Modern Pirates v Romantic Pirates

On the tin. Which is more effective for their time, the modern pirates of our time, such as the Somali pirates, or pirates during the Golden Age of Piracy? Which was more of a factor of their time and which group as a whole was more effective at what they do?
 

jahenders

Banned
Romantic/historical pirates were MUCH more of an impact and relatively more powerful. They impacted trade routes, forced countries to arm merchant ships or use escort vessels , and in some cases held forts or mini-countries. A pirate might also control several sizable, combat-ready vessels.

The pirates of today are simply kidnappers with boats. They only have any success because their prey has refused to implement any significant defensive measures. Unless pirates get to the point of having something like PT boats that can threaten a small/medium combat vessel, they're nothing like on par with historic pirates.

The only category where modern pirates might have an edge is impact-per-man or per-dollar. Today a few dozen criminals with a fishing trawler (mothership) and some fast boats (ribs or otherwise) can capture a vessel hundreds of times their size. However, again, this is just because the target vessels don't bother to arm themselves. If you threw a squad of trained mercs with assault weapons on every sizeable transport vessel in dangerous waters, piracy would be reduced to preying on small fishing boats.

On the tin. Which is more effective for their time, the modern pirates of our time, such as the Somali pirates, or pirates during the Golden Age of Piracy? Which was more of a factor of their time and which group as a whole was more effective at what they do?
 

TinyTartar

Banned
The Somali pirates only have any success because the people they are robbing are ridiculously idiotic in a way that the prey of the Romanticized pirates never were.

To be robbed by the Somali pirates, you have to be so stupid that its really not even funny. Even the slightest amount of armament on a ship would frustrate most efforts at kidnap, and beyond that, sailing further from dangerous areas isn't that difficult.

Somali Pirates mean nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Romanticized Pirates actually owned land and powerful ships and could regularly raid massively wealthy trade routes with treasure laden huge ships.
 
Also during the "Golden age of Piracy" many, if not most pirates were more or less privateers so they had at least some back up from one nation or another, hence their better efficiency.
 
Also during the "Golden age of Piracy" many, if not most pirates were more or less privateers so they had at least some back up from one nation or another, hence their better efficiency.

pretty much--iirc, Henry Morgan is considered a hero in Britain, the country he served as a privateer, while to others of the time he was a scoundrel and a terrorist
 
And even those that weren't privateers could often count on some unscrupulous port-masters to put them up for long enough to do business. The difference between romance pirates and modern ones is that romance ones often faced well-armed opponents, whereas if modern ones faced off against say a WW2 era liberty ship they'd be in a bad way.
 
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