and weapons in exchange for slaves. The traders would then sail to the Caribbean to sell the slaves, and return to Europe with goods such as sugar, tobacco and cocoa. Another triangular trade saw ships carry raw materials, preserved cod, and rum to Europe, where a portion of the cargo would be sold for manufactured goods, which (along with the remainder of the original load) were transported to the Caribbean, where they were exchanged for sugar and molasses, which (with some manufactured articles) were borne to New England. Ships in the triangular trade made money at each stop. ,
Roberto Cofresí was the last notably successful pirate in the Caribbean. As part of the peace settlement of the
War of the Spanish succession, Britain obtained the
asiento, a Spanish government contract, to
supply slaves to Spain's new world colonies, providing British traders and smugglers more access to the traditionally closed Spanish markets in America. This arrangement also contributed heavily to the spread of piracy across the western Atlantic at this time. Shipping to the colonies boomed simultaneously with the flood of skilled mariners after the war. Merchant shippers used the surplus of sailors' labor to drive wages down, cutting corners to maximize their profits, and creating unsavory conditions aboard their vessels. Merchant sailors suffered from mortality rates as high or higher than the slaves being transported (Rediker, 2004). Living conditions were so poor that many sailors began to prefer a freer existence as a
pirate. The increased volume of shipping traffic also could sustain a large body of brigands preying upon it. Among the most infamous Caribbean pirates of the time were
Edward Teach or
Blackbeard,
John Rackham, and
Bartholomew Roberts. Most of these 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 the waters though they were not as bold or successful as their predecessors. The most successful pirates of the era were
Jean Lafitte and
Roberto Cofresi. Lafitte is considered by many to be the last
buccaneer due to his army of pirates and fleet of pirate ships which held bases in and around the
Gulf of Mexico. Lafitte and his men participated in the
War of 1812 battle of New Orleans. Cofresi's base was in
Mona Island, Puerto Rico, from where he disrupted the commerce throughout the region. He became the last major target of the international anti-piracy operations. ; illustration from
The Pirates Own Book (1837) The elimination of piracy from European waters expanded to the Caribbean in the 18th century, West Africa and North America by the 1710s and by the 1720s even the Indian Ocean was a difficult location for pirates to operate. England began to strongly turn against piracy at the turn of the 18th century, as it was increasingly damaging to the country's economic and commercial prospects in the region. The
Piracy Act 1698 for the "more effectual suppression of Piracy" made it easier to capture, try and convict pirates by lawfully enabling acts of piracy to be "examined, inquired of, tried, heard and determined, and adjudged in any place at sea, or upon the land, in any of his Majesty's islands, plantations, colonies, dominions, forts, or factories." This effectively enabled admirals to hold a court session to hear the trials of pirates in any place they deemed necessary, rather than requiring that the trial be held in England. Commissioners of these vice-admiralty courts were also vested with "full power and authority" to issue warrants, summon the necessary witnesses, and "to do all thing necessary for the hearing and final determination of any case of piracy, robbery, or felony." These new and faster trials provided no legal representation for the pirates; and ultimately led in this era to the execution of 600 pirates, which represented approximately 10 percent of the pirates active at the time in the Caribbean region. Being an accessory to piracy was also criminalised under the statute. and
Robert Maynard in Ocracoke Bay; romanticized depiction by
Jean Leon Gerome Ferris from 1920 Piracy saw a brief resurgence between the end of the
War of the Spanish Succession in 1713 and around 1720, as many unemployed seafarers took to piracy as a way to make ends meet when a surplus of sailors after the war led to a decline in wages and working conditions. At the same time, one of the terms of the
Treaty of Utrecht that ended the war gave to Great Britain's
Royal African Company and other British slavers a thirty-year asiento, or contract, to furnish African slaves to the Spanish colonies, providing British merchants and smugglers potential inroads into the traditionally closed Spanish markets in America and leading to an economic revival for the whole region. This revived Caribbean trade provided rich new pickings for a wave of piracy. Also contributing to the increase of Caribbean piracy at this time was Spain's breakup of the English logwood settlement at
Campeche and the attractions of a freshly sunken silver fleet off the southern Bahamas in 1715. Fears over the rising levels of crime and piracy, political discontent, concern over crowd behaviour at public punishments, and an increased determination by
Parliament to suppress piracy, resulted in the
Piracy Act 1717 and
Piracy Act 1721. These established a seven-year
penal transportation to North America as a possible punishment for those convicted of lesser felonies, or as a possible sentence that capital punishment might be commuted to by
royal pardon. In 1717, a
pardon was offered to pirates who surrendered to British authorities. After 1720, piracy in the classic sense became extremely rare as increasingly effective anti-piracy measures were taken by the Royal Navy, making it impossible for any pirate to pursue an effective career for long. By 1718, the British Royal Navy had approximately 124 vessels and 214 by 1815; a big increase from the two vessels England had possessed in 1670. Roberts' death was seen by many historians as the end of the Golden Age of Piracy. Also crucial to the end of this era of piracy was the loss of the pirates' last Caribbean safe haven at Nassau. In the early 19th century, piracy along the East and Gulf Coasts of North America as well as in the Caribbean increased again. Jean Lafitte was just one of hundreds of pirates operating in American and Caribbean waters between the years of 1820 and 1835. The United States Navy repeatedly engaged pirates in the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and in the Mediterranean. Cofresí's
El Mosquito was disabled in
a collaboration between Spain and the United States. After fleeing for hours, he was ambushed and captured inland. 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. About the time of the
Mexican–American War in 1846, the United States Navy had grown strong and numerous enough to eliminate the pirate threat in the West Indies. By the 1830s, ships had begun to convert to steam propulsion, so the
Age of Sail and the classical idea of pirates in the Caribbean ended. Privateering, similar to piracy, continued as an asset in war for a few more decades and proved to be of some importance during the naval campaigns of the
American Civil War. Privateering would remain a tool of European states until the mid-19th century's
Declaration of Paris. But
letters of marque were given out much more sparingly by governments and were terminated as soon as conflicts ended. The idea of "no peace beyond the Line" was a relic that had no meaning by the more settled late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Canary Islands to
San Sebastián de La Gomera (1743) 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;
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 those living on the island, confirms this fact. At the same time, the numerous pirate ships that frequented the Canary Islands waters used landing places along its 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 was a pirate on the
Great Lakes in the early 20th century. 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 up river 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==