Pirates of the Mediterranean

From my posts of the Greek islands it is obvious that the land is beautiful but barren with rocky shorelines features that prohibit large scale farming.  Therefore most island communities were small with villages along the coast making fishing the primary source of sustenance.  When fishing wasn’t enough, many men turned to “sea robbery” and raided the slow moving merchant ships that sailed along known trade routes.  There were many groups that participated in piracy in the Mediterranean but historical records name the Sea Peoples as the first group(s) that engaged in piracy. 

In the classical antiquity the Illyrians and Tyrrhenians were known for being pirates. Greeks, Romans and Phoenicians protected routes for merchant ships but also resorted occasionally in piracy.  Even the Gods fought against pirates and as we see in picture above Dionysus drives Tyrrhenians pirates from his ship with the assistance of monsters.  Among the famous captives, Julius Caesar when he was 25 was captured by Cicilian pirates in 75 BC and held hostage in Famagusta. The word piracy comes from the ancient Greek word “πειράομαι”, which means an attempt to rob for personal gain. 

In the 2^nd century AD Gothic pirates terrorized the Aegean and landed among others on the islands of Cyprus and Crete.  In 9th century AD, Moor pirates were established along the coasts of southern France and northern Italy and in 846 AD they sacked Rome and damaged the Vatican.  In the 12^th century AD the Vikings descended in the Mediterranean thru European rivers.  Slavic tribes were also involved in piracy with the most feared being Ukrainian who called themselves Cossacks (picture).  Their main targets were rich settlements  of the Ottoman Empire in the Black Sea.  Finally, the Maniots, of the southern Peloponnese, did consider their involvement in piracy legitimate as their land was poor and could not sustain them.  Another justification was that they wanted to maintain their independence and freedom from the Ottomans.

Of all the pirate groups in the Mediterranean it was the Barbary Pirates that became the most notorious. The Barbary pirates derived their name from the Berbers who were the people that inhabited the region along the northwest shores of Africa.  The Barbary pirates operated from ports such as Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. They plagued the Mediterranean from 1500’s to the 1800’s attacking vessels and costal communities taking and selling their inhabitants to slavery.  By the 1700’s, they had become so fearsome that many European nations and the United States, agreed to pay them an annual ransom that was called tribute to ensure their trading vessels were not attacked.

It was Thomas Jefferson decided to deal with the Barbary pirates and piracy at large even before he became president.  It is interesting that Yusuf Karamanli, the Pasha of Tripoli, demanded a tribute of $225,000 on Jefferson's inauguration day, in 1801, which Jefferson readily denied. His refusal resulted in the declaration of war, by the pasha of Tripoli, against the United States .  On May 31st 1801, Commodore Edward Preble traveled to Messina, Sicily and sought the help from King Ferdinand IV who agreed to assist the American cause. On August 1st 1801 the schooner Enterprise defeated the Tripolitan corsair after a fierce battle.  

In October 1803, Tripoli's forces captured the frigate Philadelphia and its crew after it ran aground.  On the night of February 16th 1804, Lieutenant Stephen Decatur led a small detachment of U.S. Marines boarded Philadelphia and set it afire thus denying her use by the enemy.  The British Admiral Horatio Nelson called Decatur's heroism "the most bold and daring act of the age”. 

The turning point in the first Barbary war was when a force of eight U.S. Marines, and 500— Greeks from Crete, Arabs and Berbers, —were able to capture the town of Derma and raised the US flag. The action is memorialized in a line of the Marines hymn "the shores of Tripoli".

It was not though until 1815 when President James Madison sent a squadron led by Commodore Stephen Decatur to the Mediterranean.  As Decatur had already defeated two Algerian warships and captured hundreds of prisoners, he reached a treaty with Omar Agha that called for an exchange of U.S. and Algerian prisoners and an end to ransom payments. Having defeated the most powerful of the Barbary States, Decatur sailed to Tunis and Tripoli and obtained similar treaties. In Tripoli, Decatur also secured from Pasha Karamanli the release of all European captives that led to other treaties ending all ransom payments by the United States and the European countries to the Barbary States.