I feel blessed that I live in an age when stories of pirates are in the newspapers, not just in the history books. I had thought until recently that the age of pirates was far behind us, along with the commonplace use of snuff, the yearning for beaver felt hats and the fear of Jacobites seizing control and imposing popery. But no, pirates don’t appear to be behind us, but have simply formed different sorts of motely crews, these ones wearing cutoff shorts, tanktops and flipflops. It’s a more exciting world than I had thought it was. (I realize terrified Filipino crews and Greek shipping magnates probably feel differently about the situation.)
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The might not look like Johnny Depp, or have the presence of Long John Silver, or be as rum as Captain Morgan, but they’re at least as lethal, equipped with RPGs, AK-47s and other dependable products produced and distributed by the Russians over the past 60 years. (Question: if the Soviets were so good at producing reliable, long lasting small arms-much better than we in the free world, whose weapons never found nearly the same popularity with warlords and their raggedy-pants followers – why were they never able to make the Lada to anything near the same quality? Perhaps communist central planning put the wrong emphasis on guns versus butter.) Watching TV coverage of the seizure of an American container ship and its captain this past week and the growing calls for the U.S. navy and other first world navies to patrol the Somali coast and even venture inland to crush the pirate lairs brought to me images of reliable 19th century British gunboat diplomacy, Thomas Jefferson’s extension of American naval power to the Barbary coast, the trials and tribulations that some Catholic monks suffered when sailing along the same coast three centuries ago, and the adventures of Jim Hawkins and Squire Trelawney as they battled the aforementioned Long John Silver.
You know, there really is an ag angle to all this blather. Here it is: bulk shipping around the world could become more expensive, and world trade flows interrupted, if piracy keeps growing in crucial areas like the Somali coast. By some measures, overall world pirate activity has declined in recent years, but at the critical junction of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean – and too close to the world’s jugular vein (the Persian Gulf) – it’s definitely become a Big Deal. Not only are there the costs of ransoms, but insurance rates for certain ocean shipments have gone up in response. That, by an indirect path, sucks some pennies out of every bushel of crop exported, so it’s not a Good Thing.
Perhaps, like Long John Silver, once the pirates are vanquished in battle they’ll reform. As in this passage from Treasure Island:
“John Silver,” he (Squire Trelawney) said, “you’re a prodigious villain and imposter—a monstrous imposter, sir. I am told I am not to prosecute you. Well, then, I will not. But the dead men, sir, hang about your neck like mill-stones.”
“Thank you kindly, sir,” replied Long John, again saluting.
And that was that. Reformed, that particular menace was gone. However, the present pirates are unlikely to be as meek. Three of them ended up pretty quiet in the recent situation, but that was because U.S. navy snipers shot them. For the other guys who don’t have many options at home, piracy probably seems like a pretty good idea still.
It’s amazing how long-lasting these human phenomena are. Last year I read a book about Roman Catholic monks sent, a few centuries ago, to try to sneak their way from India to the Somali coast and then up into Ethiopia, a Christian kingdom threatened by a Muslim onslaught. Oh, the trials and tribulations they faced! Including being seized by pirates along the southern coast of the Arabian peninsula and turned into slaves for a number of years. That must have sucked! Well, anyway, it’s kitty corner to the area that’s having the problems today.Â
Piracy seems to be a curse that reappears every time the seas become unpoliced. We’d grown used to freedom of the seas, thanks first to the Royal Navy – the most fabulous organization in human history – and then to the security lockdown brought on by both sides in the cold war. But since the end of that latter influence, freedom has reigned, and the pirates have taken advantage of it.
The U.S. navy actions have gotten a lot of interest in this past week, as has the French seizure of a pirate “mother ship” a couple of days ago, and the Indian Navy’s destruction of a number of pirate vessels a few months ago, but the world’s probably going to have to figure out a more firm plan of how to deal with this menace or it could grow and snarl the trade that many countries – and prairie farmers – rely upon. A lot of people don’t know this, but one of the earliest actions of U.S. foreign policy was to send some of its nascent fleet to the Barbary coast (Tunisia) to put a scare into the Barbary Pirates, who were seizing American ships and goods. It’s not like getting rid of pirates is a new idea for the world’s navies. The Royal Navy did it for centuries.Â
If navies don’t do it, there’s always the danger of shippers and shipowners arming their own ships, as suggested in the always entertaining Agriweek (www.agriweek.com) publication this week:
“Yet is it odd that even one such incident once in a while would be tolerated by the shipping community. There cannot be a shortage of guns-for-hire mercenaries who could supply security personnel for ships. If half a dozen men can commandeer a ship, half a dozen should be able to prevent it. . . . It is hard to imagine any jurisdiction going to the trouble of prosecuting those responsible for any incident in which marauding pirates are killed.”
So, we may be back at the age of armed merchant men sailing the seas, always on the lookout for the Jolly Roger, or back at the period when world policemen patrolled the seas, chasing away and destroying the bases of the dastardly, but clearly at least for now we’re past the days of free and open sailing around the world.
