| 3 November |
History of Early Pirates |
Today we will discuss the early history of pirates. We all know about pirates, the smugglers of the sea. They’re in movies, games and books around the world.?Most of you have probably seen the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, which feature Johny Depp as Jack Sparrow. The movie was made in 2003 and the following movies were made in 2006 and in 2007. But pirates aren’t just the comical ones we see in movies, they were real. They were real and deadly and they?didn’t play?fair. In the next paragraph (which I got the information from the book “Pirates” by John Matthews) we will explore the history of early?pirates.
Pirates first came around when we started sailing the sea. We have records dating back to the seventh century BC. There?attacks came from the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas. It was easy for pirates to attack ships back then. They didn’t have any compasses so they had to sail?near the coasts. Plus, they didn’t have guns. But the pirates weren’t without their enemies. The Assyrian king, Sennacherib, attempted to destroy a nest of pirates in the Straits of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. I don’t know what happened to them. But I assume they got away. Pirates always have the people who try to kill them and purge the seas of pirates. And I think that’s a good idea. I will discuss this later in my pirate marathon?.
Anyway, piracy continued through the third century BC where Greek pirates were capturing women and girls and holding them for ransom. During the fourth century (which is before the Greek pirates) Alexander the Great tried to rid the Mediterranean of pirates, but they didn’t go away. Then the Roman general, Pompey, did a more successful job using thousands of men and a fair amount of boats that wiped out a lot of pirates in 67 BC. However, like a bad cold, the pirates kept coming back. Even in the eighth century AD the Viking pirates continued to raid the shores of Britian. Then in 1217 Eustace the Black Monk (he really was a monk for a time) was beheaded for terrorizing the English channel. That’s what you get for being a pirate.
In my next post we will explore the Golden Age of Piracy, where guns got involved. Then things started to get interesting. But I hope you all learn from my posts and that you keep reading them.
