must be brought before the proper tribunal and dealt with
according to law.
Piracy has been dealt with in a large number of English statutes, from 1556 down to the Territorial Waters ]urisdict1on Act 1878 (41 & 42 Vict. c. 73), which provided for the maintenance of the existing jurisdiction for the trial of “ any act of piracy as defined by the law of nations.”
During the Spanish-American War the Spanish government issued (1898) a decree declaring that “captains, rnasters and officers of vessels, which, as well as two-thirds of their crew, are not American, captured while committing acts of war against Spain, even if they are provided with letters of marque issued by the United States” would be regarded and judged as pirates. This was not in accordance with the international practice on the subject. A public ship or one which is entitled to fly the flag of a belligerent Ind navigates under the cover of state papers, by the very sense of the term, is not a pirate. Again, during the Russo-Japanese War, the word “ piracy ” was freely applied in British newspapers to the seizure of the “ Malacca ” and other vessels held up by the “ Peterburg ” and “ Smolensk,” two cruisers belonging to the Russian Black Sea volunteer fleet, which in July 1904 passed as merchantmen through the Bosporus and Dardanelles and were transformed to their real character on the open sea. The application of the term in this case was equally inaccurate.
The conversion of merchant into war ships was one of the subjects dealt with by the second Hague Conference (1907), but it was agreed that “the question of the place where such conversion is effected remains outside the scope “ of the agreement.”
Piracy is essentially a crime under international law, and although any state may apply its penalties to its own subjects by analogy, as was done by Great Britain and the United States in connexion with the repression of the slave trade, they cannot be law fully applied to subjects of other states. (T. Ba.)
Historical Sketch.—It has at all times been more difficult to enforce good order on the sea than on the land; or perhaps we ought to say that the establishment of law and order on the sea has in all ages of the world's history followed, but has not accompanied, and has still less preceded, the creation of a good police on the land. The sea robber, or pirate, cannot make a profit from any part of his booty except the food which he consumes, or the vessels which he may use, unless he can find a market. But so long as he is sure that he will somewhere meet a purchaser for the goods he has taken by violence, he has every encouragement to pursue his trade. Therefore from the times described in the Odyssey, down to the days when Sir Henry Keppel sailed in H.M.S. “ Dido ” to suppress the pirates of Borneo, and when Rajah Brooke of Sarawak co-operated with him on land, we find that the prevalence of piracy and the suppression of it have been closely dependent on the efforts made to rout it out from its lurking-places on the coast, and the degree of success achieved.
Very different types of men have been named pirates. They have in fact been so unlike that to class them all together would be in the last degree unjust. The Greek in the youth of the world, and the Malay of Borneo in the 10th century, knew of no rule of morals which should restrain them from treating all who lay outsde the limits of their city or their tribe as enemies, to be traded with when strong and plundered when weak. They might be patriotic, and law-abiding men towards the only authority they recognized. Their piracy was a form of war, not without close moral analogies to the seizure of Silesia by Frederick the Great, the attempted seizure of Spain by Napoleon. Indeed the story of this latter venture, with its deceitful preliminary success and its final disaster, may fairly be compared with the fall of Ulysses and his companions on the Cicones, as told in the ninth book of the Odyssey. Yet it would be highly uncritical to class Ulysses or Napoleon with Captain Avery, or Captain Kidd, or Bartholomew Roberts. We are not here concerned with the legal aspects of piracy, but with the true character of the persons to whom the name pirate has been applied at various times. The term was applied by the Romans to the adventurers against whom Pompey was commissioned to act by the Gabinian Law, by the English of the 9th and 10th centuries to the Vikings, and by the Spaniards to the English, French and Dutch who were found sailing beyond the line.
Sufferers by naval commerce-destroyers call it “ a piratical form of warfare.” But the pirates of the Roman Republic were no mere “ gang of robbers.” They were the victims of a time of conquest and “ general overture ”—“ the ruined men of all nations, the hunted refugees of all vanquished parties, everyone that was wretched and daring—and where was there not misery and violence in this unhappy age? It was no longer a gang of robbers who had flocked together, but a compact soldier state, in which the freemasonry of exile and of crime took the place of nationality, and within which crime redeemed itself, as it so often docs in its own ey es, by displaying the most generous public spirit.” Such men are akin to the fuorosciti of Italian history or the Dutch Beggars of the Sea, the victims of party strife in the cities, who took to the sword because they had no other resource. Mutatis mutandis we may say as much for the intruders beyond the line, whom history calls the “Buccaneers ” (q.v.). The “ Vikings ” (q.v.) were a portion of the Barbarian invasions. The “ Barbary Pirates ” (q.v.) stand apart. As for the piratical character of the commerce-destroyer, or privateer—why are we to brand Captain Fortunatus Wright, the Englishman who captures a French merchant ship, or Captain Robert Surcouf, the Plenchman who captures a British East Indiaman, as piratical, and not make the same reproach against Admiral Lord Howe, or Admiral Don Luis de Cordoba, who with a fleet captures whole convoys?
The pirate pure and simple is that member of an orderly community who elects to live on the sea, by violence and robbery, making no distinction between his own city or tribe and any other. The old adage that “ war makes thieves and peace hangs them ” has ever been peculiarly true of the sea. War has always been conducted there by the capture of an enemy's property, and by division of the spoil. A portion of the naval forces of all nations has been composed of privateers, letters of marque or corsairs, who plundered with a licence. They have ever found a difficulty in drawing the line between enemy and neutral; when peace returned some of them found it hard to be content with honest wages earned by dull industry. Nelson declared that all privateers were no better than pirates. He was borne out by the experience of Great Britain, which at the beginning of the Seven Years' War had to take strong measures to repress the excesses of its privateers, and to hang a good few of them as mere pirates. The pirates suppressed by Pompey did not all submit to remain in the settlements he made. Some continued to rob at sea. If we can trust the Pastoral of Longus, and the other Greek romances, the pirate was a known type even under the Roman peace, but it is highly probable that he was more of a stock literary figure than a reality. Before the Roman peace, and during long centuries after it had been shattered, piracy was common. It grew out of a state of war. In modern times—even down to 1815—a recrudescence of piracy has followed regular hostilities. But there are other conditions which have a material influence, such as the need for a lurking place and for a receiver of the plundered goods. An archipelago provides the best lurking-places, and next to it a coast of many inlets. Therefore the Greek Islands, the British Isles, the Antilles, the Indian Ocean, the coast of Cilicia in Asia Minor, of Dalmatia, of Malabar and of Norway, have all at one time or other, and some of them for centuries, been haunts of pirates. The convenience of the place had to be completed by the convenience of the market. In the ancient world, and the middle ages, the market never failed. One city or tribe had little care for the sufferings of another. The men of the Cinque Ports who plundered the men of Yarmouth knew that their own townsmen would never call them to account, and therefore they had a safe refuge. Even when the medieval anarchy had come to an end on land. the sea was lawless. When peace was made with Spain after the death of Queen Elizabeth there were many who could not settle down to a life of industrv. Some took the
