Everyday Canvas

Pirates

Prompt: Pirates
Remember those swashbucklers on the high seas? With what did we replace them in our day?
Write about the modern pirates and what you think of them.

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Hello, Anne Bonny, Blackbeard, and Captain Kidd! Wasn't it better to have lived in the "golden age of piracy" than at other times? Well, I'm glad I wasn't around then.

These kinds of guys targeted merchant ships and their cargo of gold, spices, textiles, etc. The Caribbean, the American coast, West Africa, and the Indian Ocean were hotspots, at the time. Of course, this didn't mean other seas were taboo, either.

Although pirating can bring to our minds the adventurers of high seas, pirates are criminals in any day or age. Their operations are in recorded history as far back as 1200 BC.

Yet, surprisingly, the swashbuckling guys had codes of conduct. Their captains were elected by the crew and the important decision were made collectively. If this wasn't democracy, I don't know what is! Despite the inherent dangers!

On the other hand, modern piracy is feared by the international shipping industry as it mostly happens in those areas where political corruption, economic troubles, and weak law enforcement offer a welcome mat to these criminals, who use a variety of methods for their crimes. They can hold up small speedboats or hijack ships, and they use GPS tracking and fancy satellite phones so they can coordinate their attacks, often aiming for ransom payments.

An online search says, "Naval patrols by international coalitions, such as NATO’s Operation Ocean Shield and the European Union’s Operation Atalanta, have been deployed in piracy-prone areas...Today, piracy is most prevalent off the coast of Somalia, in the Gulf of Guinea, and in parts of Southeast Asia."

The bottomline is pirates are violent, disruptive criminals, and pirating--old or new--should not be offered to kids in cartoon forms or in any other form as a romantic and lovable way of being. Yes, Hanna Barbera and others...Not even Captain Hook and Smee and other pirates of the Neverland, and no cute parrot on any pirate's shoulder, either. You never know what or who a kid would want to emulate, especially those kids who resist growing up.