Okay I know there are still some pirates around (esspecially in africa) but when did pirates lose there ability even when heavly financed to take down a war ship of a major power?

when the US totally pwned the barbary states


EDIT: and just to nitpick, the title of this ought to be " When did Pirates lose Their Edge?";)

Since the industrial powers decided they were going to build large scale ocean fleets, and not give them to pirates. I'm pretty sure if England or the US started handing out ships with Letters of Marque again, there would be some dangerous pirates out there.

There were pirates in the American civil war, they were called 'confederate raiders'.

Totally-making-it-up-off-the-top-of-my-head-but-makes-so-much-sense-it's-probably-true reason: the invention/use of the telegraph. Money could be 'wired'. Communication could go ahead of the stolen cargo so there would be no market for it. Etc.

Okay I know there are still some pirates around (esspecially in africa) but when did pirates lose there ability even when heavly financed to take down a war ship of a major power?
When did they ever take down a war ship of a major power? According to the recent pirate thread, they hardly ever did that.

The Barbary Pirates captured the frigate USS Philadelphia (36 guns) in 1803 when she ran aground on a reef off of Tripoli Harbor. Several months later, an American party under Lieutenant Stephen Decatur burned Philadelphia. There's a rather famous painting of Decatur's exploit:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Burning_of_the_uss_philadelphia.jpg

When did they ever take down a war ship of a major power? According to the recent pirate thread, they hardly ever did that.
American Privateers captured a number of British man-o-wars and the like: they werent much much more than fishing boats with cannons on them (most of the time thatts precicely what they were)

When they lost Barry Bonds to the Giants.

When did they ever take down a war ship of a major power? According to the recent pirate thread, they hardly ever did that.
A bar walks into a dyslexic :king:

Increases in firepower & armor, I'd say. Once the navies of the world moved beyond simple smoothbore cannon and started building ironclads and beyond, they could turn the pirates into a greasy spot on the ocean with little threat to themselves. Just went up from there.

Just like you won't find a shipyard today willing to build an AEGIS cruiser for a pirate (even if they could afford), I don't think there were many people 130-140 years ago willing to build ironclads for pirates.

that would be SO COOL! I want my own Ticonderoga now -but- who will be my crew?! (insert intobang here)

A bar walks into a dyslexic :king:
What's your point?

[Cheezy] If you're nitpicking, what the hell does "pwned" mean...?

It's not the case that there are "still some" pirates around. There are lots of pirates around and they're a big problem. This is especially the case in Asia, particularly around Malaysia and Indonesia. Unfortunately they're not quite as romantic as the jolly seafarers of eighteenth-century legend.

Once pirates began to lose the support of the nations, ie. when they lost their "privateer" status, they could no longer field the latest in technology and were easily swept aside by more advanced ships.

In the Mediterranean, the Corsairs were defeated by the US in a series of wars, which put an end to piracy in "the west".

In Asia and Africa, the pirates don't have any real opposition from modern navies and so can do as they like.

In the Straits of Malacca, which is one of the prime areas for pirates, they're up against the navy of Singapore, which is ultra-modern and extremely formidable. But pirates will operate wherever there's a chance of making a profit, and despite the high dangers of this area, there are also great rewards, since it's one of the busiest cargo shipping areas in the world.

It's like drugs in Singapore. If you're found smuggling more than a certain quantity of drugs through the country, they deem you a drug dealer and hang you. But people still do it, because the fact that it's so dangerous means the prices are high.

When they lost Barry Bonds to the Giants.

Damn, stole my joke. I was going for 1993.

As Plotinus says pirates are still a problem in many areas of the world, especially in Indonesia, and the Straits of Malacca are particularly bad.

In the west European powers used pirates as a supplement/replacement for their navies, pretty much from the 1500s up until about the mid 1700s, and by the 1800s the threat from pirates/privateers was lessening, finally becoming a non-issue with the elimination of the Barbary pirates in the 1830s.

One of the reasons for this I would have thought is ships getting more advanced and expensive, as a result nations were less keen on handing them out and there would be almost no chance of aquiring one privately.

Even at their height it would be fairly rare for a pirate ship to take out a major warship, though.

A 'heavily financed' pirate operation decked out with cruisers, battleships, aircraft carriers and what have you would have no problem taking down a major war ship or two, in answer to your original question. ;) :D

(as history_buff already said)

Pirates in local waters here use high-speed small boats, to rapidly move in on cargo ships and the like and capture them - utilising heavily on the element of speed and surprise. Captured sailors are ransomed off (if not killed). The cargo is sold off. The ship itself is sometimes repainted, reregistered, and sold off (if not sunk, to destroy all trails). The pirates then melt back into the general poor, fishermen population along the Indonesian coastal regions.

I believe there're large sophisticated networks involving triads and the like involved in the whole process.

Why would they want to capture a warship? How would they get rid of them? There's simply no profit in it for them.

In any case, currently the arrangement is for the three local navies to handle the local pirate problems. It isn't that widespread; otherwise the US, Japan and China would want to muscle in (which Malaysia and Indonesia object to, as a violation of their sovereignity) on the patrol work. I think the Japanese and Americans had offered, but their offer was rebuffed.

Fascinating.
Pirates in local waters here use high-speed small boats, to rapidly move in on cargo ships and the like and capture them - utilising heavily on the element of speed and surprise. Captured sailors are ransomed off (if not killed). The cargo is sold off. The ship itself is sometimes repainted, reregistered, and sold off (if not sunk, to destroy all trails).
Some questions:
How common are those pirate assaults? Do they capture really BIG cargo ships? Isnt the theft of the ship inmediately detected by the authorities?

Fascinating.

Some questions:
How common are those pirate assaults? Do they capture really BIG cargo ships? Isnt the theft of the ship inmediately detected by the authorities?
I'd assume they're easily evadable. They probably travel in small, swift boats, so they travel near the coast.

Eventually there was nobody left to hire the pirates. Piracy was becoming more of a serious issue to be dealt with, punishments were too severe. With the big industrialization of navies, it wasn't as easy for the pirates.

Fascinating.

Some questions:
How common are those pirate assaults? Do they capture really BIG cargo ships? Isnt the theft of the ship inmediately detected by the authorities?Probably a few hundred cases per year. The Singapore navy is doing its patrols (plus the Malaysian navy), but... In fact, there're outfits in Singapore offering the services of ex-Singapore elite forces members as armed escort, rapid response teams, and guards on those ships. :ack:

I doubt they go after the big container transport ships - probably more of those smaller ships with fewer crew members (and less chance of them being armed), with cargo that's more easily carried off and disposed of.

One way to look at it - they're like the marine version of the armed robbers on land.

The public here isn't really that concerned with them - they're no threat to the state, the overall threat level to intl shipping isn't that alarming and are really just criminals. And dealt with, as such.

A 'heavily financed' pirate operation decked out with cruisers, battleships, aircraft carriers and what have you would have no problem taking down a major war ship or two, in answer to your original question. ;) :D
that we call a Navy, and because it's so big, it would get crushed by one of the big powers really fast, like the US or Britain.
It would be a sight to see, though. ACutally, before we had radar and sattelites and all that Fun Police" stuff, say, around 1940, you probably could've gotten away with this kind of thing, but then again you have a few thousand people who are in on it now, and you have to feed them, give them their share of the booty, and then what when you have to refuel?

It's sad that piracy is still a problem, but I suspect satilite monitoring has made their lives far more difficult. During WW2 the Germans like to send out raiders (Graf Spee, Lutzow, Bizmark, Tirpitz, Sheer, etc...) they were little more than pirates, except they sought to just sink the captured vessels. The Germans' most successful raiders were disguised as merchant vessels. In fact, one of them sunk an Australian light cruiser (Perth?). I think that with the modern tax revenue systems and the more advanced technologies, Nations prefer to keep the pirates in house. I view the U-boat and USN Pacific Fleet subs as being the modern equivalents to the privateers. Can you image a German surface raider having success today with satilite tracking? Now you have to be able to hide from the eyes in the sky, hence disguising yourselves as common fishermen is the only way.

Excellent information Knight-Dragon: thank you.

How the hell is the US Navy equivalent to a privateer system? A privateer is a hired merchant vessel outfitted to be a ship of war. Every ship the US Navy uses is specially designed for war, with no other purpose possible. We do not camoflauge oureselves as merchant vessels to make a surprise attack on the enemy or to slip under their radar, we don't have to! We just blow them out of the water, fair and square.

And I think you misunderstand the idea of sattelite tracking. Sattelites can do several things, but none of them at the same time.
You can take pictures of an area, but it is only in the certain path that the sattelite follows above the Earth's surface. Geosynchronous sattelites are not used for warfare or spying, they are communications sattelites. Spy satellites orbit the earth, and follow set paths that take them over certain areas, such as part of Russia or Cuba. You cannot simply decide down here to change the orbit of a sattelite by firing some boosters that do not exist, you have to go up there and move the sucker with the Space Shuttle. Also, you cannot watch live feed from sattelites, thats why we have to take pictures with them. Sattelites are of no danger to the modern Navy in any way. They cannot see your position or track it, unles you are operating in that narrow band over which they orbit.

Cheezy, I view the old Privateers as commerce raiders. British Commerce raiders of the 16th century went around preventing gold from reaching Spain.
Had we gone to war with the russians, they would have sent Akulas, Victors, etc... into the atlantic to perform commerce raiding against us. The modern US navy would have fought to keep the supply lines open. Therefore, I see them (the Russian subs) as performing a similar function.
In world war II, the USN's submarine force crippled the Imperial Japanese war machine. The closest tie to the Privateers were the U-boats which Germany used to raid commerce since they couldn't stand up to the RN toe to toe.

I should have worded the USN subs and modern a little differently, since the post-ww2 us sub fleet has provided carrier escorts and you-know-your-dead reminders to Soviet boomers. I agree that the concept of disguising a US warship is insane.

As for satilite tracking, I am somewhat familiar with how spy satilites work (although I didn't know that they lack boosters), and that the Russians and such know exactly when we're watching, but I would expect that such tools along with recon aircraft and radar would allow us to know the bases of any such raiders and hence make tracking them a whole lot easier.

Okay I know there are still some pirates around (esspecially in africa) but when did pirates lose there ability even when heavly financed to take down a war ship of a major power?

Piracy was the equivalent, between the 16th and 19th centuries, of what state sponsored terrorism is today. That is, a supplement to the foreign policy interests of a nation. It was convenient for pirates to operate on behalf of a nation since, if captured, they could be dismissed as criminals, rather than agents, preserving an air of diplomatic immunity among nations that practiced it. It's the same way with some terrorist groups. Some terrorist groups are sheltered and even funded by certain countries, like Syria and Iran. These groups operate on behalf of their backers but claim to be acting of their own accord. As a result, countries can deny any involvement all the while carry on terrorism as an instrument of their foreign policy interests.

In 1854, several European nations signed a treaty that no longer recognized letters of marque as elements of policy, repudiating the use of piracy. By that time, all the major nation-states of Europe had fully functional navies and no longer needed their backing, and instead, saw pirates as more of a criminal nuissance which could threaten trade. Once pirates ceased to be funded by any nations, they could no longer keep up in either resources or technology.

Excellent post! :goodjob:

More or less what I was getting at in my post but better put and better explained. :)

A lot of it depends on the definition of "pirate." However, in most meanings of the term, pirates use small craft, with shallow water draft, and do intercepts in or near harbors. On the other hand, nations have also supported piracy, through the use of privateers. These ships could be involved with actual naval vessels if in sufficint numbers and position advantage, much as mercenaries can stand up to regular army, in issolated situations. However, global communications have made the use of mercenary ships much more difficult.

J

Actually, it all went downhill when the captain of one of the greatest pirate ships of all time grew tenticles all over his face. :D

But really, I think that pirates really lost it when fleets became a big thing. Once ships began to gather into large groups to travel, the pirates weren't able to do the same and subsequently they lost the ability to be effective.

Fascinating.

Some questions:
How common are those pirate assaults? Do they capture really BIG cargo ships? Isnt the theft of the ship inmediately detected by the authorities?

Strangely enough, there was a report in Michigan Radio, the local National Public Radio station (the best source for international news 'round here), talking about three attacks that happened near Indonesia and Singapore this past week, an unusual cluster

The "Real Pirates of the Carribean" was on the History Channel last night. Pretty informative, expecially given the little I knew on the subject.

One complaint is they really have to tone down the reenactments, every other scene was some actor prancing around acting piratical. Its gotten so bad that one of the experts they put on the show was a Blackbeard reenactor.

Probably they started to decline around when steamboats were made.

The "Real Pirates of the Carribean" was on the History Channel last night. Pretty informative, expecially given the little I knew on the subject.
I liked it, too... even though I only saw the last hour. They say it was when Bart Roberts died, around the early 1720's that largescale piracy declined. Like I said, there was more motivation to hunt pirates and better weapons to fight them.

Sid Meier's Pirates allows you to start your game in different time periods, 1600 to 1680. The 1680 period is called "The Pirate's Sunset."
Prospects in this era appear as good as in the 1660's and 1670's. However, pirate-hunting warships appear more frequently, while the non-Spanish ports are larger and better fortified.

I would reckon pirates lost their edge well before the days of ironclads. Lawlessness only thrives in disconnected frontier areas. This is true for the gunslinging outlaws of the old West, the early colonial period in the Americas, and even for the Mediterranean barbary pirates. As soon as control and order was consolidated in these areas, it was too risky to be an outlaw.

Criminals don't go for hard targets. The whole POINT of being a criminal is that it 's easy money.

Still plenty of pirates around. In the areas that aren't patrolled by national navies.

The Pirates lost their edge, when they lost Bobby Bonilla, Doug Drabek, and then Barry Bonds. :(