13 - International law and the suppression of maritime violence

Summary

Introduction

Since time immemorial mariners have fallen prey to the violence of pirates and sea robbers. In Ancient Greece, pirates were never far from the routes of maritime commerce, and the Cretans, Athenians and Rhodians engaged in periodic anti-piracy campaigns. Even the might of Rome could not prevent pirates from exacting their toll on merchant vessels, and Julius Caesar was, perhaps, the first person of note whose capture and ransoming by pirates was chronicled. Needless to say, Caesar's revenge upon these brigands was, inevitably, swift, decisive and bloody. Piracy was not, however, restricted to the Mediterranean during this time. The Germanic and Frankish tribes were efficient and ruthless maritime predators, and the Dark Ages also saw the rise of the Vikings who might be described as having committed piracy on a grand scale. Pirates were also much in evidence in South East Asia, especially in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. So great indeed was the pirate menace in the South China Sea that the Ming Emperor organized a fleet of over 3,000 warships to tackle the problem. It is, however, the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of Caribbean piracy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that most people have in mind when reference is made to pirates. Although the period has been invested with a certain romance, the sea robbers of this time were as ruthless and brutal as their predecessors.