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Topic Started: Jul 20 2009, 11:17 PM (8 Views)
Aurelius
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Freebooters and filibusters, marooners and privateers, buccaneers and Brethren - no matter the name, pirates were the scourge of the sea. Still, many adventurers yearned to sail the ocean blue and prevail in a lie of excitement. This is the 'Golden Age of Piracy'.

The Caribbean...
Before the Europeans came, the Caribbean was inhabited by many tribes of natives, rom the civilised Maya, to the peaceful Taino, to the savage Caribs, whose name is preserved not only in the word "Caribbean" but also in "cannibal". When Columbus first landed, it was the Taino, wearing gold nuggets in their noses that he met. Spain was quick to respond to the discovery, and a community was established on Hispaniola in 1493. The gold of the Aztecs was first seen by the Spanish in 1518, and that of the Incas in 1524.
Colonisation was swift and brutal. The natives who resisted were massacred and ravaged with European diseases. Those that could be enslaved, were, and Spaniards became intensely feared and hated by most Indian tribes. The proud civilisations of the Incas and Aztecs were destroyed by 1540. The Portugese and English shipped African slaves to the Caribbean; these rapidly replaced the dying Indians as labour. By 1550, only the tribes in the remote interior had been untouched by Western culture.
Major settlements Spanish included Havana, San Juan, Maracaibo, Portobelo, Cartagena, Vera Cruz, Santo Domingo, and Panama. Not until the 1620s was there real infringement on Spanish claims to the Caribbean. The English, French, and Dutch all established bases in that decade. The Lesser Antilles had been ignored by Spain as too small and too poor to bother with. Unfortunately for the Spanish, they ignored the wind. Since the wind blew fairly constantly from the Lesser Antilles, the countries with bases there could raid the Spanish settlements with ease. Not only was it easy sailing to the old ports, but there was less warning when a ship was sighted - the wind carried it in to the attack fairly quickly. Any Spanish ships coming out of port to defend were at the lee disadvantage. Also, if the Spanish tried to raid the outer settlements, their sails were seen long before their ships could get to the harbours - plenty of time for the defenders to muster a response (with the weather gage) or flee to the hills.
The English settled Nevis and St Kitts in the 1620s (Barbados had been settled in 1605). The Dutch took Aruba, Curacao, and Statia, while the French settled Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Tortuga. The Spanish retained Dominica and Trinidad in the Lesser Antilles. The English took Jamaica in 1655. They didn't mean to - they wanted Hispaniola but failed in that attack, and so sailed with the wind to the next target. They took, and managed to keep, Jamaica thanks to the buccaneers.

... and its pirates
Piracy in the Caribbean had a distinct flavour all of its own. Sir Francis Drake started it in the 1570s, and Queen Elizabeth was so enthralled with the booty that she forgave him his piracy (he’d had no letters of marque). She also accepted a share of the loot, even though it meant trouble with Spain.
Elizabeth later invested money and letters of marque in another voyage of his and was angered when he took three years to circumnavigate the globe. The anger melted when his haul was revealed to be the equivalent of well over 8 million pounds. This is the deed he was knighted for.
The word got about that there were riches to be had in the Caribbean. Spain claimed all the land, however, so there was no base of operations available. Spain’s claim to the New World was sanctioned by the Pope, who had granted Spain all the last west of 52 degrees longitude – the Line, it was simply called. There were only occasional raids into the Caribbean until the 1630s, when the buccaneers managed to organise themselves into war parties. Soon the phrase “no peace beyond the line” was born.

The Red Sea and the Indian Ocean
Towards the 1700s, the Caribbean was becoming less profitable for pirates. The Spanish were finally taking strong security measures and the English were becoming well enough established in the area to want to put down piracy. There had been some pirate settlements in Madagascar in the late 1680s, but they grew slowly until a significant event occurred. In 1697, Captain John Avery set sail from the Caribbean for the Red Sea as a pirate. Avery made only one capture: the ship of the Great Mogul’s daughter on pilgrimage to Mecca. The loot from this haul was estimated at the modern equivalent of a few million dollars and is probably the greatest single robbery in history. Avery retired from piracy, and soon pirates were headed for the Red Sea / Indian Ocean area – word travelled fast.
Many pirates set sail for the East, and Madagascar became the new pirate capital of the world. By this time, there weren’t many of the original buccaneers left, and the pirates of one ship might prey on another pirate ship, and unheard-of situation in earlier times.
Pirates raided the rich ships carrying the treasures of the East to Europe, and then sailed across the Atlantic to sell them in the American colonies. The colonials were happy to buy the goods, as the pirates could undersell the British merchants who had a legal monopoly on the trade to America.
The Island of St Mary’s off the Madagascar coast was an ideal haven for pirates. It had taverns, warehouses, a shipyard, and even a fort. There was also a pirate republic called Libertatia on the mainland of Madagascar. The setting was ideal; it was easy to raid ships going around the capes of Africa or headed towards Suez. The journey to America was long, but soon traders started making runs from New York to Madagascar, saving the pirates the need to go that far. Wine, beer, gunpowder, and ship’s supplies such as rope, tar, and sulphur were the goods most commonly brought to the pirates. Gold, silver, jewels, spices, tea, and silk were traded in exchange.

The Barbary Pirates
The Barbary pirates were pirates and privateers that operated from the North African (the "Barbary coast") ports of Tunis, Tripoli, Algiers, Salé and ports in Morocco, preying on shipping in the western Mediterranean Sea from the time of the Crusades as well as on ships on their way to Asia around Africa until the early 19th century. The coastal villages and towns of Italy, Spain and Mediterranean islands were frequently attacked by them and long stretches of the Italian and Spanish coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants; since the 17th century, Barbary pirates occasionally entered the Atlantic and struck as far north as Iceland. Between 1 and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in the Arab world between the 16th and 19th centuries.

The early 17th century may be described as the flowering time of the Barbary pirates. This is because the introduction of new sailing rigs by Simon de Danser enabled the North African raiders, for the first time, to brave the Atlantic as well as Mediterranean waters. More than 20,000 captives were said to be imprisoned in Algiers alone. The rich were allowed to redeem themselves, but the poor were condemned to slavery. Their masters would on occasion allow them to secure freedom by professing Islam. A long list might be given of people of good social position, not only Italians or Spaniards, but also German and English travellers in the south, who were captives for a time.

Iceland was subject to raids known as the Turkish abductions in 1627. Murat Reis (Jan Janszoon) is said to have taken 400 prisoners; 242 of the captives later were sold into slavery on the Barbary Coast. The pirates took only young people and those in good physical condition. All those offering resistance were killed, and the old people were gathered into a church which was set on fire. Among those captured was Ólafur Egilsson, who was ransomed the next year and, upon returning to Iceland, wrote a slave narrative about his experience. Another famous captive from that raid was Guðríður Símonardóttir. The sack of Vestmannaeyjar is known in the history of Iceland as Tyrkjaránið.

One of the stereotypical features of a pirate in popular culture, the eye patch, probably dates back to the Arab pirate Rahmah ibn Jabir al-Jalahimah, who wore it after losing an eye in battle in the 18th century.

While the Golden Age of European and American pirates is generally considered to have ended between 1710 and 1730, the prosperity of the Barbary pirates continued until the early 19th century. Unlike the European powers, the young United States refused to pay tribute to the Barbary states, and responded with naval attacks against North Africa when the Barbary pirates captured and enslaved American sailors. Although the U.S. met with only limited success in these wars, France and Great Britain with their more powerful navies soon followed suit and stamped out the Barbary raiders.

Edited by Aurelius, Jul 20 2009, 11:21 PM.
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