“In revel and carousing
We gave the New Year housing,
With wreckage for our firing,
And rum to heart’s desiring.”
The trade of piracy was carried on during the eighteenth century in the region of the West Indies by unorganized bands of desperados who had all the faults and none of the greatness of the men they succeeded, and who received little attention from the world at large. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the Barataria pirates came into notice on the coast of Louisiana, taking the place of the buccaneers, but in a much smaller way. Their leaders, Pierre and John Lafitte, carried on business quite openly in New Orleans; and their settlements on the marshy islands along the coast, and their “temple,” to which persons came out from the city to buy goods, were open secrets. But in the War of 1812, although the British tried to buy their services, they redeemed themselves by standing true to the American government, which had just been trying to exterminate them, and so they won public pardon and an added glamour of romance.
For the same reasons as those in the case of other island systems, the East Indies have always been infested with pirates, whose light, swift vessels run in and out of the intricate channels among the dangerous coral reefs, where government cruisers dare not follow, while the people on shore sympathize more with the pirates than with the police.
The East Indian sea-robbers are, as a rule, natives of that region—Malays, Borneans, Dyaks, and Chinese, with many half-savages of the South Sea Islands. This is more like a continuance of savage resistance to civilization than real piracy, since the pirates of the Atlantic are civilized sailors in mutiny against their own people and national commerce. The result is just as bad, however; for these East Indians are as bloodthirsty and cruel as the others, and if they do not kill their victims, or save them for some cannibal feast (as would probably happen in the New Hebrides and some other islands), they condemn them to a life of misery. But in these days of improved sea-craft, piracy, even in Malayan waters, is weak. Our consuls and government agents watch suspicious vessels; our telegraph warns the naval authorities in a moment; our steam-cruisers outspeed the swiftest craft of the black flag; our rifled guns silence their cheap artillery; and our coast surveys furnish maps so accurate that the pirate no longer holds the secret of channels and harbors where he can safely retreat. If, therefore, the old “Redbeards” should come back to life and try to be kings of the sea, as they rejoiced to be a couple of centuries ago, their pride would soon be humbled, and they would gladly return to their graves and their ancient glory.
There is a form of sea-roving which has been at times not very different from piracy; it is called privateering, and history shows a good many cases where it has degenerated into sea-robbery pure and simple.
A privateer is a ship, owned by a private citizen or citizens, to which authority is given by a government to act as an independent war-vessel. Its commission is called a “letter of marque” (lettre de marque in French), entitling it to “take, burn, and destroy” a certain enemy’s property on the sea or in its ports. It has no right, of course, to attack any one else.