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Today's Pirates Are 1805 Throwback

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The Washington Post

Published: December 14, 2008

When the Somali pirates hit the headlines, it shivered the timbers of pirate culture.

"On the news I keep hearing 'Pirates! Pirates!' and it's not Jack Sparrow," said Christine Lampe, editor of No Quarter Given, a magazine and Web site based in Riverside, Calif., that is devoted to piratical studies.

"When I saw the footage the other day of these very small craft with fairly lightly armed individuals capturing these huge tankers and what have you, I said, 'Oh my goodness, we're back in 1805!'" said Frank Lambert, a pirate expert and professor of history at Purdue University.

To Lambert, author of "The Barbary Wars: American Independence in the Atlantic World," the Somali pirates resemble the Barbary pirates.

The tactics and motives are similar, Lambert says. The Barbary pirates attacked Mediterranean shipping from their bases in four North African states. Unlike pirates of the Caribbean, but like the Somali pirates, they weren't after the ships' cargoes so much as hostages and ransom.

The rulers of those African states also demanded "tribute" from nations for safe passage. A significant portion of the U.S. national budget went to the pirates, prompting the political slogan: "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!"

The young nation built the Navy, sent the Marines to the shores of Tripoli and fought two undeclared wars before ending blackmail by the Barbary pirates in 1815.

"We haven't seen demands by the Somalian pirates for tribute yet," Lambert said.

Meanwhile, aficionados of a different piratical era, the so-called golden age of piracy in and around the Caribbean in the late 1600s and early 1700s, are trying to locate the Somali pirates within their own reference points.

"I don't know if they sit back and they think, 'Whoa, we're the new Blackbeard!' or if it doesn't cross their minds," said John Macek, founder of the Pirate Brethren, a group of pirate re-enactors and socializers based in Maryland.

The violent reality of the Somali pirates causes pirate fans to reflect on their own fascination. They're used to skepticism: "I've had people complain and ask if we're 'celebrating' pirates, criminals, outlaws, bad people," Lampe said.

The point isn't to celebrate or condone, she said. Just because pirates were seafaring gangsters doesn't mean they aren't fascinating.

Where does the Somali pirate fit into all this? Is he an extension or a contradiction of pirate chic?

Floating around pirate-enthusiast circles is a favorite quote attributed to Capt. Sam Bellamy (circa 1689-1717). He and most of his crew drowned in the wreck of their pirate ship the Whydah off Cape Cod, Mass. On an earlier occasion, Bellamy supposedly said in justification of his trade:

"They vilify us, the scoundrels do, when there is only this difference: They rob the poor under the cover of law, forsooth, and we plunder the rich under protection of our own courage. ... I am a free prince, and I have as much authority to make war on the whole world as he who has a hundred sail of ships at sea and an army of 100,000 men in the field."

"I think that sort of nails it on the head," Macek added in an e-mail. "If there ever was a 'meaning' to piracy, that it is."

Bellamy's "Free Prince" speech, as it is called in pirate-loving circles, strikes chords in the key of pirate romance - that middle stage of a pirate's legacy, after the crimes and contradictions of the historical figure have been uplifted into a heroic context, but before his identity has been utterly sold out to market fast food or spiced rum.

It's far too early for any Somali pirate's version of a Free Prince speech to be creditable. He's robbing us. For the time being, then, a Somali pirate is a thug and a kidnapper whose trade happens to share the same name as that of the great Bartholomew, the mad Blackbeard, the courtly Morgan, the misunderstood Kidd, the eloquent Bellamy.

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