Misleading on Piracy

Usually the British publication, The Independent, is pretty reliable, but this sympathetic piece about piracy off the Somalia coast begins with a premise so recklessly inaccurate that it makes me question the rest of the article in its entirety. The author starts by making an attempt to explain the origins of piracy and, after describing the harsh conditions that men suffered in sailing warships, specifically British, he says this,

Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied – and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively, without torture. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls "one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century."

Glamorous, but utter nonsense. To begin with, piracy existed before the British Navy ever existed; before Britain did for that matter.

In addition, mutinies were virtually never successful, and the few that were got ruthlessly hunted down by the British Navy and hanged to a man. The exception was the famous mutiny on the Bounty and, while they were not found for more than a century, they most certainly did not become pirates.

Until outlawed by treaty in 1856, nations issued “letters of marque” to private ships which allowed them to operate essentially as warships representing that nation. The ships made their profit by capturing rather than sinking enemy shipping and selling not only the cargoes, but the ships themselves. These “privateers” were quite profitable and completely legal until wars became scarce and slavery unpopular, at which point they turned their skills to capturing and plundering ships at random and became pirates. These are the jolly, egalitarian bands of brigands the author is imagining.

Nor were these ships as democratic as he fondly dreams. Edward Teach, also known as Blackbeard, owned his own ship and was certainly not democratically elected by his own men, some of whom he shot from time to time, “or they would forget who I am.” Given that personnel climate, it is doubtful that they voted on many decisions.

The author of the piece may be better at gathering current facts that he is at marshalling historical ones, and so the rest of the piece may be worth the read. It would be unsurprising for the Italian mafia to be in the trash hauling business and to be dumping it off the coast of a failed nation, and it certainly would not be surprising to know that commercial fisheries would be operating wherever they can do so with impunity. Somebody should be taking action to investigate these claims and resolve wrongdoing.

That does not justify the taking of ships at sea, even when killing is not part of that process. Lives are put at risk, and the sea is dangerous enough without mankind adding to it.