Barbarian fleet

I'm late in a game, playing as Venice, and my empire is based on trade. I'm keeping my trade routes all coming out of Venice and I have as many as I can. Suddenly, 6 barbarian ships showed up in the waters right next to Venice. It was kind of like when you have a rebellion and barbarians appear, but my empire is extremely happy (80 happiness) and this was privateers and a galley instead of land units.

Does anyone know what's going on? Is all the trade bringing them in?

Best explanation for this would be that there's an unlit land piece closeby that has been spawning barbships for a while. Privateers could have spawned, (although I've never seen it) and captured a couple cubs privateers also. Then, barbs like all AI, like pillaging as a priority. If you had fishing boats or pearls or something, they'd come over. Bummer having to bang out like 6 New ships though.

arand86,
I suppose that's possible. There were just so many at once. It turned out that there were 8 total, I just only saw 6 at first. It's just that it happened so suddenly, it seemed like it must have been some event like a rebellion. I did build a battleship and a few bombers and cleared the area, but not before I lost a bunch of trade routes.

when barb ships pillage a fishing boat or a trade route they get a 1 ship (instead of Gold, like human players do) so it means that if you have a 3 fishing boats in your border (whether its a luxury resources or just a bonus ) when they pillage it all they would got 3 barbarain ships, trireme if you are on ancient-medieval era. IDK on other eras.

Oh, that makes sense! I had 16 trade routes out of that city. It would be easy for the ships to multiply there.

I had a damaged caravel limping back to port when three barb privateers came out of the fog from three sides, formed a triangle and sunk my ship. I was sad to lose the ship but excited over the rarely before seen coordinated barb attack on the water.