Portal:Piracy

The Piracy Portal

Introduction

Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, and vessels used for piracy are called pirate ships. The earliest documented instances of piracy were in the 14th century BC, when the Sea Peoples, a group of ocean raiders, attacked the ships of the Aegean and Mediterranean civilisations. Narrow channels which funnel shipping into predictable routes have long created opportunities for piracy, as well as for privateering and commerce raiding.

Historic examples of such areas include the waters of Gibraltar, the Strait of Malacca, Madagascar, the Gulf of Aden, and the English Channel, whose geographic structures facilitated pirate attacks. The term piracy generally refers to maritime piracy, although the term has been generalized to refer to acts committed on land, in the air, on computer networks, and (in science fiction) outer space. Piracy usually excludes crimes committed by the perpetrator on their own vessel (e.g. theft), as well as privateering, which implies authorization by a state government.

Piracy or pirating is the name of a specific crime under customary international law and also the name of a number of crimes under the municipal law of a number of states. In the 21st century, seaborne piracy against transport vessels remains a significant issue, with estimated worldwide losses of US$25 billion in 2023, increased from US$16 billion in 2004. (Full article...)

Selected biography -

Simon Fernandes (Portuguese: Simão Fernandes; c. 1538 – c. 1590) was a 16th-century Portuguese-born navigator and sometimes pirate who piloted the 1585 and 1587 English expeditions to found colonies on Roanoke island, part of modern-day North Carolina but then known as Virginia. Fernandes trained as a navigator in Spain at the famed Casa de Contratación in Seville, but later took up arms against the Spanish empire, preying upon Spanish shipping along with fellow pirate John Callis. Charged with piracy in 1577, he was saved from the hangman's noose by Sir Francis Walsingham, becoming a Protestant and a subject of the Queen of England. In 1578 Fernandes entered the service of Sir Humphrey Gilbert and later Sir Walter Raleigh, piloting the failed 1587 expedition to Roanoke, known to history as the "Lost Colony".

Fernandes disappears from the records after 1590, when he sailed with an English fleet to the Azores, a journey from which he most likely did not return alive. However, a copy of one of his charts of the East coast of North America still survives in the Cotton Collection, and was probably one of the chief sources used by John Dee for his 1580 map justifying English claims to North America. (Full article...)

List of selected biographies

Selected article -

Piracy in the Gulf of Guinea affects a number of countries in West Africa as well as the wider international community. By 2011, it had become an issue of global concern. Pirates in the Gulf of Guinea are often part of heavily armed criminal enterprises, who employ violent methods to steal oil cargo. In 2012, the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), Oceans Beyond Piracy and the Maritime Piracy Humanitarian Response Program reported that the number of vessels attacks by West African pirates had reached a world high, with 966 seafarers attacked during the year. According to the Control Risks Group, pirate attacks in the Gulf of Guinea had by mid-November 2013 maintained a steady level of around 100 attempted hijackings in the year, a close second behind the Strait of Malacca in Southeast Asia.

Piracy in the Gulf of Guinea continues to be a concern to significantly affect the shipping industry, with over 80% of crew kidnappings occurring there, as reported by the IMB in late 2019. Officials report Nigerian pirate gangs in the Gulf of Guinea shifting, in 2019, from cargo theft to kidnapping seafaring crews in order to extort ransom from ship owners. With piracy surging again in the 2020s, governments in the region generally highlight that the fight against piracy requires a broad understanding of maritime security throughout the Gulf of Guinea. (Full article...)

List of selected articles

Did you know?

... that indigenous Australian artist Daniel Boyd has depicted colonial figures including Captain James Cook and Governor Arthur Phillip as pirates?
... that since 1904 the Gasparilla Pirate Festival in Tampa, Florida, has featured a pirate-themed parade?
... that Saudi Arabian broadcaster beoutQ pirated and resold beIN Sports programmes during the Qatar diplomatic crisis?
... that HMS Redpole, one of the aptly-named coffin brigs, sank in an action with a pirate vessel in August 1828?
... that the developers of Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number suggested that Australian customers pirate their game?

... that, unlike traditional Western societies of the time, many pirate clans operated as limited democracies, demanding the right to elect and replace their leaders?
... that in the Golden Age of Piracy, the word "pirate" was often spelled "pyrate" or "pyrat"?
... that, while it is unknown if pirates actually kept parrots as pets, it is thought that at least some captains kept cats aboard to keep populations of rats and other vermin down?

Selected quotations

“

Coming up to them, there has passed some common shot between some of our fleet and some of them; and as far as we perceive, they are determined to sell their lives with blows.

”

— Francis Drake to Admiral Henry Seymour, after coming upon part of the Spanish Armada.

General images

The following are images from various piracy-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Map of Durrës in 1573 by Simon Pinargenti (from Albanian piracy)
Image 2British captain witnessing the miseries of Christian slaves in Algiers, 1815 (from Barbary pirates)
Image 3Four Chinese pirates who were hanged in Hong Kong in 1863 (from Piracy)
Image 4A merchant seaman aboard a fleet oil tanker practices target shooting with a Remington 870 12 gauge shotgun as part of training to repel pirates in the Strait of Malacca, 1984 (from Piracy)
Image 5A person costumed in the character of captain Jack Sparrow, Johnny Depp's lead role in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series (from Piracy)
Image 6An action between an English ship and vessels of the Barbary Corsairs (from Barbary pirates)
Image 7Ottoman admiral Hayreddin Barbarossa (from Barbary pirates)
Image 8Incidents of pipeline vandalism by pirates in the Gulf of Guinea, 2002–2011 (from Piracy)
Image 9Painting from 1772 depicting British and French sailors at battle with Dulcignottes (Ulcinj pirates). These pirates were defeated on 5 September 1772. (from Albanian piracy)
Image 10Barbaria by Jan Janssonius, shows the coast of North Africa, an area known in the 17th century as Barbaria, c. 1650 (from Barbary pirates)
Image 11Pirates attacking a French ship (from Albanian piracy)
Image 12Mural representing the attack of Charles Windon to San Sebastián de La Gomera (1743) (from Piracy)
Image 13The Barbary pirates frequently attacked Corsica, resulting in many Genoese towers being erected. (from Barbary pirates)
Image 14Capture of the Pirate Blackbeard, 1718 depicting the battle between Blackbeard and Robert Maynard in Ocracoke Bay; romanticized depiction by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris from 1920 (from Piracy)
Image 15A contemporary flyer depicting the public execution of 16th-century pirate Klein Henszlein and his crew in 1573 (from Piracy)
Image 16Kent battling Confiance, a privateer vessel commanded by French corsair Robert Surcouf in October 1800, as depicted in a painting by Garneray (from Piracy)
Image 17Bartholomew Roberts' crew carousing at the Calabar River; illustration from The Pirates Own Book (1837). Roberts is estimated to have captured over 470 vessels. (from Piracy)
Image 18Pirate Anne Bonny (disappeared after 28 November 1720). Engraving from Captain Charles Johnson's General History of the Pyrates (1st Dutch Edition, 1725) (from Piracy)
Image 19Map showing the extent of Somali pirate attacks on shipping vessels between 2005 and 2010 (from Piracy)
Image 20Conquest of Tunis by Charles V and liberation of Christian galley slaves in 1535 (from Barbary pirates)
Image 21Photomontage of Somali pirates on the MV Faina (from Piracy off the coast of Somalia)
Image 22Henry Every 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. (from Piracy)
Image 23"Cossacks of Azov fighting a Turk ship" by Grigory Gagarin (from Piracy)
Image 24Coat of arms of the town of Almuñécar, granted by King Charles V in 1526, showing the turbaned heads of three Barbary pirates floating in the sea (from Barbary pirates)
Image 25A Barbary pirate, Pier Francesco Mola, 1650 (from Barbary pirates)
Image 26Sixteenth century Japanese pirate raids (from Piracy)
Image 27A fleet of Vikings, painted mid-12th century (from Piracy)
Image 28Jacques de Sores looting and burning Havana in 1555 (from Piracy)
Image 29Henry Morgan who sacked and burned the city of Panama in 1671 – the second most important city in the Spanish New World at the time; engraving from 1681 Spanish edition of Alexandre Exquemelin's The Buccaneers of America (from Piracy)
Image 30Amaro Pargo was one of the most famous corsairs of the Golden Age of Piracy (from Piracy)
Image 311890 illustration by Rafael Monleón of a late 18th-century Iranun lanong warship. The Malay word for "pirate", lanun, originates from an exonym of the Iranun people (from Piracy)
Image 32Castle of Ulcinj in the 1890s (from Albanian piracy)
Image 33British Royal Navy Commodore gives a presentation on piracy at the MAST 2008 conference (from Piracy)
Image 34Modern reconstruction of skull alleged to have belonged to 14th century pirate Klaus Störtebeker. He was the leader of the privateer guild Victual Brothers, who later turned to piracy and roamed European seas. (from Piracy)
Image 35Map of Tripoli in 1561 (from Albanian piracy)
Image 36The cemetery of past pirates at Île Ste-Marie (St. Mary's Island) (from Piracy)
Image 37Anti piracy operations by Indian Navy's INS Tabar, in the Gulf of Aden on 18 November 2008 (from Piracy off the coast of Somalia)
Image 38U.S. naval officer Stephen Decatur boarding a Tripolitan gunboat during the First Barbary War, 1804 (from Piracy)
Image 39Time series of maritime traffic crossing the Indian Ocean showing the effect of piracy and its progressive decline in re-routing ships. Each sub-plot shows 6-month colour-coded trips, red southbound and green northbound, using Long Range Identification and Tracking (LRIT) historical data. Operational authorities requested an increase of LRIT reporting frequency from ships in 2009 and 2010 in order to better track them remotely in the High Risk Area. The increase of tracking points can be erroneously perceived as an apparently higher volume of traffic with respect to other periods. (from Piracy off the coast of Somalia)
Image 40The traditional "Jolly Roger" flag of piracy (from Piracy)
Image 41Battle of Preveza, 1538 (from Barbary pirates)
Image 42Map of Dalmatia in 1715 by Guillaume Delisle (from Albanian piracy)
Image 43"Mic the Scallywag" of the Pirates of Emerson Haunted Adventure Fremont, California (from Piracy)
Image 44Captain William Bainbridge paying tribute to the Dey of Algiers, c. 1800 (from Barbary pirates)
Image 45Puerto del Príncipe being sacked in 1668 by Henry Morgan (from Piracy)
Image 46A Sea Fight with Barbary Corsairs by Laureys a Castro, c. 1681 (from Barbary pirates)
Image 47The Bombardment of Algiers by the Anglo-Dutch fleet in 1816 to support the ultimatum to release European slaves (from Piracy)
Image 48Suspected Somali pirates keep their hands in the air (from Piracy)
Image 49French bombardment of Algiers by Admiral Dupperé, 13 June 1830 (from Barbary pirates)
Image 50A collage of Somali pirates armed with AKM assault rifles, RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launchers and semi-automatic pistols in 2008 (from Piracy)
Image 51An LRAD sound cannon mounted on RMS Queen Mary 2 (from Piracy)
Image 52Aerial photograph of the Niger Delta, a center of piracy (from Piracy)
Image 53Map of Ulcinj in 1573 by Simon Pinargenti (from Albanian piracy)
Image 54The Prisoner by Jean Lecomte du Nouÿ after Jean-Léon Gérôme, c.1871 (from Albanian piracy)
Image 55The crew of the merchant vessel Faina stand on the deck after a U.S. Navy request to check on their health and welfare. The Belize-flagged cargo ship owned and operated by Kaalbye Shipping, Ukraine, was seized by pirates 25 September 2008 and forced to proceed to anchorage off the Somali Coast. The ship is carrying a cargo of Ukrainian T-72 tanks and related military equipment. (from Piracy off the coast of Somalia)
Image 56Iban war prahu in Skerang river (from Piracy)
Image 57Slave market in Algiers, Ottoman Algeria, 1684 (from Barbary pirates)
Image 58International Maritime Organization (IMO) conference on capacity-building to counter piracy in the Indian Ocean (from Piracy)
Image 59A mosaic of a Roman trireme in Tunisia (from Piracy)
Image 60A man from the Barbary states (from Barbary pirates)
Image 61The Vitalienbrüder. Piracy became endemic in the Baltic Sea in the Middle Ages because of the Victual Brothers. (from Piracy)
Image 62Battle of a French ship of the line and two galleys of the Barbary corsairs (from Barbary pirates)
Image 63The Quattro Mori ("Four Moors") by Pietro Tacca; Livorno, Italy (from Barbary pirates)
Image 64Views of Ulcinj in 1718 bz H. C. Bröckell (from Albanian piracy)
Image 65A private guard escort on a merchant ship providing security services against piracy in the Indian Ocean (from Piracy)
Image 66Armed pirates in the Indian Ocean near Somalia. After the picture was taken, the vessel's crew members opened fire on U.S. Navy ships and the ship's crew members returned fire. One suspected pirate was killed and 12 were taken into custody (see engaged pirate vessels). (from Piracy off the coast of Somalia)
Image 67Bartholomew Roberts was the pirate with most captures during the Golden Age of Piracy. He is now known for hanging the governor of Martinique from the yardarm of his ship. (from Piracy)
Image 68Spanish warships bombarding the Moro Pirates of the southern Philippines in 1848 (from Piracy)
Image 69A French ship under attack by Barbary pirates, ca. 1615 (from Piracy)
Image 70A fight between Filipino pirates, Bugis trading ship, and Dutch mariners. (from Piracy)
Image 71Bombardment of Algiers by Lord Exmouth in August 1816, Thomas Luny (from Barbary pirates)
Image 72Blackbeard's severed head hanging from Maynard's bowsprit; illustration from The Pirates Own Book (1837) (from Piracy)
Image 73Lieve Pietersz Verschuier, Dutch ships bomb Tripoli in a punitive expedition against the Barbary pirates, c. 1670 (from Barbary pirates)
Image 74Born to a noble family in Puerto Rico, Roberto Cofresí was the last notably successful pirate in the Caribbean. (from Piracy)
Image 75Hanging of Captain Kidd; illustration from The Pirates Own Book (1837) (from Piracy)
Image 76Dan Seavey was a pirate on the Great Lakes in the early 20th century. (from Piracy)
Image 77A pirate skiff in Baltiysk, Russia — captured by the Russian Navy (from Piracy off the coast of Somalia)
Image 78Double-barrelled lantaka cannons, kalasag shields, armor, and various swords (including kalis, panabas, and kampilan) used by Moro pirates in the Philippines (c. 1900) (from Piracy)
Image 79Somalia's coral reefs, ecological parks and protected areas (from Piracy off the coast of Somalia)
Image 80A French Ship and Barbary Pirates by Aert Anthonisz, c. 1615 (from Barbary pirates)
Image 81The work of the Mercedarians was in ransoming Christian slaves held in Muslim hands, Histoire de Barbarie et de ses Corsaires, 1637 (from Barbary pirates)
Image 82Map of Shkodër with the Buna river in 1571 by Giovanni Francesco Camocio (from Albanian piracy)
Image 83An Algerine pirate ship (from Barbary pirates)
Image 84Map of Vlorë in 1573 by Simon Pinargenti (from Albanian piracy)
Image 85A 19th-century illustration of an Iranun pirate (from Piracy)
Image 86Pirate treasure looted by Samuel Bellamy and recovered from the wreck of the Whydah; exhibit at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, 2010 (from Piracy)

Selected Jolly Roger

First flag of Bartholomew Roberts

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