Pirates Riding the Seas in 2008

Larry Lubell
Close your eyes as someone mentions pirates, and your likely to have your head filled with images of gallant, swashbuckling men with a parrot on their shoulder and a cutlass in hand. The "Bad-boys" of the sea, in a Robin Hood meets Keith Richard hybrid. Our image has forever been shaped by Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, as well as by Disney, Fairbanks and Halloween costumes.


Time creates legends, mixing one part truth, with two parts fantasy, then laying levels of artistic license. The end product, an icon "Blackbeard" might embrace, although one he is unlikely to recognize. A metamorphosis from a murderous bands of thugs terrorizing the seas, raping woman, setting ships ablaze; to a capped-toothed Johnny Depp and his waif super-model girlfriend/hostage. The classic era of piracy in the Caribbean began in the 1560's with the period from 1700 until the 1730s as the zenith of the pirates reign. We no longer see events through the eyes of the Spanish or Portuguese Empires protecting their ships and the wealth the they carried.

Today the news is filled with stories of a new batch of Pirates, yet we don't see them through the fog of time. These bands we view with the pain of 9/11 clear and fresh. When one of their leaders known only as Boyah, issued a statement to the press, the world listened; but did not like what it heard.

"The pirates are living between life and death," said the pirate leader, . "Who can stop them? Americans and British all put together cannot do anything."

Boyah said that the piracy began when large foreign fishing trawlers depleted local fish stocks, and fuel prices soared making difficult traditional coastal fishing unprofitable. At first their attacks were against the trawlers, but soon the trawler's crews began fighting back with heavy artillery. The fishermen in their smaller boats were no match; so the sought out "Softer Targets"

"We went into the deep ocean and hijacked the unarmed cargo ships," Boyah said.

Far from isolated insistences, the past year has seen the number of attacks has increase both in number as well as scale. The International Maritime Bureau recognizes more than 90 pirate attacks off the East Africa coast thus far in 2008.
When attacks are successful, The pirates take there captured ships into Somali waters, where the crew, ships and cargo are held until a ransom demand is met. In the past weeks the ante has been raised again with the capture of a Saudi supertanker carrying more than $100 million of crude oil, and a cargo-ship loaded with Russian-built tanks. Moses Wetangula, Kenya's foreign minister put the ransoms paid at more than $150 million.

The reality is the pirates realize the hijackings have been profitable, and the world has been unsuccessful in stopping the attacks. Until recently,many of the shippers looked at these attacks as just a part of the cost of doing business; there seems to have been a turn in the way nations are perceiving the threat. It appears the very level of success of the Somali bands might bring about their undoing. The very scale of their criminal acts have brought world powers to the brink of deploying armies to address the growing threat. If the Somali fisherman pirates were foiled by armed crews of trawlers, one must assume that jet fighters and nuclear subs can have similar success.

Who knows, maybe in a hundred years Boyah and his followers names will be spoken of along-side famous Caribbean pirates like Edward Teach or "Blackbeard" or Henry Morgan. Maybe the Disneyland that's part of a future space station, will create a ride in their honor, but in 2008 they are a bunch of criminals that need to be stopped.

Larry Lubell
www.UrbanNewsBlog.com