The Barbary pirates are back!
According to the International Maritime Bureau, 92 ships have been attacked by pirates in the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia this year, with nine crew members killed, nine more missing, and more than 500 taken hostage. Using sophisticated GPS systems and small craft launched from “mother ships,” these modern Jack Sparrows are now able to board ships heading to and from the Suez Canal in just 15 minutes.
Piracy is hardly a modern phenomenon, although seizing an entire oil tanker does up the ante: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/world/africa/18pirates.html?ref=todayspaper
In Thomas Jefferson’s day, pirates from the Islamic states of Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers in North Africa routinely captured sailing vessels in the Mediterranean and enslaved their crews. The Barbary Coast pirates also raided villages as far north as Ireland and Iceland, capturing, torturing and enslaving more than 1 million Christians and Jews.
Instead of defending their ships, many European nations chose to pay tribute (jizya) to the pirates in an attempt to buy “protection” from attacks at sea. In letters to future presidents John Adams and James Monroe, Jefferson argued that paying tribute would inevitably lead to more demands.
In 1784, Congress authorized $80,000 to appease the Barbary pirates – a staggering sum at the time. But when Jefferson was elected president in 1801, the pasha of Tripoli did exactly as Jefferson predicted and demanded an initial payment of $225,000 with yearly installments of $25,000 to keep the Barbary pirates at bay.
Jefferson’s answer: “”Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!”
He sent a fleet to the Mediterranean with orders that if any of the Barbary states declared war, they were to blockade their ports, “protect our commerce and chastise their insolence by sinking, burning or destroying their ships and Vessels wherever (you) find them.”
And so they did. In 1805, after four years of bombardment and on-shore raids by U.S. Marines, Tripoli finally surrendered and all American captives it held were freed. The victory is celebrated in the Marine Hymn:
“From the shores of Montezuma
to the shores of Tripoli,
We will fight our country’s battles
in the air, on land, and sea.”
And the high leather collars our Marines wore to protect themselves against being slashed by the pirates’ cutlasses earned them the nickname “leathernecks” which is still in use today.
