As the sea has furnished opportunities for so much good,—for manly exertion, knowledge of the world, and acquaintance with people outside of one’s own country, and for gaining wealth,—so it has given a chance for unscrupulous men to show the worst that is in them; and the guarding of shore towns and merchant vessels from piratical attacks has always been a part of the usefulness and duty of a nation’s naval force.

As on land there are robbers and highwaymen, so on the ocean robber ships have often been lying in wait for vessels loaded with treasure, and have landed crews of marauders to make havoc with rich seaboard provinces. Such robbers on the high seas are termed pirates, and their crime was visited by the old laws with torturing punishments; yet they were never more daring than when the laws against them were severest.

The word is Greek, and the first pirates who figure in history are those of the Greek and Byzantine islands and coasts—bloody ruffians who originated the amusing method of disposing of unransomed prisoners by making them “walk the plank,” as has been done within the present century.

The intricate channels and hidden harbors of the Ægean Sea long remained a hiding-place of sea-robbers, and are still haunted by them, though every few years, from CÆsar’s time till now, the kings of the surrounding countries have sent expeditions to break them up. In the sixteenth century piracy in that region was especially prevalent. The crews then were chiefly Turkish, but the great leaders were two renegade Greeks, the brothers Aruck and Hayradin Barbarossa (“Redbeard”).

It happened that Spain, having conquered the Moors of Granada in 1492 and pursued her victories across the straits, had gained control of Algeria (at that time a collection of small Mohammedan states), and held it until the death of King Ferdinand in 1516. Then the Algerians sent an embassy to Aruck (sometimes spelled Horuk, or Ouradjh) Barbarossa, requesting him to aid them in driving out the Spaniards, and promising him a share in the spoils. He eagerly accepted this proposition, seeing a great deal more in it than the Algerians saw; and the moment the Spaniards had been beaten and expelled he murdered the prince he had come there to help, seized upon the city and port for himself, and made it the headquarters of that system of desperate piracy which became the dread of all Europe. These robbers of the sea called themselves corsairs, from an Italian word signifying “a race”; and they generally won, because they had the best and swiftest vessels of that time, such as feluccas, xebecs, and the like. The black flag which they flew was not blacker than their reputations, so that even yet to call a man as bad as a Barbary pirate is to mean that he could not be much worse if he tried. The Spanish colonies in America, a few years later, began sending home immense treasures dug in the silver-and gold-mines of Peru and Mexico, and extorted from the natives or stolen from the temples of those unhappy countries. A quantity of ingots and gold and silver ornaments equal in value to fifteen million dollars of our modern money was taken at one time by Pizarro, in Peru, as the ransom of the Inca Atahualpa, and booty amounting to a similar sum was gained in the sacking of various cities. This great inpouring of wealth caused a general giving up of manufactures and trade in Spain, and was one of the reasons of her final decline in power, and it had the immediate bad effect of making piracy more attractive than ever. The treasure-ships, though convoyed by war-ships, were often attacked and captured by the corsairs. Barbarossa’s fleets were more like armadas of a powerful nation than mere pirate craft; and whenever it happened that his commanders were defeated, they would land upon the nearest unprotected coast of Spain, France, or Italy, and pillage and burn some town in revenge. How galling this was to all merchants and travelers we can hardly understand in these days; but so strong were the corsairs that the fleets and armies of various governments, and even of the Pope, which were sent against them, could not gain their stronghold nor suppress their cruisers, at least for more than a short time. Charles V of Spain tried greatly to conquer them; but although his forces, attacking Aruck Barbarossa from the province of Oran, near Algiers, defeated and killed him, Hayradin (more properly spelled Khair-ed-din) Barbarossa succeeded his brother, and, placing himself under the protection of Turkey, continued to build up the power of the pirates. His first care was to fortify the city of Algiers, and he expended a great deal of money and labor on the perfection of the harbor, compelling all his prisoners and thousands of citizens to work as slaves on the defenses. Next he conquered Tunis, and was selected by the sultan as the only fit man to sail against Andrea Doria, the great Genoese naval commander of the Christians in their wars against the Turks early in the sixteenth century. Mediterranean commerce became so unsafe that watch-towers were built all along the coasts, and guards were kept afoot to give alarm at the approach of the corsairs. Charles V gathered together a powerful armament, and sailed to the rescue of Tunis, recapturing it for its rightful sovereign in 1535; but he was never able to capture Hayradin Barbarossa, who lived out his life in Algiers as “a friend to the sea and an enemy to all who sailed upon it.” After his time the power of the pirates continued under other leaders; and not Algeria alone, but Tripoli, Morocco, and even Tunis, harbored piratical vessels in every port, and the rulers shared their spoils; piracy, indeed, was the source of their national revenues, and was encouraged by the Sultan of Turkey inasmuch as all these states were his vassals.

Every few years some European power—Spain, France, Venice, or England—would lose patience, send a fleet, and open a campaign that would be successful in destroying certain strongholds, releasing a crowd of prisoners, and burning or sinking many ships. The city of Algiers was bombarded almost into ruins in 1682, and the job completed a year later, after the Algerians had tossed the French consul out to the fleet, with their compliments, from the mouth of a mortar. They were fond of such jokes. Nevertheless, the city speedily recovered, and piracy, complicated by Moslem fanaticism and Turkish politics, harassed commerce during all the next century, partly because Europe was so busy in its own wars that it had no time for outside matters, and partly because it was for the advantage of certain nations (particularly of Great Britain, which, in possession of Gibraltar and Port Mahon, might have suppressed this villainy) to let the corsairs prey upon its foes—especially France. The actual result was that most or all of the European powers fell into the custom of paying to Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and other rulers of the Barbary (or Berber) States large sums of money as annual tribute to restrain them from official depredations upon their coasts and commerce, besides other large payments for the ransom of such Christian prisoners as each sultan’s lively subjects continued to take in spite of treaties.

In this shameful condition of affairs the newly independent United States was obliged to join during the first years of its existence, to secure immunity for our commerce in the Mediterranean, because we had not yet had time to create a navy. By the end of the century, however, the United States was able to defend itself at sea, and in 1801 answered the insults of Tripoli by bombarding its capital seaport until the dey sued for mercy and promised to behave himself. Nevertheless, he needed another lesson, and in 1803 a second American fleet was sent to the Mediterranean, commanded by Preble, in the Constitution, with such subordinate officers as Bainbridge, Decatur, Somers, Hull, Stewart, Lawrence, and others that later became famous. One incident of this campaign, which began by frightening the Sultan of Morocco at Tangier into abject submission, but was especially directed against Tripoli, is well worth remembering.

Captain Bainbridge, going alone in the fine frigate Philadelphia into the harbor of the city of Tripoli, had unfortunately run aground, and there, overpowered by the number of his enemies afloat and ashore, had been compelled to give up his ship, and find himself and all his crew taken prisoners. He managed to get word of his misfortune to Commodore Preble at Malta, and that officer at once took his fleet to Tripoli—Decatur, in the Argus, gallantly capturing on the way one of the great lateen-sailed piratical crafts of the enemy, which later proved a useful instrument in the contest. The fleet blockaded Tripoli for a while, and shelled the fortifications somewhat, just to give the bashaw a hint, and to encourage the poor prisoners; but none of the big vessels was able to enter the narrow, tortuous, and ill-charted harbor in the face of the many batteries, under whose guns the Philadelphia could be seen at anchor with the Tripolitan flag at her main, so they sailed away to Syracuse to make preparations for reducing this nest of barbarians. Gunboats of light draft and mortar-vessels had to be fitted out; but the first thing was to try to carry out a plan that Decatur and all his friends had been maturing ever since they had arrived—the destruction of the Philadelphia, not only because she had been refitted into a powerful weapon in the hands of the enemy, but because it was galling to national as well as naval pride to see her flying a foreign flag. The plan was this:

Decatur was to take a picked crew of seventy officers and men on the captured felucca (renamed Intrepid), and attempt at night to penetrate to the inner harbor of Tripoli in the disguise of a trader, supported as well as possible by the gun-brig Siren, also disguised as a merchantman. As his pilot was an Italian and a competent linguist, it was hoped the ketch could get near enough to set fire to the ship, whirl a shotted deck-gun into position to send a shell down the main hatch and through her bottom, fire it, and escape before the surprise was over. The chances of failure were enough to daunt the bravest, yet every man in the fleet wanted to go.

On February 15, 1804, Decatur in his felucca, and Somers commanding the brig, found themselves, toward evening, again in sight of the town, with its circle of forts crowned by the frowning castle. The great Philadelphia stood out in bold relief, closely surrounded by two frigates and more than twenty gunboats and galleys. From the castle and batteries 115 guns could be trained upon an attacking force, besides the fire of the vessels, yet the bold tars on the Intrepid did not quail.

The crew having been sent below, the pilot Catalona took the wheel, while Decatur stood beside him, disguised as a common sailor. It was now nine o’clock, and bright moonlight. Standing steadily in, they rounded to close by the Philadelphia, and, boldly hailing her deck-watch, asked the privilege of mooring to her chains for the night, explaining that they had lost their anchors in the late storm, and so forth, until at last consent was given.

Having dragged themselves close to the frigate, it was the work of only a moment to board her with a rush, overpower her surprised crew, and make sure of her destruction by means of the combustibles and powder they had brought with them. Before their task was done, however, they had been discovered, and it is almost a miracle that they were able to return to their felucca, and make their way out of the harbor, through a rain of harmless cannon-balls; yet they did so, and Decatur was justly honored for one of the most gallant exploits in naval annals.

A few weeks later Preble’s squadron shelled the pirate city and fortresses into ruin, forced Tripoli as well as Algiers and Tunis to respect them and thenceforth the American flag, and gave these arrogant rulers the new sensation of paying instead of receiving money for bad deeds. It put an end to the corsairs.

Turkish and Barbary pirates were not the only ones in the world, however. Although the old Norwegian vikings and rough Norman barons did not go under that name, they were scarcely anything else, in fact, as the neighboring peoples could testify, though this was far back before modern history began. But when the Spaniards and the French began to colonize the West Indies, and to dig mines in South and Central America, not only were the Barbary corsairs given a fresh incentive, but a new set of pirates sprang up, the most daring that the world has ever seen.

As the archipelago east of Greece had sheltered the hordes of the Turkish sea-robbers, so the many islands, crooked channels, reefs unknown to all but the local pilots, small harbors, and abundant food of the Antilles, made the West Indies the safest place in the world for pirates to pursue their work. To these new and wild regions, in the sixteenth century, had flocked desperados and adventurers from all over the world. When the wars with their chances of plunder died out after the campaigns led by CortÉs, Pizarro, Balboa, and the rest of the Spanish conquistadores, many ruffians seized upon vessels by force, or stole them, and turned into robbers of the sea. At first, as a rule, they had farms and families on some island, and went freebooting only a portion of the year. The island of Hayti, or Santo Domingo, was then settled by farmers, hunters, and cattlemen, the last-named of whom, mainly French, passed most of their time in the interior of the island, capturing, herding, or killing half-wild cattle and hogs. But the monopolies which Spain imposed upon the colonists interfered with the market for their produce and induced an illicit trade, which led to frequent encounters with the Spanish navy. As the constant wars between Spain and France and England increased the difficulties of trade, large numbers of the colonists joined the freebooters, who then became extremely numerous and formidable, losing their old name and becoming known by that of the cattlemen—buccaneers, from the French word boucanier.

First Santo Domingo, then Tortugas, and finally Jamaica were headquarters of the buccaneers, who were made up of men of all nations, united by a desire to prey upon Spain as a common enemy. They were thousands in number, possessed large fleets of ships and boats, were well armed, and finally formed a regular organization with a chief and under-officers. The most noted of these chiefs, perhaps, was Henry Morgan, a Welshman, who was at one time captured and taken home to England for trial. To his own surprise, instead of being executed, he was knighted by Charles II, who had not been at all grieved at seeing Spanish commerce harassed; and Morgan was returned to Jamaica as commissioner of admiralty, where at one time he acted as deputy governor, using his opportunity to make it unpleasant for those of the buccaneers with whom he had formerly had disagreements as to the distribution of prizes.

The earlier buccaneers found ample plunder in the Spanish fleets. They patrolled the sea in the track of vessels bound to and from Europe, and seized them, allowing or compelling the crews to become pirates, or else to be killed or carried into slavery. This work, however, employed only a portion of the buccaneers; and early in the seventeenth century, as the commerce of Spain declined, it became too uncertain a means of wealth to suit them. But the rich Spanish settlements still remained; and often, therefore, they equipped a great fleet, enlisted men under certain strict rules as to sharing the spoils, and sailed away to pillage some coast. There was hardly an island in the West Indies from which, in this way, they did not extort immense sums of money under threat of destruction of the people. The mainland also suffered from the marauders. Great cities, like Cartagena in Venezuela, Panama on the Isthmus, MÉrida in Yucatan, and Havana in Cuba, were attacked by armies of buccaneers numbering thousands of men. Sometimes their fortifications held good, and the enemy was beaten back; but sooner or later all these cities, and others, smaller, were captured, robbed of everything valuable that they contained, and burned or partly burned.

For years the buccaneers were the terror of the Caribbean region, and after the famous sacking of Panama, under Morgan, in 1671, their power spread across the Isthmus and scourged the southern seas. We have no way of knowing the amount of the treasure which they captured from the merchant vessels and from the coast of Peru; for the moment they got home from an expedition they wasted all their booty in wild carousing, so that the spoils earned by months of exposure, and wounds, and danger of death, would be spent in a single week.

At last even England and France, after secretly favoring the buccaneers, became roused to the necessity of controlling them, and it was with this object in view that a certain Captain William Kidd was fitted out at private expense toward the end of the seventeenth century, and armed with King William’s commission for seizing pirates and making reprisals, England being at war with France. Just why it was, nobody has explained, but Captain Kidd spent his time in loitering around the coast of Africa, where no pirates were to be found, until he grew quite disheartened, and, fearing to be dismissed by his employers and to be “mark’d out for an unlucky man,” he started a little pirate business for himself, in which he gained more of a certain kind of fame than any of the rest; for popular tradition supposes him to have hoarded his booty and buried it. “Captain Kidd’s treasure” has been sought for until the whole eastern coast of the United States is honeycombed with diggings for it; but probably he had eaten and drunk it up before 1701, when he was captured and executed in England. About this time, however, and without his valuable aid, the combined naval forces of all the nations interested in the commerce of the New World broke the power of the buccaneers, and their depredations ceased. Their story is one of the wildest, most romantic, and most terrible in the history of the world.

The trade of piracy was carried on during the eighteenth century in the region of the West Indies by unorganized bands of desperados who had all the faults and none of the greatness of the men they succeeded, and who received little attention from the world at large. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the Barataria pirates came into notice on the coast of Louisiana, taking the place of the buccaneers, but in a much smaller way. Their leaders, Pierre and John Lafitte, carried on business quite openly in New Orleans; and their settlements on the marshy islands along the coast, and their “temple,” to which persons came out from the city to buy goods, were open secrets. But in the War of 1812, although the British tried to buy their services, they redeemed themselves by standing true to the American government, which had just been trying to exterminate them, and so they won public pardon and an added glamour of romance.

For the same reasons as those in the case of other island systems, the East Indies have always been infested with pirates, whose light, swift vessels run in and out of the intricate channels among the dangerous coral reefs, where government cruisers dare not follow, while the people on shore sympathize more with the pirates than with the police.

The East Indian sea-robbers are, as a rule, natives of that region—Malays, Borneans, Dyaks, and Chinese, with many half-savages of the South Sea Islands. This is more like a continuance of savage resistance to civilization than real piracy, since the pirates of the Atlantic are civilized sailors in mutiny against their own people and national commerce. The result is just as bad, however; for these East Indians are as bloodthirsty and cruel as the others, and if they do not kill their victims, or save them for some cannibal feast (as would probably happen in the New Hebrides and some other islands), they condemn them to a life of misery. But in these days of improved sea-craft, piracy, even in Malayan waters, is weak. Our consuls and government agents watch suspicious vessels; our telegraph warns the naval authorities in a moment; our steam-cruisers outspeed the swiftest craft of the black flag; our rifled guns silence their cheap artillery; and our coast surveys furnish maps so accurate that the pirate no longer holds the secret of channels and harbors where he can safely retreat. If, therefore, the old “Redbeards” should come back to life and try to be kings of the sea, as they rejoiced to be a couple of centuries ago, their pride would soon be humbled, and they would gladly return to their graves and their ancient glory.

There is a form of sea-roving which has been at times not very different from piracy; it is called privateering, and history shows a good many cases where it has degenerated into sea-robbery pure and simple.

A privateer is a ship, owned by a private citizen or citizens, to which authority is given by a government to act as an independent war-vessel. Its commission is called a “letter of marque” (lettre de marque in French), entitling it to “take, burn, and destroy” a certain enemy’s property on the sea or in its ports. It has no right, of course, to attack any one else.

The object and plea of the government issuing commissions to privateers is that thus a great many more armed vessels can be sent afloat than the government has money to equip, and that consequently far more damage will be done to the enemy, by crippling his trade and resources, than regular men-of-war alone can accomplish. Private capital has been willing to take the risk because rewarded by a large share of the prizes; and from the end of the fifteenth to the middle of the eighteenth century this was one of the most profitable of marine industries, for then nearly universal wars made almost any capture legitimate. In the earlier times even the limited regulation that came later was absent, and there was small choice between a privateer and a pirate. Queen Elizabeth found the hundreds of privateers which she had commissioned against the Spanish and Dutch preying upon her own people, and robbing fishermen, coasters, and small shore towns, to such an extent that she had to suppress them as bandits. Those were the times when Hawkins could use a royal fleet to wage war upon the Spanish colonies for private reasons; and when his ablest lieutenant, Drake, could make his notable journey around the world a history of robbery and slaughter. On the west coast of South America he spent months in destroying Spanish vessels and ravaging and burning settlements; yet it was thought remarkable, when he returned from his circumnavigation of the globe, that the Queen hesitated somewhat before recognizing his great achievements as a seaman, for fear of complications with Spain!

Spain, in those days of first harvest from her American possessions and the East Indies, was the prey of everybody on the high seas able to rob her, and formalities were joyously disregarded by both sides. Her galleons carried precious cargoes of spices, silks, and East India goods around the Cape, and brought silver ingots and gold bars from the Spanish Main. They were usually convoyed by regular war-ships, and had to run the gantlet of the enemy’s fleets whenever Spain happened to be openly at war with somebody, as was usually the case; and otherwise must escape buccaneers in West Indian waters, Malayan and Chinese pirates in the far East, and irregular sea-rovers along the West African coast, while the corsairs made the Mediterranean route doubly dangerous.

The gradual growth of organized navies, the development of international law, and the increasing organization of the civilized world generally, slowly tamed these wild practices and reduced privateering to some sort of control. Thus Jean Bart, the popular hero of French naval history, who flourished toward the end of the seventeenth century, was recognized and supported by the French monarch as a free-lance in the Mediterranean, because his humble birth prohibited him from taking a commission in the regular navy, which amounted to a sort of apology for his deeds.

During the wars of the United States with England privateering was extensively practised on both sides, and was of especial value to the Americans. Congress issued private commissions as early as March, 1776, and the ablest statesmen upheld it as a means of employing the ships, capital, and thousands of seamen that must lie idle when the enemy’s cruisers were ranging the ocean highways unless permitted to arm themselves and assist the government in an irregular warfare, trusting to the value of their captures for remuneration. That the chance of such reward was enough inducement is shown by the fact that during the first year of the Revolution nearly three hundred and fifty British vessels were captured, chiefly West Indiamen, worth, with their cargoes, five million dollars. As Great Britain did not recognize the flag of the United States, not only these, but even our regular naval officers, were regarded by them as pirates, rather than true privateers—Paul Jones first of all; but she never acted on this theory with the severity that would have been visited upon true pirates.

In the naval warfare that came later between the United States and France, privateering again flourished, and was a source of immense profit to the principal seaports whence these swift, effective Yankee vessels were despatched. No less than three hundred and sixty-five American privateers were sent out between 1789 and 1799, and swept the seas almost clean of the French merchant flag.

Then came the second war with Great Britain, which was fought over a question of the sea rather than of the land,—the right of search claimed by the British,—and once more American and British privateers swarmed upon the highways of commerce. Of our merchant ships in all parts of the world, about five hundred were lost; but this was more than paid for, since our two hundred and fifty privateers captured or destroyed, during the three years and nine months of the conflict, no less than sixteen hundred British merchant vessels of all classes.

This disparity of results was largely due to the greater number of English merchant vessels, but is also to be credited to the superior speed and handiness of the Yankee vessels, most of which were “Baltimore clippers,” topsail-rigged schooners with raking masts, that could outsail and out-manoeuver anything afloat. “They usually carried from six to ten guns, with a single long one, which was called ‘Long Tom,’ mounted on a swivel in the center. They were usually manned with fifty persons besides officers, all armed with muskets, cutlasses, and boarding-pikes.”

An English writer, Mr. R. C. Leslie, is of the opinion that this type of vessel grew out of models in vogue in the West Indies, long before, for the small piratical craft that made those waters the terror of travelers.

These Baltimore clippers, too, enlarged and square-rigged, but still the fastest things on the western ocean, formed the craft with which the slave-trade was continued between Africa and America long after it had been condemned by the civilized world. For many years previous to the American Civil War, which put an end to the larger part of the traffic by destroying its market, England and the United States kept squadrons patrolling the African coast to arrest the slavers and free their “cargoes.”

What wild, wild tales of the sea do these reminiscences of piracy, privateering, and the slave-chase bring to mind—tales of horror, and yet full of such deeds of daring and romance and fierce delight as must stir the heart in spite of brain and conscience!

Pirates are things of the past—no more to be feared except in a small way in the Malayan and Chinese archipelagoes. The African slave-trade is extinct, so far as shipment across the ocean is concerned, save where, now and then, an Arab dhow steals with its black cargo along the East African foreland, or flits across the Gulf of Aden or the Red Sea. Privateering has been forbidden by international treaty among the larger European powers, which now recognize that trade goods, even of belligerents, must be held safe in the ships of neutrals (except articles declared contraband of war), because the business of the world cannot stop, or even be put in jeopardy, by a quarrel between two nations. Privateering, therefore, has been abandoned in Europe as a method of war since the treaty of Paris in 1856, though Prussia came pretty near it in 1870, by organizing what she called a volunteer fleet, and Spain reserves the privilege of commissioning privateers.

The United States, however, and some other countries whose policy or ability forbid them to have a large navy, would not enter into the European agreement above mentioned, mutually to abstain from privateering, on the plea that to do so would be to yield the most powerful weapon of a nation weak in naval armament and sea commerce, against any of many possible enemies whose large sea-borne commerce would expose it to the most serious wounds. In our Civil War the President issued no letters of marque, although authorized to do so. It was customary to speak of the Confederate cruisers Alabama, Shenandoah, Florida, etc., as privateers, or even pirates, and they actually played the part with a success woeful to us of the North, and to Great Britain, which had to pay for the damages caused by the Alabama; but, strictly speaking, they were neither, because commissioned by a temporary but regular government, whose flag might have been recognized if its arms had succeeded.

More lately (1898) the United States has announced it as its policy to refrain from privateering, though no formal signature has been given to any international agreement to that effect.