Tag Archives: Pirates

About Pirates.

You can find various tidbits about Pirates here.  My favorite is the whole notion of a ‘plank’ to walk:

Few (if any) pirate ships ever used “the plank.” When pirates took over a ship, they usually let the captured crewmembers choose between joining the pirate crew or jumping overboard. Why go to all the trouble of setting up a plank to walk off? As historian Hugh Rankin put it: “The formality of a plank seems a bit absurd when it was so much easier just to toss a prisoner overboard.”

What so called Historian Hugh Rankin doesn’t take into account is that everything about great piracy is purley a formality.  From looting and murdering to the clothes they wear.

Completely formal.  Just like the Vikings.

Piracy up again.

Pirate Hunters.

The Piracy Reporting Centre says Piracy is up once again:

In the first 9 months of the year a total of 15 vessels were hijacked, 172 crewmembers were taken hostage, 63 were kidnapped, and 21 were assaulted.

There was a lull in Piracy in 2005 but as we all know that was just the clam before the storm. I’m not sure if the photo above is of Pirates or Pirate Hunters but those guys look pretty serious. Granted, I don’t see where they could attach a plank.

Lately there has been a bevy of Piracy articles in the news:

National Geographic: Dark Passage

BBC: Dip in global pirate ship attacks

BBC: Somalia’s pirates are ‘thriving’

AP: Piracy Off Somalia’s Coast Increases

Clarifying Statement w/ regard to Vikings.

storyvikingafpgi.jpg

CNN has the following link on their ‘Top Stories’ list:

Viking ship to ply North Sea; no invasion planned.‘

Well thank god for the clarification. Granted our intelligence failures have been rather frequent lately. It’s good to know more than a thousand years after the fact we still need to specify when writing an article about Vikings setting out to sea. Many Northern Europeans will sleep softly again.

I just hope the Pirates don’t have anything to say about this.