The History of Piracy: A Closer Look at Early Pirates

When you hear the word pirate, most people think of the modern day pirates, Captain Hook from Peter Pan, Jack Sparrow from The Pirates of the Caribbean. The stereotypical definition of pirates was men who sailed the sea saying arrrgh and wear eye patches. But they were a lot bigger than that. Pirate is a word from Greek and Latin piratia, and the root of peril prefers to a person who commits acts of piracy (Waldman).

The first pirate activity that the world has knowledge of is back in the seventh century BC (Matthews 1). By the mid 13th century BCE pirates had become the dominant seafaring people of the Mediterranean, committing acts of piracy (Waldman). The Golden Age of Piracy was when pirate activity increased greatly. The Golden Age of Piracy dated 1660 to 1730 (Matthews 2). The act of piracy was a crime on the seas. For over 2,500 years pirates lurked along trading routes, ready to attack merchant ships (Lock 8). Some pirates were stealers, while others were famous for behaving unusually. The most famous were the ones whose names could strike fear into the hearts of all who heard the name (Mason 26). But during the 1800's was when Pirates were seen as monsters in human form (Mason 4).

Pirates sailed seas and oceans around the world, there was no specific area for pirates. They were called by different names in each place though (Lock 6). The most popular places for pirates were common seas like the Caribbean and the Mediterranean (Williams 18). There were many kind of pirates that sailed the seas, such as Turkish, Greek, Latin, French, and many more (Waldman). Pirates and privateers in the 17th century were mostly English, Dutch, and French (Waldman).

The first Pirates that we have records of were Phoenician sa...

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...l the flesh rotted off them. The process could take as long as two years, this was a warning to anybody who from then on thought of piracy (Matthews 21). But the growth of National navies in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries helped decreased piracy (Waldman), by the end of the 18th century most of the pirates were gone (Matthews 22). Even though pirates aren't as common as they were back in the earlier years, acts of modern piracy still happen today. Now in modern days technology allows pirates to still sail the oceans (Waldman).

Throughout the history of pirates, no one really liked them, due to the fact that they were robbers of the seas. The typical descriptions of pirates don’t show what they were really like. Though some people did not appreciate pirates, there were some people who lived the life of a pirate who loved it; it was the only thing they knew.