New Libertalia: A Pirate Dream Comes True by Daniel Sekulich
T
hree hundred years ago, the general public was fascinated by the lives of pirates and privateers, avidly following their exploits in books and newspapers. 1l1is was during the so-called Go lden Age of Piracy, when the likes of Captain Kidd, Edward Teach (a.k.a. Blackbeard) and Bartholomew Roberts went "on the acco unt" to roam the waves in search of riches, and pirate tales provided a visceral fo rm of entertainment to readers in Europe, Britain, and the American colonies, who were at once appalled and attracted by what was occurring on the high seas. One facet of the era that received co nsiderable publicity concerned a place in the far-off Indian Ocean where pirates were supposed to have established their own republic. It was a haven set up on the island of Madagascar, where sea robbers lived by their own rul es without worrying about prosecution from the authorities. Led by a certain Captain Misson, pirates called their new republic "Liberrali a," a land where all the outlaw inhabitants shared power and money, where slavery had been abolished and where they'd even created a new language. Ir was nothing short of a pirate utopia. The story of Libertalia was first described in the second volume of Captain Charles Johnson's A General H istory of the Py rates, published in London in 1728. A bestseller at the time with its vivid descriptions of pirates and their activities, his depiction of Libertalia evoked a revolutionary, rogue state in which pirates had cast off all the traditional limitatio ns of Western law and o rder in an effort to create a criminal territory from whi ch mey could set forth to prey upon vessels in the Indian Ocean and beyo nd, a most dangero us proposition indeed. Unfortunately for its would-be pirate "citizens," Liberralia was really nothing more than a fancifu l ideal. W hile it is true that M adagascar had served from time to time as a pirate haven, no one ever managed to build an ou tlaw nation there. Libertalia never achieved anything near the utopian paradise that Johnson presented. Scholars have serious doubts as to whether Captain Misson or the communi ty actually existed, with no trace of any Liberralian settlements having ever been fou nd
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on Madagascar. The notion of a pirate republic on the African coast-som e sort of rogue state that wo uld allow men to plunder and rob at will-appears to have been a piece of fiction. Bur three centuries later, that fiction would turn into a reality.
An Attack on a Galleon by Ho ward Pyle (1853-1911) Until recently, the idea that piracy could still be a problem on the waters of our planet today might have seemed, to most of us, preposterous and far-fetched. However, the reality is that we are living in the midst of a global maritime crisis of epic proportions. Since the end of the Cold War, pirates have returned to plague the seas with a vengeance, preying upon vessels and mariners sailing throughout the Atlantic, Indi an, and Pacific Oceans. In many cases, they have become highly organized operations with hundreds of willing participanrs who are heavily armed and can operate with ruthless efficiency hundreds of miles from shore. Piracy has evolved into a multinational, multibillion-dollar criminal enterprise that makes Blackbeard's era seem a mere Bronze Age by comparison . By the time 2008 came to a close, the number of pirate hijackin gs and hostagerakings had reached levels not seen in centuries. According to the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), last year saw 293 reported incidents of piracy and armed
ro bbery agai nst vessels, with pirates holding 889 mariners hostage and ki lling 11 in the course of their attacks (another 2 1 seafarers were still missing when the IMB released its statistics). The use of violence is on the rise; during that same year, there were over a thousand reported incidents in which crew were assaulted during a pirate attack. What is most startling about these statistics is that they are incomplete: The IMB only tallies reported incidents, and m ost observers believe the actual figures are at least rwo or three times higher. Incidents go unreported because a ship owner doesn't want to see insurance rates rise or potential customers scared off, or because the victims operate small vessels-s uch as fishing boars-in places where the local police may be powerless, or corrupt. Nevertheless, even the officially reported incidents are asto nishing. They reveal a sophistication that has developed in certain parts of the world that has allowed pirates to seize the largest and most valuable prizes ever captured in their long history. This, in turn, has led to co ndemnation from the United Nations and the deployment of warships from over a dozen countries to patrol the seas. Pirates may be fo und throughout the globe, in the Cari bbean and South C hina Seas, the Strait of Malacca and West Africa's G ulf of G uinea, but it is the wate rs off the Horn of Africa that are undoubtedly the most dangerous for any m ariner roday. The IMB reports a whopping 200% increase from 2007 in pirate incidents in the Red Sea, G ulf of Aden, and western Indian Ocean. And most of those attacks were carried o ut by pirates operating fro m what might be considered "New Libertalia"-Somalia. Since 199 1, Somalia has descended into indescribable anarchy and ch aos, a place without a dependable government, judiciary, police or army. The nine-anda-half million people who live there are among the poorest in the world, inhabiting a fa iled state that has been wracked by famines and disease, torn apart by civil war and controll ed by local warlords. Somali a is a place where the old rules no lo nger apply, and it is the perfect breeding gro und for piracy, which requires SEA HISTORY 127, SUMMER 2009