News Flash: The American captain was rescued by the U.S. Navy this morning. Three pirates were killed. Now, on to the original story which recounts the history of pirate activity in Africa.

Pirates. I cannot get that word out of my head. I am finding the re-birth of pirates off the coast of Africa quite amazing. Major pirate activity is something that I would have chalked up to history -- like cowboys in the wild west. A book on pirates, published in 2004, states that piracy is now small-scale and it will not return to the levels of 300 years ago. The number of ships hijacked by the Somali pirates in the last couple years might test that hypothesis.

With all of this craziness, it is a good time to review the interesting history of pirates in Africa. The most famous pirates to operate out of Africa were those who were identified as the Barbary Corsairs. These pirates were Muslims, often Turks, and they raided European ships for valuable cargos and they captured the crews and turned them into slaves. The most famous of the Barbary Corsairs were the brothers Barbarossa.

The Barbarossa brothers were fierce. The most famous of the two was nicknamed Red Beard. I first heard about Red Beard a few years ago when I visited the island of Lipari, which is off the coast of Sicily. At one time Red Beard raided, plundered and took control of that island. This took place a very long time ago since Red Beard was killed by the Spanish is 1518.

The Barbary pirates were aggressive and carried out their raids even far from Africa -- as far away as Iceland. These Barbary coast pirates holed-up in the northern part of Africa in Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli.

Another famous pirate, homebase Africa, was a Welshman -- Bartholomew Roberts.

Roberts was one of the most successful pirates in all of pirate history and he captured or sunk over 400 ships.  Roberts operated off the west coast of Africa and his plunder even came from ships headed for the Americas. This pirate was killed by the British. Their anti-piracy navy ship, the HMS Swallow, caught up with Roberts in 1721. A grape-sized pellet through the throat ended his career. Africa has a strong history of pirates. Hundreds of years ago, Dutch, French and Portuguese pirates sailed in the waters off southern Africa and other pirates preyed on waters from Africa to North America. This route, up the Red Sea, became known as the Pirate Round. Another  safe-haven, popular with pirates, was the Island of Madagascar off the east side of Africa.

Now, lets move forward to today, as in the last couple of years. The map below shows the general vicinity of the current pirate activity, much of it taking place in the Gulf of Aden.

That map got you in the right waters but take a look at the number of incidents in 2008. Simply amazing.

 These Somali pirates might look like a rag tag bunch in small boats, but they have sophisticated weapons including rocket launchers and automatic weapons. They are going up against merchant ships, or pleasure craft, that are unarmed and practically defenseless.

This Reuters news video, immediately below, is from late last year. It shows pirates in action -- navigating the waters in their small and highly-maneuvarable boats that allow them to attack and board ships.

The next question is, now that these pirates have struck against a United States ship, what do we do? If we look back on history, Thomas Jefferson was the first President to decisively go after pirates who were based in Africa. He declared war and sent the U.S. navy and U.S. marines against Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. Jefferson knew that, even though the pirates were the ones looting the ships, the booty was headed to those destinations -- Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. The US navy setup a blockade and, at one point, an American battle ship, the Philadelphia, ran aground and was captured by Tripoli. United States Marines launched an operation and went into Tripoli and set the ship on fire so it could not be used by the enemy. While the marines were at it, they also captured the city of Tripoli. That war, against the Barbary pirates and their supporters, ended with an American victory in 1805. If you had not thought about it before, that triumph against the pirates was immortalized in an early verse in this famous American hymn.

Steven L. Smith

Bellingham WA Home Inspections