Pirate Informational Essay Piracy is a concept that intrigues us all. Over time we he developed an idea of what piracy is like, such as the elaborate ships at sea, digging for treasure, and walking the plank. However, piracy has a long, rich history. There is much more to it than the romanticized storybook ideas of treasure maps and men with eyepatches and peg legs. To begin with, pirating has a very rich, and long history that traces back to ancient Greek times. With the progression of trade between empires came the development of piracy. The oldest mention dates back to 1350 B.C. Inscriptions on a clay tablet describe Mediterranean ships being attacked in North Africa. Greek merchants that traded in Phoenician and Anatolian …show more content…
The act of piracy began to increase in popularity in the 1300’s, due to the progression of technology in ships. In addition, privateers also became increasingly popular. In many cases, robbing ships at sea was no longer illegal. In the 1500’s Queen Elizabeth The First hired privateers to attack Spanish ships. North African pirates could be licensed to attack English ships. These people were privateers. They would not be punished by the law for robbing or attacking the ships that they were assigned to. However, there were still a large amount of illegal pirates sailing the seas. The North coast of Africa became an area infamous for piracy in the early sixteenth century. These pirates were called Barbary Corsairs, or Barbary Pirates. They operated off of the Barbary coast. Buccaneers were another type of pirate. They originated from French, Dutch, and English sailors that fled their countries to evade the law. They gradually became more and more powerful, gaining possession of a large amount of the Caribbean/Central and South America. They began to come together in the 1600’s. “United in their hatred of the Spanish, the buccaneers formed a loose knit
Piracy has become a major issue in the United States. For every motion picture that has been featured in theaters also has been pirated onto the Internet the next day, and for every new musical album that is released, yet there is a free torrent file of the album within the same hour. Even though these online pirates steal music and movies from other companies and make a drastic profit, yet these “rogue” websites receive 53 billions visits a year from across the globe according to Creative America. The persistence of the thieves that break copyright laws of the productions has lead the entertainment business to place a definitive complaint to the U.S. government of the constant notion of piracy. While the notion of piracy was not left
Their contemporaries described them as “Robbers, Opposers, and Violators of all Laws, Humane and Divine.” Many viewed themselves as a more selfish reincarnation of Robin Hood, stealing from wealthy merchants, foreign traders, and abusive captains, and in doing so, threatening the hierarchical status quo of seventeenth and eighteenth English society by declaring “war against the world.” The Law considered them hostes humani generis, enemies of all mankind. In reality, Anglo-American pirates were none of those things, or perhaps more accurately, were not one but a combination. They were all robbers, since piracy in its most elementary definition is nothing more than a robbery at sea, something the English Admiralty recognized from its establishment in the fourteenth century. There was certainly also some relevance for their self-perceptive image of stealing from the rich and giving to themselves in order to escape the unjustness of a hierarchical society.
During the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries, piracy was rampant in the Atlantic, specifically in the West Indies. Piracy has existed since the earliest days of ocean travel, for a range of personal and economic reasons. However, one of the major reasons why piracy was wide spread and rampant in the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries was Great Britain’s endorsement and usage of piracy as an asset; in wars fought in the New World. Great Britain with its expanding power and conflicts with other nations would make piracy a lifestyle and lay down the foundation for the Golden Age of Piracy and eventually bring what it created to a screeching halt.
The Barbary pirates operated off the coast of North Africa since the time of the Crusades. The pirates were essentially sponsored by the Arab rulers in Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. They are said to have sailed as far north as Iceland, attacking ports, taking captive people as slaves, and plundering merchant ships. Most countries found it easier and cheaper to bribe the pirates instead of fighting them in a war. Seafaring nations would
The Villains of All Nations is book written by Marcus Rediker that follows the origins of the pirate boom before and after the War of Spanish Succession. The book covers infamous pirates like Bartholomew Roberts, William Fly, and Edward Teach also known as Blackbeard.It discusses the grim environment of working the seas for the government, what lead many people to turn to piracy, the tale of the first women pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read, how piracy impacted slavery, the pirates bonds of brotherhood under the Jolly Roger, and the events that lead to the death of the pirate era itself.
Most people do not know this but piracy on international waters and on the coast of Somalia has become an increasingly important issue to global businesses. Since most people are unaware of this growing problem it has just now been noticed. To help stop piracy most crews are encouraged to have trained officers aboard while shipping cargo to avoid attacks by pirates. 95 percent of the piracy on international waters is by somali pirates. That’s right 95 percent. Piracy is robbery/stealing at sea. Not a lot of people are aware that piracy occurs almost everyday.
Authors present similar information in different ways. In the golden age of piracy, despite being disputed when it actually happened. Despite sometimes being worlds apart, the similarities in all these people and their dastardly deeds is incredible. Their paths frequently intersected either through direct contact or other things. Both Rediker and Greene talk about similar situations and people, but they discussed it quite differently. From showcasing the hardships to glorifying their short and fast paced lives, their arguments are as different as night and day, but give us a solid insight into the average life of a pirate in the golden age of piracy.
As is hopefully apparent by now, the common element of piracy trials throughout the era was the uniform desire to convict harshly regardless of circumstance. All of the ingredients existed for rampant cases of wrongful convictions on par with Kidd and Green, but with the exception of the six fisherman hanged for sharing a drink with John Rackam, they didn’t occur in the vice-Admiralty courts after the Quelch hearings. How is it that pirate hunters always captured the true sea thieves? Or another way of asking the question, where did all the privateers go? Analyzing the answers to these inquiries is crucial to understanding how the evolution of piracy reduced the ambiguity that plagued seventeenth-century piracy trials and eliminated the uncertainty that existed between legal privateers from
Blackbeard was a brave and most outspoken sea rovers who operated during early 1700s in the coastal regions of the English Southern parts of the New world. His piracy activities, together with his co-pirates are key sectors in United States of America’s history. Happening in the time eminently known as the golden age of piracy, their brave advances in sea robbery facilitated the gradual demise of sea hijacking and theft on the deep seas.1
Pirates are people we think of living in the eighteenth century, attacking ships in the open seas. One that may come to mind is Blackbeard. The most common definition of pirates is a person who steals or robs at sea. Although it may not seem like it, there are still pirates today such as the Somali pirates.
Criminals guilty of piracy may be sentenced up to 5 years in prison and fined up to 250,000 dollars. Crimes such as piracy are very serious, as well as the punishments. Businesses who promote and commit piracy and other similar need to be prosecuted, and organizations should do everything they can to win legal battles. Because businesses who steal media promote piracy and creators of the media are losing potential money, it is appropriate for organizations such as the Motion Picture Association of America to use charged language like "piracy" to win legal battles.
When the word pirate is mentioned, many people think of ship carrying men across the seas as they pillage other ships. While this is true to some extent there was much more to the lives of the men that were known as pirates. Pirates were mostly men from French, English or Dutch heritage, and were privateers or merchants. Many of these men were sanctioned by their government. By the Spanish they were call piratas or unsanctioned sea-raiders, and would have a heavy influence of trade in the Caribbean and on the Spanish Empire.
The pirates have created a unique system that has easily allowed them to continue to pirate with little conflict between one another. The former fishers, military, and technicians have joined together and mutually have all the skills needed to pirate including; difficulties of the navigation and handling ships, weapon and fighting training, and high tech equipment. They happen to be in a spot where lots of cargo ships have to go through as well as Somalis in port cities that tell the pirates when these ships are coming through. The pirates have a good distribution of power and profits and, without a greedy leader, everyone gets paid and no one rebels which could cause the whole system to collapse from the inside. They
How can traditional (or old media) enterprises such as film, television and music overcome the threat of online piracy and file sharing?
These new pirates are similar to their predecessors in a variety of aspects. They are split up into two groups: those who work for themselves and others who have an alliance with a government. The most famously known group is currently known as the Somali pirates. They attempted to attack and capture the U.S. cargo vessel called Maersk Alabama in April 2009. However, they were fought off, and their one hostage, the ship’s skipper, was rescued five days later (Boot, Max. “Pirates, Then and Now”). Pirate techniques of stealing and escaping have not changed either. Sea robbers continue to elude the authorities by using state and country flags to become unrecognizable. Their ships are designed to be fast and easy to maneuver through coves and channels. On the other hand, technological advances have made it easier for ordinary ocean vessels to become victims of piracy. Wooden ships with shallow bottoms and cannons were ingenious a century ago, but speedboats have become the new pirate transportation. Somali pirates tend to have a larger, ‘mother ship’ used for deep ocean assaults (May, Laura.