Buccaneers, Privateers, and Corsairs by Barb Karg and Arjean Spaite
To understand the evolution of piracy and how it came to be so prevalent throughout history, one must examine the events of each era that enabled piracy to flourish with reckless abandon. From its inception around 3000 B.C., piracy plagued entire civilizations such as those of the Greeks and Romans, and even brought the commerce of several nations to a screeching halt. For 300 years beginning around 789 A.D., the Vikings rampaged the Baltic Seas. Starting in the fourteenth century a new group of pirates, the Barbary corsairs, terrorized the Atlantic coast of Europe and the Mediterranean Sea around North Africa. Corsairs were embroiled in a battle between Muslims and Christians and would be hired by either side to attack the other (see Chapter 4).
The Privateers
With Spanish exploration in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries came decades of wars and riches that proved irresistible to pirates and to economically depleted countries such as England. Queen Elizabeth and her legendary sea dogs literally saved Britain with the riches they commandeered as a result of their “legalized” piracy (see Chapter 6). Privateers, as they were called, were pirates who were granted commissions by a sovereign nation and were issued letters of marque, which gave them the license to attack any ship that their nation was currently at war with. At face value, this amounted to nothing more than legal piracy, and in truth when privateering ended during times of peace, many of the privateers turned to piracy. On the other hand, it's sometimes argued that privateers weren't pirates at all, but instead men who were simply working for their government much like any military seamen.
The term Davy Jones' Locker basically refers to someone ending up at the bottom of the ocean. The exact origin of Davy or David Jones is unclear, though he has been immortalized as a type of oceanic demon or the devil himself. Typically, pirates used the phrase as a threat, swearing to kill a man and “send him to Davy Jones' Locker,” or as a reference to a pirate near death being in Davy Jones' hands.
The Buccaneers
Starting in the late 1400s, the Spanish took control of areas of the Caribbean and Central and South America. In total, these lands were known as the Spanish Main. As part of their own undoing, the Spaniards inadvertently created a new breed of pirates called the buccaneers, who are detailed in Chapter 7. Career hunters and tradesmen, these relentless rogues proved to be a major thorn in Spain's side for decades as they plundered Spanish galleons and port cities throughout the Main and beyond into the Caribbean. Among them was one of the greatest buccaneers, an intimidating force of a man called Henry Morgan, whose legendary raids and brutality put him in a class of elite pirates who would stop at nothing to achieve their dastardly goals (see Chapter 8).
