Pirates

by Read Listen Learn

Pirates

“Life’s pretty good, and why shouldn’t it be? I’m a pirate after all.” Johnny Depp in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’

We are near the coast of Somalia in North-East Africa, a busy sea route. It is daytime and a large ship is travelling towards South Africa from Japan with a load of cars. Suddenly, a young seaman shouts: “Raiders!!” But, it’s too late and, in seconds, two fast motor boats come up to the ship and four or five young Somali men climb on to it very quickly. They have machine guns and one of them fires a few shots in the air and, in bad English, shouts at the crew to lie down and not to move. One man is too slow and they shoot him dead.

The raiders find the captain and tell him to open the safe in his office at the back of the ship. In the safe is the money to pay the crew every time they stop at a port. It comes to $1,400,000. The pirates take the money and the captain – his company will pay another million dollars for him to be set free. He has a fifty-fifty chance of living.

Does this sound like something from an action movie? Well, maybe, but it’s also part of everyday life in some parts of the world’s seas and oceans. The name of this crime is ‘piracy’, and the people who do it are called ‘pirates’. Pirates have been part of life at sea since people first started using it for trade and transport.

The Ancient Greeks, two thousand years ago, had a problem with them; the Romans fought them; and the famous Vikings were really pirates more than they were anything else. The Vikings, and many other pirates, were fishermen with their own ships who were always ready to steal if they had the chance. A quick raid on a fishing village would bring twenty or so slaves to sell. Perhaps they could find another ship and quickly attack before the crew knew they were pirates.

And pirates do not just work at sea. There are also lake and river pirates in many parts of the world. There was a problem with pirates on the American Great Lakes between 1900 and 1930, not so long ago. River Pirates in China were usual until about 1950, moving up and down the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers looking for travellers to rob and kill.

Of course, many people will know the movie series ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’, which is set in the 1700s, the time known as the Golden Age of Piracy. These are the pirates we all know and, for some reason, love. Why were there so many pirates at that time and in the Caribbean? The many small islands of the Caribbean meant that the pirates always had places to hide and rest, far away from the law – this is something all pirates need. Also, most pirates were running away from something. The very many black pirates were usually escaped slaves; and many pirates were gay. Being gay was illegal at the time and meant death so many young gay men had no choice if caught than to run away and become pirates.

It all looks like a lot of fun in the movies but most pirates came to a bad end. Those who didn’t die fighting were killed if they were caught. In many ports in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was usual to see the bodies of a couple of pirates, hanged for their crimes and left as a warning to everyone not to live the pirate’s life.

In the 19th century, piracy started to die out. One reason for this was the growth of powerful navies, British, French, American and Japanese, who patrolled the seas and attacked pirates. The growing European empires also meant that there were not so many places for pirates to hide, at least, not on land.

Now, in the last ten or fifteen years, piracy is growing again, and it’s growing very fast. It’s in the news and what we hear makes it clear that there is nothing romantic about pirates – they kill. But why are the pirates back? When the ‘Cold War’ ended in 1991, navies got a lot smaller but trade at sea grew with the globalisation of markets. For pirates, this meant more to steal and less chance of being caught by a navy patrol; also, war and the breakdown in government in places like Somalia or Indochina mean that, once again, pirates have places on land to rest and fix their ships. At the moment, the international community, through organisations like NATO or the United Nations, is organising the fight against the new pirates. Many of the world’s navies patrol the worst places like the seas between the Horn of Africa and Arabia around the Red Sea, and some parts of South-East Asia.

So the future for modern pirates doesn’t look good but many have explained that the best way to stop piracy in these places is to bring peace and the chance of honest work to the young men who don’t choose this way of life – it chooses them. However, as long as ships full of riches cross our seas, there will always be pirates.