Pirates and Piracy

OSCAR HERRMANN
With Illustrations by FREDERICK EHRLICH
And an Introduction by HERMAN A. HEYDT
New York PRESS OF STETTINER BROTHERS, PRINTERS 52-58 DUANE STREET 1902
PIRATES AND PIRACY.
There is hardly a person who, as a school-boy, had not received the fire of imagination and the stimulus for adventure and a roaming life through the stirring narratives concerning Captain Kidd and other well-known sea rovers. A certain ineffable glamor metamorphosed these robbers into heroes, and lent an inalienable license to their “calling,” so that the songster and romancist found in them and their deeds prolific and genial themes, while the obscure suggestions of hidden treasures and mysterious caves have inspired many expeditions in quest of buried fortunes which, like the Argo of old, have carried their Jasons to the mythical Colchis.
The pens of Byron, Scott, Poe, Stevenson, Russell, and Stockton, and the musical genius of Wagner, were steeped in the productive inspiration of these lawless adventurers, and Kingsley found in Lundy Island, the erstwhile nest of the reckless tribe, a subject for his “Westward Ho!”
Byron, in “The Corsair,” sings:
O’er the glad waters of the dark-blue sea, Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free, Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam, Survey our empire, and behold our home! These are our realms, no limits to their sway, Our flag the sceptre all who meet obey. Ours the wild life in tumult still to range From toil to rest, and joy in every change.
Piracy was the growth of maritime adventure, and developed with the advancement of commerce. The Phœnicians and Greeks were especially apt in the interstate wars which frequently degenerated into rapine and plunder, and with them piracy became a recognized enterprise. In Homeric times it was dignified with a respect worthy of a nobler cause—a sentiment in which the freebooters of later centuries took arrogant pride. The pirate—cruel, vicious, debased to the lowest degree of turpitude—established a moral code governing his actions and circumscribing his wanton license, and it was in the rigorous observance of these “trade laws” and customs of their realm that this abortive sense of honor manifested itself.