Pirates and Piracy
BY
With Illustrations by
FREDERICK EHRLICH
And an Introduction by
HERMAN A. HEYDT
New York
PRESS OF STETTINER BROTHERS, PRINTERS
52-58 DUANE STREET
1902
[3]PIRATES AND PIRACY.
INTRODUCTION.
There is hardly a person who, as a school-boy,had not received the fire of imagination and thestimulus for adventure and a roaming lifethrough the stirring narratives concerning CaptainKidd and other well-known sea rovers. Acertain ineffable glamor metamorphosed theserobbers into heroes, and lent an inalienable licenseto their “calling,” so that the songster andromancist found in them and their deeds prolificand genial themes, while the obscure suggestionsof hidden treasures and mysteriouscaves have inspired many expeditions in quest ofburied fortunes which, like the Argo of old, havecarried their Jasons to the mythical Colchis.
The pens of Byron, Scott, Poe, Stevenson, Russell,and Stockton, and the musical genius of[4]Wagner, were steeped in the productive inspirationof these lawless adventurers, and Kingsleyfound in Lundy Island, the erstwhile nest ofthe reckless tribe, a subject for his “WestwardHo!”
Byron, in “The Corsair,” sings:
Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free,
Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,
Survey our empire, and behold our home!
These are our realms, no limits to their sway,
Our flag the sceptre all who meet obey.
Ours the wild life in tumult still to range
From toil to rest, and joy in every change.
Piracy was the growth of maritime adventure,and developed with the advancement of commerce.The Phœnicians and Greeks were especiallyapt in the interstate wars which frequentlydegenerated into rapine and plunder,and with them piracy became a recognized enterprise.In Homeric times it was dignified witha respect worthy of a nobler cause—a sentimentin which the freebooters of later centuries tookarrogant pride. The pirate—cruel, vicious, debasedto the lowest degree of turpitude—established[5]a moral code governing his actions andcircumscribing his wanton license, and it wasin the rigorous observance of these “trade laws”and customs of their realm that this abortivesense of honor manifested itself.
The successes of the Phœnicians and Greekssoon made the Mediterranean the theatre ofmaritime robbery, in later years conductedunder the authority, sanction, and immunity ofthe Barbary powers. In fact, so reckless had theenterprise become that the temerity of the freelances knew no bounds, and headquarters, so tospeak, were established, and for a long timemaintained, at Cilicia.
The vigorous campaign of Pompey in 67 B.C.against the pirates was but the precursor of thatsystematic defence which the nations of theworld eventually adopted. The Hanseatic Leagueof the cities of Northern Germany and neighboringstates, no doubt, had its origin in thenecessitous combin