Pirates were with us from the time of the Greeks, and probably the Egyptians…
Most were Not Nice People in any way, shape or form.
They tended to blossom forth in numbers after political upheavals on land…as people who had boats found a way to get out of Dodge. When whole navies were put in that position by losing a war—they sometimes turned to free enterprise.
The little nation of Cilicia, girt by mountains, having nothing but a major land trade route and some fishing for a resource (it sat where Asia Minor connects to the Syrian/Lebanon area)…declared itself a ‘free port’ in ancient times: no questions asked. So it a) harbored pirates, who could put in there for a re-fit and supplies, and spend their gold ashore, thus encouraging local business b) encouraged land trade, because it didn’t allow banditry on that trade route c) didn’t itself need a navy: it had the pirates.
They were a plague on Roman shipping (witness Caesar getting kidnapped by pirates in his youth) and unstoppable until Sextus Pompey took after them with an organized Roman fleet and denied them Cilicia.
The Pirates of the Spanish Main were yet another variation on the ‘defeated navy.’ In point of fact, they’d succeeded too well as an adjunct navy—Britain had licensed privateers (private ships) to harry the Spanish trade routes during the period when Adm. John Hawkins and family (kin to me, Jane, and apparently some of you guys!) redesigned British warships to be more weatherly and seaworthy—and agile. This was a good thing, since the Spanish, duly annoyed at the action of the privateers, decided to go invade England. Which, as you know, didn’t work, and put a heavy hit on Spain.
This had an adverse effect on the privateers, who began to look for other ways to go on doing what they were doing.
Meanwhile England, Holland, France, the Netherlands…all broke out in religious contentions and the Pope unhelpfully blamed the bad weather (Little Ice Age) on witches, which made the whole continent crazy, created mob mentality, burnings, witch hunts, and political push-pull as the English beheaded their king and had Cromwell attacking the Irish with fanatic intensity—all over religion. Some people fled to the New World either to practice their beliefs or to take over the New World for their particular sect or belief — and the privateers, meanwhile, pursued a lifestyle of democracy, racial and gender tolerance, work-based advancement, and all the virtues we now hold dear: they just had this untidy habit of raiding shipping…
They had their own Cilicia, in Port Royal, but when a great earthquake slid Port Royal into the sea, they were kind of disadvantaged, and when Adm. Hawkins’ redesigned fleet left off fighting the Spanish to go after the pirates who were now being a nuisance to the slave-molasses-rum traffic (the Triangular Trade) — the pirates were running on borrowed time…
So should we all talk in the Somali language today? 🙂
Strange how unglamorous modern pirates are, though they are actually not very different from historical communities of pirates.
In fact, they probably have more justification than most. Illegal fishing in Somali waters, and dumping of toxic waste by big companies have deprived many fisherman of their livelihood, and civil war has meant disorder and anarchy. So many Somali coastal towns and communities are strongly supportive of the pirates.
See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy_in_Somalia
The Somali pirates are probably perfectly representative of the rank and file sort of pirate…simple folk, limited economic opportunity.
The great difference is in equipment and leadership. The typical Caribbean privateer captain/owner was educated, capable of directing a far larger vessel, and conversant with the language and habits of the target vessels: the crew, however, probably varied from experienced, skilled sailors fallen on hard times or defecting, and the ‘hands’: meaning literally that, ‘hands’, ie, any living soul capable of tailing onto a rope and hauling when told to do so. On the wooden ships, sheer body weight is worth something.
But if said unskilled recruit doesn’t learn fast, there are also many ways to die painfully on a wooden ship far from aid: putting your foot into a coil of rope, getting hit in the head by flying rope and tackle, getting washed overboard…The stupid did not likely live long after being drafted into the Royal Navy or getting a berth on a pirate ship.
The Somalis are quite sophisticated. They are fully capable of taking over the bridge of a large ship far off the coast, and navigating and sailing it themselves.
Apparently there is a also stock exchange in the city of Harardhere where people can buy and sell shares in pirate expeditions. Financing of weapons and boats is quite sophisticated, and they even have professional currency-counting machines (the same as those used by banks) to verify and count banknotes paid as ransoms.
Interesting. Something of the sort, though less formal, went on in Britain in the case of the privateers…in the days when they were legal.
It is said that Jean LaFite was a direct descendant of General Lafeyette, through the acknowledged child of his American mistress during our Revolutionary war. Does anyone track other than legitimate children when doing their ancestry?
That’s interesting.
Oh, yes, we track ‘unofficial’ relationships…in much of the American frontier, you were lucky if you could find a parson; in ancient times it was pretty much whatever the local priest of whatever sort—or the duke—or the king—or two householders in a village agreed was a marriage. I’m just trying to sort out a relationship with a chap named Ingelric, who claimed Ethelred the Unready was his father. Now, we know Ethelred’s ‘official’ children, which are 4-5 in number. But here is Ingelric, of the right date, right general area—and who is apparently marrying into the Peverell household, who evidently set some importance on him as an early Important Person in the Peverell line.
So—certain historians and genealogists say ‘unproven.’ But the Peverells were a damned important family, and they thought he was Something, and they were a lot oloser to witnesses than we are. So you can take your pick. The best bet is that he was illegitimate. King John—had so many mistresses and one night stands there are many, many, many descendants. Then there’s Genghis Khan, and they’ve run DNA on this one: apparently a healthy segment of the entire Mongolian NATION is related to him.
IIRC Spencer Wells’ said there are some 6 million men in Asia with identical Y chromosomes, presumably from you know who.
Bad apostrophe! Get down! Go back to the kennel. Go!
Don’t know what I was thinking letting it out now.
The Pirates are only one game out and may yet be in the post season for the first time in a long time.
I rate apple and blueberry the best – but they are best with no sugar and extra lemon juice.
Arr, me mateys, somehow I missed that it were talk like a pirate day. ‘Tis most unfortunate, an’ I must hang me haid in shame, says I.
A merry day to all o’ yez betimes.
Alas, the fish I fixed is now too old, but if there’s still some lime juice on hand, shoujld be, then I’ll have some to celebrate wi’ me supper tonight.
Famous pirates were playthings of nations in war. Glorified, even mystified heros for one side and evil for the other. Some ended not too bad (Francis Drake) some very bad (Klaus Störtebeker).
America has not been above a little state-sponsored piracy.
In colonial America, for instance, colonial governors issued them in the name of the king. During the American Revolution, first the state legislatures, then both the states and the Continental Congress, then, after ratification of the Constitution, Congress authorized and the President signed letters of marque. … For instance, during the Second Barbary War President James Madison authorized the Salem, Mass., brig Grand Turk to cruise against ‘Algerine vessels, public or private, goods and effects, of or belonging to the Dey of Algiers’. (Interestingly, this particular commission was never put to use, as it was issued the same day the treaty was signed ending the U.S. involvement in the war—July 3, 1815.)” Wikipedia: Letters of Marque
Off-Topic yet not: In the past week, my new blog, which *does* have a spam filter plugin in place, has had five new user registrations which have gotten past the filter. They have not posted replies. None of them have avatars. I checked with http://www.stopforumspam.com and three have email addresses which have been associated with spam. Yet two of those appear to have a possible legitimate connection on Facebook or elsewhere…maybe. The other two raise no suspicions from stopforumspam, so I think they’re OK. I have left these five, since they haven’t posted.
My inclination is to dump the three which stopforumspam indicates and keep the two that raise no warning flags.
Suggestions are appreciated in advance.
Try banhammer.
Also, view with great suspicion anyone with numbers and particularly a strange name with high numbers attached as the origin. Someone called Marie782 is likely a spammer. Compounded with an addy called adamjones2801.gmail.com—very suspect.
The email addresses fit about like that, but the usernames are bland; they look innocent, of the FirstNameLastName style.
However, looking again, all the recent ones are from Hotmail.
I’ll check for banhammer; many thanks.
I have an umpty-ump great-grandfather (ship captain) who fell afoul of French privateers. He never made it home.
Another umpty-ump great-grandfather was a friend to folks who wanted to dodge the British taxman, which probably included pirates and/or privateers. He had a warehouse on a spit of land that had sea on one side and a river on the other — and the main government docks were upriver. Dock on the sea side, move some cargo (No, really! We’re just taking on fresh water!), go on to the main docks while wagons went out to the town by land… There’s a letter extant where the local taxman is swearing furiously about Grandpa Nick, and accusing him of taking ten thousand pounds (!) worth of goods off the official lists in a single year.
I don’t know if anyone I’m related to was definitely a pirate or a privateer, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Aaarrr! Kinfolk!
hotmail is a spam hotbed.
I use hotmail (have for years) and I’m not a spammer! Promise! Where I work we get many spams from gmail addresses, and a sprinkling of yahoo ones.
Oh, gmail has a lot, no question. You can get these problems from just about anywhere, because believe me, they’re hammering at the gates at the rate of several an hour, and during ‘hot’ periods, dozens. I do currently note a lot of hotmail ones…but a lot of our good guys have hotmail too, so I don’t just ban the addy: it’s a good service that may have been just a little wide open for these no-goodniks getting a foothold, and then of course, they become a channel for others. When I say that a particular service is a problem, it’s more a pattern of things: a lot of numbers plus certain characteristics…
Have NO fear that I’ll come down and ban all hotmail or yahoo or gripe about your servers: once I know who you are and that you’re a good ‘un, you’re in, and we’ll see you stay in, the same way we try to keep our site from sending you out with electronic passengers …I can’t think of any providers that don’t have issues from time to time. There’s one provider that occasionally has a snit with the provider we use, over just the same issue; but spammers are like fleas: it’s hard to walk through the grass in some places without picking up a few…
I’m not yet prepared to block all hotmail addresses, though if this speeds up I might have to. I’m leaning toward deleting the three users with suspect email addresses, listed on stopforumspam.com, though with under ten entries. I don’t have reason to suspect the other two, except through coincidence, circumstance, guilt by association, timing…which isn’t quite enough. No attempts to post replies from any of these.
I suppose my inner makeup leans more toward Bren than Banichi in personality. But then, I’ve noted that before. There’s a point where dealing in the imperfect, continuant, conditional, or subjunctive modes is difficult, compared to the indicative or perfect modes.
I’ll see how it goes. If I get an escalation of nonsense, then my conscience will be much more clear in pressing that delete, banish them button.
I wouldn’t ban hotmail: that’d get too many. Start collecting IP addresses. If they come back under a different name–you know.
IP addresses are not a good criterion with all the NAT, Network Address Translation, ISP’s use.
When I phone up, I get assigned a local address I and the ISP know is mine for a time. When I send a SYN packet to make a connection to some IPA from some randomly chosen port, my ISP intercepts it. It masquerades as the source of the request from its own PoP, point of presence, IPA, and a TCP port that it remembers as associated with my original SYN. The distant destination replies to my ISP at it’s chosen port. My ISP translates it’s own address & port in the reply packet into the distant IPA and port I originally used, so it seems like the reply packet I get came from that distant host directly. The distant host never saw me, just the masqueraded NAT of my ISP. I hope I wrote that understandably.
Yep. But many don’t bother…particularly trolls never seem to. I’m a mod on a pretty large site, and the number that can’t figure how we know it’s them is amazing…
OTOH, I have a pretty good faculty for analyzing ‘style’ of speech, and word usage; and I can id some of them because they are SO cut-and-dried same-old same-old.
I seem to be pretty popular with the Japanese spammers these days, me hearties. They all want me to buy Bulgarian purses. Forsooth, what strange times we live in.
I deleted the three spammers, though they’d made no reply posts, and kept the two with no warning flags. I’m keeping lurkers who haven’t commented. I’ll have a blog post up shortly.
Forum anti-spam measures have been blissfully quiet since beefing up registration. A Captcha plus a random question a human should be able to answer, and away went the bogus signups from (obvious!) spammers. So the forum’s been free of such since the upgrade and reopening.
There is one clever spammer that keeps getting multiple email addresses and spamming my Yahoo account. The spammer claims “she” is Adriana from Facebook, and she misses our, uh, romantic relationship. — I haven’t found a way to block on Yahoo, other than email addresses or domains, nor a way to report what’s already identified as spam, to intensify it, and no way to ban an IP address.
I get them from ladies from Nigeria.
I’m sure they shave.
Also: a good clue to spammers is a user name that in no wise resembles the addy. If the addy is handbags039.com that’s another dead giveaway.
CJ and Paul, thank you! Yes, that explanation makes sense. I didn’t ban Hotmail as a domain, nor would I want to ban other popular email services.
Ladies who shave? Somehow, I think they’re not hani with mustaches and beards! 😀 But aye, indeed.
Whew, back when I had a misbehaving forum, it would give all sorts of patterns. Some were painfully obvious.
Those just deleted on the blog were more clever, but now I have an idea of what’s going on there. We’ll see how it goes.
You might not get this Tweet from Dai Lama@WelshDalaiLama:
“Apparently it’s #TalkLikeAPirateDay today, or as it’s known in Bristol: Thursday.
#ooharr”
The Bris’ol accent is broad and rolling, very good for going “ooh, argh, Jim lad!” and a good many 17th century pirate ships and their sailors might have originally hailed from Bristol.