I was thinking about this the other day. I've bought about 5 books on pirates & about 6 movies where piracy was the central theme. What's odd is that I haven't read any of the pirate books I've bought & I've only seen 2 of the movies since I bought them. The rest were gifts for friends who had some kind of fascination with piracy.
I grew up in NC. From the time I was in 2nd grade there were many history lessons that dealt with pirates off the NC coast. Of course Edward Teach featured prominently in these tales as he was the most famous pirate with an NC connection. It seems that close to 300 years after his death he's still making news:
Blackbeard's Ship to be fully excavated
Now while not as funny as some sites (such as this one entitled How to be a Pirate) Wikipedia does have a nice entry on The Golden Age of Piracy. That page has links to pages dealing with Stede Bonnet (who got into piracy solely for the adventure), Black Bart & a nice link filled section on female pirates.
Piracy nowadays is seen more for what it is; a crime against property & person. Often times the methods employed are brutal & there's really nothing romantic about it (not that there ever really was but history gets distorted at times). When I was in my 20's I contemplated for a while buying a sailboat & touring the world. One of the things I spent the most time considering was anti-piracy measures. There are a few out there that are effective but in the end nothing beats old fashioned repeating firearms with a skilled crew using them. Of course now most countries forbid the possession of arms so you're taking a legal risk in having the means of defense on board your vessel. The ironic part is that piracy is more common now than it ever was, yet vessels are compelled to abandon any means of effective defense.
& of course there's another kind of modern piracy to be discussed. I'll point you to this post called At least they're honest about it for a humorous look at a more common form of piracy. But some folks &/or institutions don't take it so lightly:
RIAA demands payment from college students
& on a related note, Zombyboy points out how idiotic record companies will be in pursuit of whatever ends they're pursuing:
The record industry wants to hide its products
K, that should wrap up this Theraflu induced post on piracy. Now I must go find a fresh fluffy shirt & a new box of Kleenex...
Posted by Publicola at March 15, 2007 06:21 AM | TrackBack