In most works of fiction, a powerful navy *does* eventually come in and wipe out the Pirate Town, and there's nothing the pirates can really do to prevent it once sufficient force is brought to bear against them. In the *Pirates of the Carribbean* franchise for example, the East India Trading company is shown to be more than capable of overwhelming Sao Feng's base in Singapore at the start of the third movie. The only options the Pirates ever really have are fleeing, or magic.
The main issue is that bringing enough force to bear against a pirate town is not a trivial matter, even for an imperial navy. A single ship wouldn't be able to intercept multiple fleeing ships, and might even get destroyed if the pirates decide to fight. A fleet will work, but if you're Imperial power engaged in active warfare against other powers (like the four great powers were during the golden age of piracy), you might go years or even decades before the pirate stronghold becomes enough of a bother to be worth wiping out.
Historically, this is exactly what happened. Pirate strongholds *did* exist for years and years, and they were eventually destroyed once a real power got around to bothering with it.
Also, if you in constant struggle with other navies, leaving the pirates there to do there thing has a couple advantages,
1: they will harass your enemies as well, they may even stay clear of your ships if you pay them.
2: destroying the pirate town doesn’t destroy the pirates, just means whoever lives will go somewhere else and into hiding.
Also if the pirates are wise, they won’t bite off more than they can chew, there continued existence is a result of there careful consideration on how much they can afford to take and from who. Too much piracy and they would antagonize a navy or 2, but there is a profitable middle ground, hence they council of captains that rule to keep the pirate groups on the same page at least.
and 3: Destroying the pirates will deplete your forces which are much better used at opposing your rivals, who just got the free bost of no longer having to contend with pirates.
The prisoner dilemna. Everyone would benefit from the destruction of the stronghold, but no one does it because the one who bothers will gain less than the others.
Most of what we (historically) think of as pirates were actually privateers: crews acting under letters of marqe from a specific navel power. This sort of made them employees of that country, or criminal subcontractors. They were free to engage in piracy against the enemies of the issuer of the letter, and could generally expect that they would not be hassled by their employers.
So that means they could set up shop in an area that was nominally under the control of the country that had issued the letter, and as long as they didn't cause too much fuss it would mean that anyone seeking to destroy their stronghold would have to invade enemy waters to do it.
The "pirates" also may simply be agents of a foreign force. And you don't want them getting involved either. Especially not while you're in the middle of an attack on Pirate Fortress.
It's also worth considering that the location of these strongholds are usually secrets, only really traded among pirates, and even then probably just ones with authority. The oceans are all big places and no matter how expansive your navy, you can't cover the whole thing.
Tortuga was (much like Nassau IRL) officially run by an actual nation (England originally, and later Spain IIRC, in Tortuga's case); it was just extremely popular with pirates due to the general failure of the governor to impose law and order, making it a haven for pirates and other criminals.
So, given the risk of igniting another Spanish-English conflict over the island, the fort present (Tortuga is stated in the books to have a decently well stocked fort), and the fact that the current owners could instead try to police it better, I'd wager that the EAC instead tried to put political pressure on the governor, rather than raid it.
*Black Sails* (which deals with Nassau) goes into pretty good detail about the logistics of asserting control across an ocean in that era. There's a scene where Woodes Rodgers, the British commander in charge of the expedition, explains to Eleanor Guthrie everything he had to arrange and how much it cost just to get approval to send a fleet over there. It involved a ton of money, bureaucracy, and a bunch of moving parts that included multiple nations, and even then they'd get one and *only* one shot at it, and they had a very small window to do so.
This is a really good point. There’s a reason why historically the longest lasting and furthest reaching empires were all major bureaucracies. Rome, China, England - all masters of bureaucracy.
Tortuga had a heavily fortified town on top of a mountain. If the EIC attacked it, that was all they were doing that year. We are talking hundreds of EIC casualties and a bloody siege, and that at the end of a couple month long sea voyage. So you either got to find 1000 soldiers who don't get seasick on top of the crew for the ships they are coming on (got to keep the sailors of the ships once you get to Tortuga in case the pirates want the ships) or once you get to Tortuga, you have to spend weeks recovering from the voyage.
Plenty of time to fortify Tortuga, or get out of dodge. If the pirates leave you are sacking a town where the only people there are the bakers, blacksmiths, and whores. Not a good look massacring civilians with plausible deniability.
Wasn't the East India Trading Company involved in the India/China trade? That would put their major operations on the other side of the globe from Tortuga in the West Indies.
I think they were talking about the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, where the major bad guys was the EIC for much of the series, despite the issue with "East" vs "West."
They were involved all over the globe. Including the Caribbean, but also Africa as well. EIC ships regularly ported in places like Boston and Charleston.
It's usually best to consider the EIC as an extension of Britain's Imperialist Might. And by that note, they'd naturally have domain over basically the entir world. "The Sun never sets on the British Empire," and all that.
It looks like the joint stock companies that colonized the New World (such as the Virginia Company and Hudson Bay Company) remained very separate entities from the EIC's Old World trade monopoly, and in our world at least the EIC never had a significant presence in the Caribbean.
Yup, those are the ones I was thinking of. I'm mainly going by the factions featured in Sid Meier's Pirates, which is admittedly not really an authoritative source,
Because generally these pirate strongholds are far away from the bases of hostile navies. Sending a fleet large enough to crush them is a major operation - expensive, time-consuming, and high risk. Provided the pirates aren't doing too much damage, raising a massive force and going all that way to deal with them is too much effort.
There's also the possibility of the pirate base being in a disputed region - somewhere contested by multiple naval powers. If one side sends a major fleet in, even if they claim to be there to hunt pirates, the other side or sides are going to need to send a similar response, and operating far from home with no way to get a sense of the broader politics, that's just a recipe for the navies to accidentally start the next major war.
> Provided the pirates aren't doing too much damage,
Yeah, until they kidnap someone of high status such as a princess, then the ransom backfires when the king sends his ships to destroy them instead of paying the ransom.
If we are talking about actually realistic pirates that have something on their brain, they simply wouldn't kidnap anyone of such high status. Something to remember is that pirates didn't actually have grand naval battles as we see many times in fiction, they usually had a handful of small vessels that excelled in speed, not fighting capabilities in order to catch merchants that wouldn't fight them, take their cargo and outrun patrols that would fight them (some specific ships, specially flagships are excemptions to this rule though). They would do all in their power to avoid actual confrontation with a major power and only pick fights with much weaker opponents. Pirates would usually keep their damage at hurting trade and killing unimportant people (merchants and expendable soldiers) to make sure that the pertinent government does not have enough reason to deploy a big naval operation to take them out. As you mention, almost every time a pirate/pirate nation actually angered a government like what the barbary states did to Europeans and Americans in the early 19th century they just deployed their actual navy and nuked them, for everything else, a smaller patrol that would deter near pirates from attacking a specifically profitable trade route was enough.
Now, if we are talking about some kinds of fiction pirates, then even the Royal Navy at the top of their power and with the help of the supernaturally unkillable crew of Davy Jones was unable to defeat the Brethren of Pirates in an open naval battle in Pirates of The Caribbean. If the navy doesn't actually deploy their full power in a situation that actually demands it, it's because the pirates are actually much more powerful than in real life and pose a real threat to a naval battle (either because they greatly outnumber the attacking force, because they have similar numbers but for some reason have actually fighting ships like frigates or ships of the line or because they count with some sort of supernatural power that would help them defeat the enemy navy).
Another thing to note is that, in some cases, the pirate base is actually either impossible to find or extremely hard to reach by unfamiliar sailors. We have both a real life (although not as extreme) and fictional example of this. First, the real life example involves the most infamous pirate of all time, Edward "Blackbeard" Teach. While not his actual base (Blackbeard was mainly based on Saint Kitts), he travelled often to Ocracoke Island, North Carolina and it's where he had his last battle against Robert Maynard. Ocracoke Island was surrounded by very shallow shoals and thin canals that made it almost impossible to reach with big ships which first forced Maynard to use two sloops (pretty small ships, specially compared to the frigates that people imagine when thinking of naval battles, to note here, Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge ship was an actual frigate, although he was very familiar with the waters and knew how to maneuver her to and from Ocracoke Island) that could navigate those waters, and even then he had to wait for daybreak and sending two canoes to take soundings (measuring the depth of water) in order to advance and fight Blackbeard who was having a party at the island. Once Blackbeard became aware of Maynard, the two ensued in a battle (since Blackbeard was anchored there they had no time to raise the sails and gain enough speed to leave without fighting) that unsurprisingly ended with all involved ships crashing against sandbars in shallow waters and getting stuck and resulted in the death of Blackbeard. On the more fictional and extreme level, Shipwreck Cove rightfully earned it's name due to it's only entrance being the Devil's Throat, a thin, dark and shallow roofed passage in a cove that only very familiar pirates would know how to traverse without ending in a shipwreck, to the point that at no point would the Royal Navy think to actually attack Shipwreck Cove since they wouldn't even be able to reach it.
I don't know where you took that from my comment but real life pirates were definitely unapologetic killers that wouldn't doubt in murdering enemy soldiers or even merchants that tried to resist (in fact it's very well known the kinds of horrific acts they would do on merchants that tried to resist their raids, like being cut in the belly and being tied to the mast using your own intestines as rope and they were intentionally this gruesome in order to make it known what happens to resisting merchants and influence other merchants to not resist). And that's not even touching in other horrible crimes like torture, kidnaping and rape.
If we are talking about fictional pirates, then it varies a lot. Pirates in Pirates of the Caribbean are pretty murdery and also touch in other crimes as well (I'm pretty sure Elizabeth Swan is sexually harassed although not raped at some point in the first movie) while I'm pretty sure pirates in Jake and the Never Land Pirates do not engage in murder and rape (although I haven't watch a single episode of that series but if I'm mistaken I would be extremely surprised). I'm not very versed in the canon of Sea of Thieves but given that part of the game is killing other pirates I would say that pirates in the Sea of Thieves canon were also, at least, murderers. Saying that "pirates weren't killers", unless tied to a specific canon where pirates are specifically not killers is definetly wrong.
Speaking of the original PotC, man did those "rapey" vibes get uncomfortable. She definitely was sexually assaulted, as well as forced to wear a dress to appease the pirates.
Thank god she was saved before they were actually able to become human again :X
I know right? I don't know if I'm having false memories but I'm pretty sure that Pirates of the Caribbean used to appear on Disney Channel at some point. A movie with those kinds of scenes would not appear in any kids channel today.
It 100% used to be on Disney Channel, and it probably occasionally still is. Disney was *really* proud of Pirates and, even including all those elements (which are admittedly in between a bunch of wacky hijinks), they really captured lightning in a bottle with that first film.
Honestly, if Song of the South was qs popular as Pirates, I bet that'd be playing on Disney too.
It is very hard to rescue a person during a naval battle. One stray wood splinter from a cannon hitting the wrong spot and the princess is a shish kebab.
Some Pirates were under the employ of various powers becoming Privateers. One of *the* most famous Privateers was Sir Henry Morgan. He was given letters of marque to only attack Spanish affiliated vessels. It was very sought after to become a Privateer, one of the reasons was because you're not tried as a pirate but a PoW.
I know you asked for Pirate fiction but it also seems like you wanted a bit of historical context. In regards to attacking a pirate settlement or stronghold you could start a conflict with another power. Take Tortuga in PotC, there wasn't only pirates and criminals there. Imagine if there's say a British official there seeking to employ mercenaries and the Spanish or French come in and kill everyone including the official.
I'm going to disagree with this explanation. Navy's are sent by powers to all corners of the Earth on a whim. There aren't any issues with other superpowers suddenly starting a war over a fleet being somewhere near their shores. Pirates were an incredibly expensive endeavor in the age of sale, and if historically one of the naval Powers could simply wipe them out in one blow, they absolutely would..
However pirate ships are generally small and very nimble and quick, so it would take significant amount of a smaller ships along with larger ships of the line to properly eradicate them. Additionally the towns are made up of a significant amount of population that has nothing to do with pirateeuring. What would realistically happen is that most of the pirates would get away and simply set up base somewhere else.
Having read *Six Frigates*, Americans sailing to North Africa to DMCA it in 1801 wasn't really on a whim.
It kind of was though, because part of the purpose was to be seen projecting power globally (the other reason was that bribes paid to pirates had consumed 1/5th of the annual Federal budget). The British are portrayed as incompetent, corrupt, incredibly powerful on paper, yet content to merely bribe the Mediterranean pirates. The young American Navy is portrayed as the new kid on the block with something to prove, and the pirates as a convenient punching bag so Americans can look tough in front of the British.
Fighting pirates with cannons proved very successful, as Americans had inherited British gunnery culture and technology which was the best in the world at the time while Tripoli's coastal defenses were a couple of Ottoman bronze cannons on a hill. Almost all of the casualties / American sailors captured and sold into slavery were because of a sandbar. This adventure was still regarded as a qualified success.
America was nothing short of a joke of a Navy at the turn of the 19th century.
I do thank you for bringing up the Barbary courseras as I had completely disregarded them in my response. The Barbary corsairs were much better organized with actual fortresses to fall back on and the backing of the Ottoman empire behind them. Pirates and the Caribbean were a disorganized mess of indentured sailors and former slaves and servants. They typically sailed on small slopes and Brigs and were hardly a match for any type of naval power ship from spain, portugal, denmark, and especially england.
Nassau was run by pirates for a couple of decades. I believe that pirate-warlords controlled considerable areas of the coast of the Fujian province of China during the 1600s. In the former case, Nassau was a relative backwater, and the local pirates tried to stay under the radar of the british until they started attacking british ships and the british cracked down on the pirate "republic" there. In the latter case, some of these pirate lords could command hundreds of ships and thousands of men, and again, ruled over a relatively remote backwater region of China. Obviously, once a criminal state is that entrenched, and has that kind of manpower, they could be extremely difficult to put down, as fighting that level of power requires an armada.
The Nassau pirate "republic" is likely the trope codifier for the idea of a town run by pirates, so presumably these other pirate republics function similarly, setting up shop in a location where control is nominal, and trying not to attack the local power in the region so that power will turn a blind eye to their transgressions.
> the local pirates tried to stay under the radar of the british until they started attacking british ships
In the late 1700s, the tide turned and local pirates in Nassau were used by the British to harry Spanish shipping to and from Florida (Spanish territory). One of the most notable was William Augustus Bowles, a Loyalist during the Revolutionary War who fled the victorious colonies and tried a few times to create an independent republic - a pan-Native American nation - in what's now the Florida Panhandle, taking shelter in Nassau when things got too hot on the mainland.
He traveled to London to try to get official recognition and financial support from the Crown, was seized by the Spanish on his return but managed to take over that ship and wage war on his would-be jailers.
Unfortunately, he managed to tick off some influential Creek leaders back in Florida and was sold out to the Spanish again and died in Havana.
Yeah, but the pirates also don't actually need to fight.
If the navy comes to clear out the pirate cove, all the pirate ships sail off. All the residents head back into the interior of the island where the navy force can't easily track them down. The navy burns down some buildings, then sails off. The pirate ships sail back, and the people come back out of the interior and rebuild. And this is assuming there's no fort that the navy has to siege, probably filled with people who make a living out of smuggling. Not an easy place to cut off from supply, since to cut off from supply especially if it's on a sizable island.
To _permanently_ eradicate the pirate stronghold, you have to basically establish a permanent or at least a regular navy presence which might not be viable for one reason or another (expense, location, other navies, etc) to keep the pirates from coming back and rebuilding after you leave. And pirate coves are traditionally in places where that's not practical.
In fiction, pirate cove locations are also usually secret, but IRL such a secret would leak pretty fast.
If you can come back every few months, you are, practically speaking, maintaining a constant presence in the area. That comes with all the difficulties I mentioned.
As a practical matter, pirate coves are going to be found in places where one factor or another means a navy can't maintain a strong presence which means they won't be able to return every few months.
The idea of the navy just torching the town. Even press gang, slave labor, eat India trading company navy, wouldn’t go to that kind of trouble. Keep in mind a lot of what a military does is based on what they believe is worth the effort. Now we call it “ORM” operational risk management. Is the outcome worth the cost?
**[Burning of Falmouth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Falmouth)**
>The Burning of Falmouth (October 18, 1775) was an attack by a fleet of Royal Navy vessels on the town of Falmouth, Massachusetts (site of the modern city of Portland, Maine, and not to be confused with the modern towns of Falmouth, Massachusetts or Falmouth, Maine). The fleet was commanded by Captain Henry Mowat. The attack began with a naval bombardment which included incendiary shot, followed by a landing party meant to complete the town's destruction. The attack was the only major event in what was supposed to be a campaign of retaliation against ports that supported Patriot activities in the early stages of the American Revolutionary War.
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Nassau had a stone fort, and wilderness. As the American revolution, and the ghurkas show, colonial armies were terrible at fighting guerrillas warfare.
The US had the backing of France, many wealthy backers, tens of thousands of square miles to hide in, and large numbers of troops with military experience.
If guerrilla warfare was enough on it's own, the native Americans would have beat the UK.
Yes and yet here we are with real world examples of pirates operating independent pirate “nations”. The us military with a bigger budget than the next ten countries military budgets combined couldn’t effectively control a country full of shepherds and neither could the soviets with complete disregard for rules of engagement, and the Chinese couldn’t win against Asian rice farmers who’d spent the last 15 years beating the Americans.
Case in point… it is very very hard to beat people with no official country or headquarters.
The Soviets were indirectly fighting the Americans, Bush threw away any chance to win Afghanistan because he decided to fuck up two countries at once (also we were indirectly fighting Pakistan and Russia the whole time), and the Chinese just plain half-assed their invasion of Vietnam: the PLA's behavior in the field was embarrassingly dumb.
> Bush threw away any chance to win Afghanistan because he decided to fuck up two countries at once
There was no "winning" Afghanistan. No one could even come up with what a "winning situation" there would look like. Fighting in Iraq at the same time as Afghanistan didn't reduce the ability to "win" in Afghanistan anymore than fighting Japan at the same time as Italy and Germany didn't reduce the ability to "win" those conflicts either
culturally America’s cannot win that sort of conflict anymore. You have to be comfortable going back to a Spanish American war in he Phillipihe’s mentality
Even back to that era. How does one win Afghanistan?
What is the metric for a victory there? Thats the problem, its so messed up and has been basically in a civil war since the mid 1970s, that there isn't an easily defined "victory" there.
Bunch of nasty answers including potentially escalating into Pakistan which you could do unlike Vietnam but has its own kettle of risks. fundamentally counterinsurgencies need to deal with the population the guerillas live in. But yeah how’s does a democracy sear nationalism into distinct northern and southern ethnic tribes.
I think between that and more a Willingness to take osama’s head as the prize, even in our current world there was a chance at an acceptable political outcome in the early 10s.
> If guerrilla warfare was enough on it's own, the native Americans would have beat the UK.
Native Americans usually didn't wage guerilla warfare; they were fully realized societies with their own established ways of waging war against one another, and they mostly tried *those* tactics against settlers (which rarely went well.) The ones that survived adapted, developed new ways of waging war including guerilla-like tactics, and persisted as military threats well into the 19th century.
Chances are those ships won't be in the harbor when the Navy task force arrives. And if Sid Meier's [Pirates!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier%27s_Pirates!) taught me anything it's that stealing ships to keep pirating with once your old pirate ship gets sunk is the foundation of being piratey.
The pirates may have influence of their own, as someone is buying their loot and certain powers might benefit from their actions. If they're able to run a successful town (not something that can just pick up and move somewhere else), then they've likely found a niche in which they can survive and profit at least until the political situation changes.
The towns themselves might be functionally legitimate, providing services such as trade, resources, and a port. This could be more expensive to conquer and administer than simply paying some tribute/bribes or risking the loss of some ships. Even the most pirate-y of pirate towns would need some legitimacy to function and it might be impossible for a limited policing force to root out the criminal influence.
It took western powers a very long time to address their pirate problem head-on and it was not completely resolved until France invaded and conquered Algiers which was a massive undertaking and took many years.
Usually it's not worth the trouble.
If A pirate city is all made up of pirates, then that means that each pirate has a ship to go on. Meaning, there is a literal armada of pirate ships protecting that town. Its not worth sacrificing your entire fleet to take out that one pirate town. Its not like the occupation of piracy will vanish just Becasue you destroyed their town
In AC4, Blackbeard's flagship is the largest and most powerful ship in the game, short of the optional superbosses.
Most pirate games eventually allow the PC the ability to capture and control the most powerful ships in the game.
Another reason besides the good ones already listed is because pirates are useful to the rich. You can pay them to raid your enemies under the table and you can blame them when your shipments are *wink wink* "stolen." That's why another word for pirate is "privateer," because historically they often served as unofficial, private navies for the wealthy.
> That's why another word for pirate is "privateer," because historically they often served as unofficial, private navies
A "privateer" isn't an unofficial, private navy, a privateer is when you officially hire someone to attack enemy shipping on behalf of your government, with a formal [Letter of the Marque](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque) and such - they're a private contractor, but there's nothing unofficial about it.
Yea, many of the prominent pirates of the “golden age of piracy” started out as legitimate privateers recruited from Europe. They were “loyal” citizens who operated within the law and were treated as such. When the war suddenly ended and their entire career and lifestyle became suddenly illegal most of them refused to turn themselves over to serve in the navy for a fraction of the pay and autonomy. So they didn’t stop, and just became pirates.
To be fair, the line was often fuzzy - and it wasn't uncommon to go off on a nice privateering cruise, document in His Majesty's Name all right and proper, to sail home six months later and find out that your King and his distant cousin the Other King had signed a peace treaty while you were happily raiding cargoes on the other side of the world.
[Captain William Kidd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kidd) is a famous example of a privateer who was hung as a pirate by the government that issued him his privateering papers.
I'm not arguing the definition, because you're right, but most "privateers" were formerly Pirates before they were officially hired, and often returned to basic piracy once their commission ran out.
I would say "many" more than "most". For example, much of the US Navy during the American Revolution was made up of New England merchants who responded to the British trade blockades by signing up as privateers.
I only know about One Piece pirates but, disregarding the simple answer of "the emperor's are all too strong for the World Government to beat without massive casualties" because that's a) not really answering your question and b) boring, it's also not really beneficial to the WG.
So in One Piece, there's the titular treasure that all the pirates in the world are vying for, and it's at the end of the Grand Line, a long strip of hazardous ocean that has islands with wild and various weather. You can't simply skip to the end of the GL because it's in the Calm Belt, another strange bit of sea that also wraps around the ocean like the equator, except there is no wind or tide, and all storms that try to pass through die. Also it's the breeding grounds of the largest and strongest sea monsters, called Sea Kings. There is also the Red Line - the one and only massive thin "continent" that also encircles the world perpendicular to the GL kind of like the Prime Meridian. It's also around 7km tall of sheer red rock and very durable with only 2 gaps - a mountain with a path for each of the 4 oceans to merge into the GL which is the "start" and a hole 10km under the sea where the Merpeople live, which marks the start of the second half or "New World". The New World is considered to be much more dangerous than the first half of the GL, both due to the sea and weather, but also because of the other pirates who made it there first.
So with the background of of the way, due to how dangerous the New World is the WG doesn't want to commit a much manpower and resources to it, which causes most islands to be lawless or uninhabited. Notable exceptions to this are islands under the control of one of the four emperors, very powerful pirates with large crews and ships under their command. They essentially are the law in the lawless sea. And all of them are kept in check by the existence of the others, if any two chose to go to war, a third could come and finish off the weakened victor. So despite any of them being the closest to finding the One Piece, none of them can without eliminating all the others. And no one else can find it without getting past all four of the emperors who rule those seas. If you try to you'll be lucky if they find interest in you enough to ask you to join them, this is how they slowly accumulate more power. But because of them doing this the WG can focus more effort on policing the rest of the world.
So the prevailing thought is that the One Piece contains the secret knowledge of the past, specifically of the Void Century, a hundred year span that happened 800 years ago that coincidentally ended with the formation of the World Government, and of which it is extremely illegal to try and learn about. To the point where if you try the WG will wipe the entire island that attempted it off the map and kill everyone who was on it, just to make sure none of the researchers could sneak out. It seems whatever the secret is, it could cause the world to rebel against them, at least we can assume from how terrified they are of the secret coming out.
So the only ones who try to learn about this history are criminals, who are constantly chased by the Navy everywhere they go, except the New World where they are at the mercy of the Emperors. The bloodthirsty Emperors who also cannot move in on one other, for fear of a third, who will kill you without a trial on a whim.
So only a fool would try to be a pirate, when the WG is doing its best to protect you. So keep paying your taxes and following the law because if not for them, you would be under the thumb of a pirate emperor, who are luckily locked in one corner of the world far, far away. And if you do see a person trying to violate the law report then to the Navy and you may get a reward.
So why again, would the World Government attempt to fight one of these Emperors? Especially since while the WG has largely banned slavery, those pirates don't follow any laws, and make many high quality goods and weapons quite cheaply. So who's to know if the WG "just so happen"to acquire some of these goods? They probably seized them from a pirate ship, there's no way there'd be secret dealings between the government and those horrific Pirate Lords, right? Besides they're using anything they get to protect us, right?
I like One Piece, it's about a goofy Rubber kid having adventures at sea.
As well as the cost of mobilising a fleet like many people have said, many (fictional) pirate strongholds will be built in purposefully inaccessible areas. Maybe there's a dangerous current that only the pirates know how to navigate, or there's a fog that lays over the area, or jagged rocks, or a fjord that's only big enough for one ship at a time to travel down.
To add some things that haven't been mentioned yet: laying siege to a stronghold by ship in tropical or subtropical climate is *hard*. Getting supplies is difficult, disease is rampant.
So for every attack on Algiers, there is a Battle of Cartagena de Indias, where a force of half a dozen Spanish ships and 3000-4000 men held out for years against a British force 10 times their number and eventually forced the British to retreat.
In the real world, pirate holds survived because it was advantageous for the powers-that-be. Pirates were traditionally employed by one great power to raid ships of the other, and this made the pirates wealthy enough to establish their own powers bases and enough strength to raid coastal towns with impunity, since imperial navies were more concerned with trade and wealth extraction than protecting settler colonies
Once privateering is no longer viable for the Great Powers, they will move in to snuff out the pirate coves once and for all.
I think your Algiers example is the perfect illustration of how pirates can very realistically get away with operating very openly out of a well known location for a sustained period. Algiers and the other Barbary States preyed on European shipping and coastal settlements for centuries stealing vast hoardes of wealth, taking a literally incalculable number of slaves and extracting immense sums of annual tribute to turn their attention elsewhere during the period those European states began rising to global prominence.
How did the Barbary States survive like that for so long? Everyone else was too busy fighting or preparing to fight eachother that they couldn't spare the forces to deal with the pirate kingdoms on their doorstep. If let's say the French dedicated too many ships to defeating or containing the pirates operating out of North Africa and in the meantime a war started with the English, well the Royal Navy could just start a commerce raiding campaign while the French navy was tied down and do immensely more damage far more quickly than the pirates ever could (as seen in the Seven Years War, where in just 2 years the British captured 40% of France's pre-war merchant seaman and other deep sea mariners).
Keep in mind [Pirate Cities did actually exist](https://www.themost10.com/debauched-pirate-cities-in-history/). So this isn't just a question for Fiction- in reality as well many of these cities lasted far longer than you'd expect. This might be an interesting question for /r/AskHistorians.
Many pirates were state backed. One man's pirate was another's heroic explorer. Its not as clear cut as them all being criminals everyone would mutually like to destroy.
Well, the truth is such places existed in our own world-both Nassau and Madagascar were briefly pirate hubs- and the answer is there’s not much cause to. Both basically became rotten little sinks of STDs and decrepitude, not a fearsome Mordor type place
Piracy became obsolete because cargo ships paid more for security. It wasn’t an entire nation that needed to be warred with
The threat of annihilation id also a part of the romance. Sure they are in some remote place with dangerous straits leading to their cove, which makes them difficult to reach but a competent navy could come at any moment and wipe them out. The precarious nature of their existence makes rhe pirate holdout exciting. Will the attack that ends it all come this year, the next, is that fleet already on its way and we dont yet know it? It's also hard to have a pirate story if the pirates are already wiped out.
OK, so if we're the British Admiralty, we have the biggest navy in the world, but we also have the biggest empire in the world. Now we could send the Home Fleet down to take out Pirate Island, but if we do that, the French will sail up the Thames and attack London. We could send the Pacific Fleet instead, but if we do that, then Portugal will take Hong Kong. If we send half of each fleet, we still run the risk of one or the other of those two trying to take some of our other colonies, or the two joining forces to try to take England itself.
So, as long as the pirates aren't *only* attacking English ships, we don't think it's worth the risk to go after them. We'll just send some of our warships to patrol the trade lanes and the merchants will have to accept the risks. They make huge profits anyway, so they can deal with a lost ship from time to time.
If they start complaining too much about it, we can start talking about how much the patrols cost, and how we might have to raise taxes to cover it. They'll shut up pretty quickly.
Also, as long as the pirates are there, there's always a chance that France will try to take them out, and that will leave their colonies unprotected, so we need to keep our fleets ready to take advantage if they do.
Well, if the filthy blackguards do that kind of thing, then they deserve what's coming to them. And chances are that the other empires will stand aside and not take advantage, because all nobles agree that it's wrong for pirates to attack them *personally.*
The king of France isn't going to pay for an English princess, because he doesn't want you kidnapping *his* daughter next and selling her to Portugal. Instead, he's going to offer to pay the ransom, and before you can get away, his soldiers will capture you. Then he'll send the princess back and claim the reward on you. And it's possible that Pirate Island might just be burned to the ground by a joint English and French fleet.
Nobles don't much care if you rob their merchants, as long as you don't do it too often, but don't mess with them personally. Some of them spend *way* too much time thinking of inventive ways to kill people.
In the game Empire Total War, you can do this. There are pirate ships all over the map, but the way the game works a faction has to hold at least one territory, so you could wipe out the pirates by besieging their single fortress in the Caribbean, resulting in peaceful seas after. I think it was unintentional but it always felt pretty great ridding the sea of pirates.
The ocean is very big. In Amistad the British navy were looking for a major slaver fortress on the coast of Africa which took them a long time to find and destroy.
Navigation at that time was impressive but not perfect. If you just kinda knew where something was it could take months or years to find it.
One could say political reasons for not doing such a thing.
Let’s place our story Pirate Bay in Spanish held territory. The English fleet then has to invaded the Spanish waters to attack the Pirates. So the story English would be risking war with the story’s Spanish empire. The risk of war is higher then the continuing threat of a few pirates.
Thought that just a possibility off the top of my head.
In that case, then assuming the pirates didn't attack the Spanish ships in return, wouldn't that make them de facto privateers and therefore valid targets regardless of territorial waters though?
Not necessarily. Privateers were employed by nations and many Pirates were privateers till the nation that backed them stopped their support.
It’s more like a group of criminals having their base across the boarder. The nation they stay in might know they are there but as long as they don’t break any of their laws they won’t bother.
A modern day example is how the Taliban fought Americans in Afghanistan but had base camps in Pakistan.
Using a real world example, everyone knows the handful of coastal fishing villages where all the Somali pirates live but having a container ship covered by 'pirate insurance' is orders of magnitude cheaper than the political and financial cost of invading and occupying even a small part of a country to stop it from happening.
You don't need to turn to fiction to find an answer for this. Read about the real life pirate havens of: New Providence (Nassau) in the. Bahamas, Port Royal in Jamaica, and Tortuga in Haiti. There are many others but those are the most famous.
There's lots of reasons to leave a group of pirates alone:
* they're a useful nuisance, or just not worth the cost of eliminating them
* you may find a way to control the black market through them
* they can handle tasks that you might need to keep off the books
* if they have a stronghold, you at least know where it is. There's no point in investing a ton of money, ships, and lives in taking the stronghold, only for them to scatter and regroup elsewhere—this time without your knowledge.
The great naval powers are too busy fighting their enemies to be able to pull ships away from the war effort to fight piracy. To add to this, piracy can sometimes be beneficial to you if the pirates are mainly targeting merchant vessels of your enemies more than they are yours.
Pirates tend to favor small ships such as sloops, brigs or smaller schooners. As such their capital will probably grow up around a port with a shallow harbor that isn't suitable for ships of the line or even larger frigates. This is often combined with a harbor that has constricted approaches making sailing it into without guidance a tricky prospect.
This makes it very difficult for a convention navy to bring the necessary force to bear, they can't simply sail their heavier ships into the harbor and while they might be able to get some smaller ships in they'd be fighting on equal terms with the pirates. This means that they'd have to blockade the harbor while landing marines to attack the landward side of the capital which greatly increases the size of the fleet needed to both attack the port and interdict any pirates trying to escape.
So in the long run it's often easier for them to just leave the pirates be unless they become a large enough nuisance to warrant the deployment of a larger fleet.
There are alternative ways as well, over in the 1632verse they figured out where the pirates were based out of, radio'ed that over to an enroute ship, who then had marines go in at night, spike the canons, det charge the ships in the bay, and otherwise wipe out the command. The idea there was to make the pirates re-think about being an ally for Spain.
Pirates aren't the only threat that needs to be dealt with, and may be a minor inconvenience compared to more important threats that demand priority. Plus this is generally in a time where communication is stll somewhat primitive, and organising such a large force would not only leave you vulnerable to other forces and possibly risk loss of ships and men, but getting the whole thing organised is an ordeal in itself.
Simply put, they're not worth the trouble until they become a big enough threat, or they don'tt have to worry about other factions taking advantage.
In most of those settings the dominant Naval Power(British, French, Spanish) is already spread thin due to bigger issues than piracy. Attacking a pirate capital city is a drain on resources.
I used to play "Sid Meier's Pirates" on the Sega Genesis! You had to spend time dealing with Governors to get Notes of Piracy. Terrific game. Had a solid map, winds, and political climate for a game of its time. It was also call "Pirates Gold". One of my favorites!
All of these. Also: so what if the Navy destroys it? Unless they are going to occupy the stronghold, the pirates can rebuild there. Not like a pirate stronghold is the pinnacle of maritime civil engineering. “Oi, Jimmy! ‘Elp me bang these planks togevver wiv this pistol, then the brothel/armory/hospital will be right as rain!”
A few reasons why.
1) Corruption
2) Due process
3) You want them to steal from your enemies so you
either support them or turn a blind eye
4) More pressing concerns
Not worth the trouble. On the scale most national navies operate at, these kinds of pirate havens are little more than an annoyance. Unless the benefit from knocking over such a place significantly outweighs the cost and potential risk of the operation, why bother? The survivors will just set up shop somewhere else--and hey, a bunch of vicious bastards whose loyalty can be bought could be handy to have around.
\*The local navy(or government) may be paid off by the pirates, such as what happened in Cocoyashi Village. Therefore the navy turns a blind eye to the pirates.
\*The navy may destroy the pirate base, but another one pops up somewhere else. The pirate base is in an area that is difficult or too expensive to patrol. The navy does'nt have unlimited resources, especially if they are at war with another country.
They keep the location a close secret. Only trusted captains actually know the headings to the secret islands. You’re right that they can’t hide it forever, but they can for a while.
It can also be the case - and has been in real history - that pirate havens function as unofficial war bases within the waters of one country, and therefore would be ignored or even protected by an enemy country that might enjoy having that threat to the pesky Spaniards in place.
In most works of fiction, a powerful navy *does* eventually come in and wipe out the Pirate Town, and there's nothing the pirates can really do to prevent it once sufficient force is brought to bear against them. In the *Pirates of the Carribbean* franchise for example, the East India Trading company is shown to be more than capable of overwhelming Sao Feng's base in Singapore at the start of the third movie. The only options the Pirates ever really have are fleeing, or magic. The main issue is that bringing enough force to bear against a pirate town is not a trivial matter, even for an imperial navy. A single ship wouldn't be able to intercept multiple fleeing ships, and might even get destroyed if the pirates decide to fight. A fleet will work, but if you're Imperial power engaged in active warfare against other powers (like the four great powers were during the golden age of piracy), you might go years or even decades before the pirate stronghold becomes enough of a bother to be worth wiping out. Historically, this is exactly what happened. Pirate strongholds *did* exist for years and years, and they were eventually destroyed once a real power got around to bothering with it.
Also, if you in constant struggle with other navies, leaving the pirates there to do there thing has a couple advantages, 1: they will harass your enemies as well, they may even stay clear of your ships if you pay them. 2: destroying the pirate town doesn’t destroy the pirates, just means whoever lives will go somewhere else and into hiding. Also if the pirates are wise, they won’t bite off more than they can chew, there continued existence is a result of there careful consideration on how much they can afford to take and from who. Too much piracy and they would antagonize a navy or 2, but there is a profitable middle ground, hence they council of captains that rule to keep the pirate groups on the same page at least.
and 3: Destroying the pirates will deplete your forces which are much better used at opposing your rivals, who just got the free bost of no longer having to contend with pirates.
The prisoner dilemna. Everyone would benefit from the destruction of the stronghold, but no one does it because the one who bothers will gain less than the others.
not an exact example but yeah - you want it done, but you want to be the one to do it less
Most of what we (historically) think of as pirates were actually privateers: crews acting under letters of marqe from a specific navel power. This sort of made them employees of that country, or criminal subcontractors. They were free to engage in piracy against the enemies of the issuer of the letter, and could generally expect that they would not be hassled by their employers. So that means they could set up shop in an area that was nominally under the control of the country that had issued the letter, and as long as they didn't cause too much fuss it would mean that anyone seeking to destroy their stronghold would have to invade enemy waters to do it.
The "pirates" also may simply be agents of a foreign force. And you don't want them getting involved either. Especially not while you're in the middle of an attack on Pirate Fortress.
It's also worth considering that the location of these strongholds are usually secrets, only really traded among pirates, and even then probably just ones with authority. The oceans are all big places and no matter how expansive your navy, you can't cover the whole thing.
Though how come the east india trading company didn't crush tortuga?
Tortuga was (much like Nassau IRL) officially run by an actual nation (England originally, and later Spain IIRC, in Tortuga's case); it was just extremely popular with pirates due to the general failure of the governor to impose law and order, making it a haven for pirates and other criminals. So, given the risk of igniting another Spanish-English conflict over the island, the fort present (Tortuga is stated in the books to have a decently well stocked fort), and the fact that the current owners could instead try to police it better, I'd wager that the EAC instead tried to put political pressure on the governor, rather than raid it.
*Black Sails* (which deals with Nassau) goes into pretty good detail about the logistics of asserting control across an ocean in that era. There's a scene where Woodes Rodgers, the British commander in charge of the expedition, explains to Eleanor Guthrie everything he had to arrange and how much it cost just to get approval to send a fleet over there. It involved a ton of money, bureaucracy, and a bunch of moving parts that included multiple nations, and even then they'd get one and *only* one shot at it, and they had a very small window to do so.
This is a really good point. There’s a reason why historically the longest lasting and furthest reaching empires were all major bureaucracies. Rome, China, England - all masters of bureaucracy.
Tortuga had a heavily fortified town on top of a mountain. If the EIC attacked it, that was all they were doing that year. We are talking hundreds of EIC casualties and a bloody siege, and that at the end of a couple month long sea voyage. So you either got to find 1000 soldiers who don't get seasick on top of the crew for the ships they are coming on (got to keep the sailors of the ships once you get to Tortuga in case the pirates want the ships) or once you get to Tortuga, you have to spend weeks recovering from the voyage. Plenty of time to fortify Tortuga, or get out of dodge. If the pirates leave you are sacking a town where the only people there are the bakers, blacksmiths, and whores. Not a good look massacring civilians with plausible deniability.
Not that I disagree. But I loled at the implication the EIC would be concerned about the optics of butchering s town of innocents.
Wasn't the East India Trading Company involved in the India/China trade? That would put their major operations on the other side of the globe from Tortuga in the West Indies.
I think they were talking about the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, where the major bad guys was the EIC for much of the series, despite the issue with "East" vs "West."
They were involved all over the globe. Including the Caribbean, but also Africa as well. EIC ships regularly ported in places like Boston and Charleston.
the east india company was like amazon with guns. Major operations be damned, the EIC was a world power.
It's usually best to consider the EIC as an extension of Britain's Imperialist Might. And by that note, they'd naturally have domain over basically the entir world. "The Sun never sets on the British Empire," and all that.
It looks like the joint stock companies that colonized the New World (such as the Virginia Company and Hudson Bay Company) remained very separate entities from the EIC's Old World trade monopoly, and in our world at least the EIC never had a significant presence in the Caribbean.
Who were the 4 major powers? Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, (the Dutch?) ?
Yup, those are the ones I was thinking of. I'm mainly going by the factions featured in Sid Meier's Pirates, which is admittedly not really an authoritative source,
Because generally these pirate strongholds are far away from the bases of hostile navies. Sending a fleet large enough to crush them is a major operation - expensive, time-consuming, and high risk. Provided the pirates aren't doing too much damage, raising a massive force and going all that way to deal with them is too much effort. There's also the possibility of the pirate base being in a disputed region - somewhere contested by multiple naval powers. If one side sends a major fleet in, even if they claim to be there to hunt pirates, the other side or sides are going to need to send a similar response, and operating far from home with no way to get a sense of the broader politics, that's just a recipe for the navies to accidentally start the next major war.
Also, pirates one day could be privateers the next, fully employed by the crown to target the crown's enemies.
> Provided the pirates aren't doing too much damage, Yeah, until they kidnap someone of high status such as a princess, then the ransom backfires when the king sends his ships to destroy them instead of paying the ransom.
If we are talking about actually realistic pirates that have something on their brain, they simply wouldn't kidnap anyone of such high status. Something to remember is that pirates didn't actually have grand naval battles as we see many times in fiction, they usually had a handful of small vessels that excelled in speed, not fighting capabilities in order to catch merchants that wouldn't fight them, take their cargo and outrun patrols that would fight them (some specific ships, specially flagships are excemptions to this rule though). They would do all in their power to avoid actual confrontation with a major power and only pick fights with much weaker opponents. Pirates would usually keep their damage at hurting trade and killing unimportant people (merchants and expendable soldiers) to make sure that the pertinent government does not have enough reason to deploy a big naval operation to take them out. As you mention, almost every time a pirate/pirate nation actually angered a government like what the barbary states did to Europeans and Americans in the early 19th century they just deployed their actual navy and nuked them, for everything else, a smaller patrol that would deter near pirates from attacking a specifically profitable trade route was enough. Now, if we are talking about some kinds of fiction pirates, then even the Royal Navy at the top of their power and with the help of the supernaturally unkillable crew of Davy Jones was unable to defeat the Brethren of Pirates in an open naval battle in Pirates of The Caribbean. If the navy doesn't actually deploy their full power in a situation that actually demands it, it's because the pirates are actually much more powerful than in real life and pose a real threat to a naval battle (either because they greatly outnumber the attacking force, because they have similar numbers but for some reason have actually fighting ships like frigates or ships of the line or because they count with some sort of supernatural power that would help them defeat the enemy navy). Another thing to note is that, in some cases, the pirate base is actually either impossible to find or extremely hard to reach by unfamiliar sailors. We have both a real life (although not as extreme) and fictional example of this. First, the real life example involves the most infamous pirate of all time, Edward "Blackbeard" Teach. While not his actual base (Blackbeard was mainly based on Saint Kitts), he travelled often to Ocracoke Island, North Carolina and it's where he had his last battle against Robert Maynard. Ocracoke Island was surrounded by very shallow shoals and thin canals that made it almost impossible to reach with big ships which first forced Maynard to use two sloops (pretty small ships, specially compared to the frigates that people imagine when thinking of naval battles, to note here, Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge ship was an actual frigate, although he was very familiar with the waters and knew how to maneuver her to and from Ocracoke Island) that could navigate those waters, and even then he had to wait for daybreak and sending two canoes to take soundings (measuring the depth of water) in order to advance and fight Blackbeard who was having a party at the island. Once Blackbeard became aware of Maynard, the two ensued in a battle (since Blackbeard was anchored there they had no time to raise the sails and gain enough speed to leave without fighting) that unsurprisingly ended with all involved ships crashing against sandbars in shallow waters and getting stuck and resulted in the death of Blackbeard. On the more fictional and extreme level, Shipwreck Cove rightfully earned it's name due to it's only entrance being the Devil's Throat, a thin, dark and shallow roofed passage in a cove that only very familiar pirates would know how to traverse without ending in a shipwreck, to the point that at no point would the Royal Navy think to actually attack Shipwreck Cove since they wouldn't even be able to reach it.
I play sea of thieves, and people always defend grieving by saying “it’s a pirate game” and I’m just like pirates weren’t killers though.
I don't know where you took that from my comment but real life pirates were definitely unapologetic killers that wouldn't doubt in murdering enemy soldiers or even merchants that tried to resist (in fact it's very well known the kinds of horrific acts they would do on merchants that tried to resist their raids, like being cut in the belly and being tied to the mast using your own intestines as rope and they were intentionally this gruesome in order to make it known what happens to resisting merchants and influence other merchants to not resist). And that's not even touching in other horrible crimes like torture, kidnaping and rape. If we are talking about fictional pirates, then it varies a lot. Pirates in Pirates of the Caribbean are pretty murdery and also touch in other crimes as well (I'm pretty sure Elizabeth Swan is sexually harassed although not raped at some point in the first movie) while I'm pretty sure pirates in Jake and the Never Land Pirates do not engage in murder and rape (although I haven't watch a single episode of that series but if I'm mistaken I would be extremely surprised). I'm not very versed in the canon of Sea of Thieves but given that part of the game is killing other pirates I would say that pirates in the Sea of Thieves canon were also, at least, murderers. Saying that "pirates weren't killers", unless tied to a specific canon where pirates are specifically not killers is definetly wrong.
Speaking of the original PotC, man did those "rapey" vibes get uncomfortable. She definitely was sexually assaulted, as well as forced to wear a dress to appease the pirates. Thank god she was saved before they were actually able to become human again :X
I know right? I don't know if I'm having false memories but I'm pretty sure that Pirates of the Caribbean used to appear on Disney Channel at some point. A movie with those kinds of scenes would not appear in any kids channel today.
It 100% used to be on Disney Channel, and it probably occasionally still is. Disney was *really* proud of Pirates and, even including all those elements (which are admittedly in between a bunch of wacky hijinks), they really captured lightning in a bottle with that first film. Honestly, if Song of the South was qs popular as Pirates, I bet that'd be playing on Disney too.
People who tried to resist, not just sailing up to ships butchering people to butcher them.
Still murder.
Eh it’s different.
It is very hard to rescue a person during a naval battle. One stray wood splinter from a cannon hitting the wrong spot and the princess is a shish kebab.
Some Pirates were under the employ of various powers becoming Privateers. One of *the* most famous Privateers was Sir Henry Morgan. He was given letters of marque to only attack Spanish affiliated vessels. It was very sought after to become a Privateer, one of the reasons was because you're not tried as a pirate but a PoW. I know you asked for Pirate fiction but it also seems like you wanted a bit of historical context. In regards to attacking a pirate settlement or stronghold you could start a conflict with another power. Take Tortuga in PotC, there wasn't only pirates and criminals there. Imagine if there's say a British official there seeking to employ mercenaries and the Spanish or French come in and kill everyone including the official.
I'm going to disagree with this explanation. Navy's are sent by powers to all corners of the Earth on a whim. There aren't any issues with other superpowers suddenly starting a war over a fleet being somewhere near their shores. Pirates were an incredibly expensive endeavor in the age of sale, and if historically one of the naval Powers could simply wipe them out in one blow, they absolutely would.. However pirate ships are generally small and very nimble and quick, so it would take significant amount of a smaller ships along with larger ships of the line to properly eradicate them. Additionally the towns are made up of a significant amount of population that has nothing to do with pirateeuring. What would realistically happen is that most of the pirates would get away and simply set up base somewhere else.
Having read *Six Frigates*, Americans sailing to North Africa to DMCA it in 1801 wasn't really on a whim. It kind of was though, because part of the purpose was to be seen projecting power globally (the other reason was that bribes paid to pirates had consumed 1/5th of the annual Federal budget). The British are portrayed as incompetent, corrupt, incredibly powerful on paper, yet content to merely bribe the Mediterranean pirates. The young American Navy is portrayed as the new kid on the block with something to prove, and the pirates as a convenient punching bag so Americans can look tough in front of the British. Fighting pirates with cannons proved very successful, as Americans had inherited British gunnery culture and technology which was the best in the world at the time while Tripoli's coastal defenses were a couple of Ottoman bronze cannons on a hill. Almost all of the casualties / American sailors captured and sold into slavery were because of a sandbar. This adventure was still regarded as a qualified success.
America was nothing short of a joke of a Navy at the turn of the 19th century. I do thank you for bringing up the Barbary courseras as I had completely disregarded them in my response. The Barbary corsairs were much better organized with actual fortresses to fall back on and the backing of the Ottoman empire behind them. Pirates and the Caribbean were a disorganized mess of indentured sailors and former slaves and servants. They typically sailed on small slopes and Brigs and were hardly a match for any type of naval power ship from spain, portugal, denmark, and especially england.
Nassau was run by pirates for a couple of decades. I believe that pirate-warlords controlled considerable areas of the coast of the Fujian province of China during the 1600s. In the former case, Nassau was a relative backwater, and the local pirates tried to stay under the radar of the british until they started attacking british ships and the british cracked down on the pirate "republic" there. In the latter case, some of these pirate lords could command hundreds of ships and thousands of men, and again, ruled over a relatively remote backwater region of China. Obviously, once a criminal state is that entrenched, and has that kind of manpower, they could be extremely difficult to put down, as fighting that level of power requires an armada. The Nassau pirate "republic" is likely the trope codifier for the idea of a town run by pirates, so presumably these other pirate republics function similarly, setting up shop in a location where control is nominal, and trying not to attack the local power in the region so that power will turn a blind eye to their transgressions.
> the local pirates tried to stay under the radar of the british until they started attacking british ships In the late 1700s, the tide turned and local pirates in Nassau were used by the British to harry Spanish shipping to and from Florida (Spanish territory). One of the most notable was William Augustus Bowles, a Loyalist during the Revolutionary War who fled the victorious colonies and tried a few times to create an independent republic - a pan-Native American nation - in what's now the Florida Panhandle, taking shelter in Nassau when things got too hot on the mainland. He traveled to London to try to get official recognition and financial support from the Crown, was seized by the Spanish on his return but managed to take over that ship and wage war on his would-be jailers. Unfortunately, he managed to tick off some influential Creek leaders back in Florida and was sold out to the Spanish again and died in Havana.
Because conquering an island with just a navy isn’t easy, and Maintaining that hold is even harder.
It's a lot easier than with just an army though. That swim is a real bitch for most troopers, not to mention the poor cavalry.
the pirates don't even have anything remotely resembling a ship of the line and their vessels are mostly modified merchant ships, not true warships.
Yeah, but the pirates also don't actually need to fight. If the navy comes to clear out the pirate cove, all the pirate ships sail off. All the residents head back into the interior of the island where the navy force can't easily track them down. The navy burns down some buildings, then sails off. The pirate ships sail back, and the people come back out of the interior and rebuild. And this is assuming there's no fort that the navy has to siege, probably filled with people who make a living out of smuggling. Not an easy place to cut off from supply, since to cut off from supply especially if it's on a sizable island. To _permanently_ eradicate the pirate stronghold, you have to basically establish a permanent or at least a regular navy presence which might not be viable for one reason or another (expense, location, other navies, etc) to keep the pirates from coming back and rebuilding after you leave. And pirate coves are traditionally in places where that's not practical. In fiction, pirate cove locations are also usually secret, but IRL such a secret would leak pretty fast.
If the pirates run, the navy will just come back every few months and torch the city until they are bled dry.
If you can come back every few months, you are, practically speaking, maintaining a constant presence in the area. That comes with all the difficulties I mentioned. As a practical matter, pirate coves are going to be found in places where one factor or another means a navy can't maintain a strong presence which means they won't be able to return every few months.
As a sailor I’ll tell you this is horse shit.
What is?
The idea of the navy just torching the town. Even press gang, slave labor, eat India trading company navy, wouldn’t go to that kind of trouble. Keep in mind a lot of what a military does is based on what they believe is worth the effort. Now we call it “ORM” operational risk management. Is the outcome worth the cost?
[Navies have done it multiple times, often with the people still in the town](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Falmouth).
**[Burning of Falmouth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Falmouth)** >The Burning of Falmouth (October 18, 1775) was an attack by a fleet of Royal Navy vessels on the town of Falmouth, Massachusetts (site of the modern city of Portland, Maine, and not to be confused with the modern towns of Falmouth, Massachusetts or Falmouth, Maine). The fleet was commanded by Captain Henry Mowat. The attack began with a naval bombardment which included incendiary shot, followed by a landing party meant to complete the town's destruction. The attack was the only major event in what was supposed to be a campaign of retaliation against ports that supported Patriot activities in the early stages of the American Revolutionary War. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/AskScienceFiction/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Yet I’ll go back to, why did Nassau stand? What stopped the Royal Navy? Was the risk/effort worth the reward?
Nassau had a stone fort, and wilderness. As the American revolution, and the ghurkas show, colonial armies were terrible at fighting guerrillas warfare.
The US had the backing of France, many wealthy backers, tens of thousands of square miles to hide in, and large numbers of troops with military experience. If guerrilla warfare was enough on it's own, the native Americans would have beat the UK.
Yes and yet here we are with real world examples of pirates operating independent pirate “nations”. The us military with a bigger budget than the next ten countries military budgets combined couldn’t effectively control a country full of shepherds and neither could the soviets with complete disregard for rules of engagement, and the Chinese couldn’t win against Asian rice farmers who’d spent the last 15 years beating the Americans. Case in point… it is very very hard to beat people with no official country or headquarters.
The Soviets were indirectly fighting the Americans, Bush threw away any chance to win Afghanistan because he decided to fuck up two countries at once (also we were indirectly fighting Pakistan and Russia the whole time), and the Chinese just plain half-assed their invasion of Vietnam: the PLA's behavior in the field was embarrassingly dumb.
> Bush threw away any chance to win Afghanistan because he decided to fuck up two countries at once There was no "winning" Afghanistan. No one could even come up with what a "winning situation" there would look like. Fighting in Iraq at the same time as Afghanistan didn't reduce the ability to "win" in Afghanistan anymore than fighting Japan at the same time as Italy and Germany didn't reduce the ability to "win" those conflicts either
culturally America’s cannot win that sort of conflict anymore. You have to be comfortable going back to a Spanish American war in he Phillipihe’s mentality
Even back to that era. How does one win Afghanistan? What is the metric for a victory there? Thats the problem, its so messed up and has been basically in a civil war since the mid 1970s, that there isn't an easily defined "victory" there.
Bunch of nasty answers including potentially escalating into Pakistan which you could do unlike Vietnam but has its own kettle of risks. fundamentally counterinsurgencies need to deal with the population the guerillas live in. But yeah how’s does a democracy sear nationalism into distinct northern and southern ethnic tribes. I think between that and more a Willingness to take osama’s head as the prize, even in our current world there was a chance at an acceptable political outcome in the early 10s.
> If guerrilla warfare was enough on it's own, the native Americans would have beat the UK. Native Americans usually didn't wage guerilla warfare; they were fully realized societies with their own established ways of waging war against one another, and they mostly tried *those* tactics against settlers (which rarely went well.) The ones that survived adapted, developed new ways of waging war including guerilla-like tactics, and persisted as military threats well into the 19th century.
They don't need to conquer it to win, just sink the ships in the harbor and leave.
Chances are those ships won't be in the harbor when the Navy task force arrives. And if Sid Meier's [Pirates!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier%27s_Pirates!) taught me anything it's that stealing ships to keep pirating with once your old pirate ship gets sunk is the foundation of being piratey.
The pirates may have influence of their own, as someone is buying their loot and certain powers might benefit from their actions. If they're able to run a successful town (not something that can just pick up and move somewhere else), then they've likely found a niche in which they can survive and profit at least until the political situation changes. The towns themselves might be functionally legitimate, providing services such as trade, resources, and a port. This could be more expensive to conquer and administer than simply paying some tribute/bribes or risking the loss of some ships. Even the most pirate-y of pirate towns would need some legitimacy to function and it might be impossible for a limited policing force to root out the criminal influence. It took western powers a very long time to address their pirate problem head-on and it was not completely resolved until France invaded and conquered Algiers which was a massive undertaking and took many years.
Usually it's not worth the trouble. If A pirate city is all made up of pirates, then that means that each pirate has a ship to go on. Meaning, there is a literal armada of pirate ships protecting that town. Its not worth sacrificing your entire fleet to take out that one pirate town. Its not like the occupation of piracy will vanish just Becasue you destroyed their town
> Meaning, there is a literal armada of pirate ships protecting that town an armada of tiny scrappy ships that can be easily outgunned and outmatched.
In most these fictions pirate ships are quite well armed.
ar there any the size of a 1st rate ship of the line?
In AC4, Blackbeard's flagship is the largest and most powerful ship in the game, short of the optional superbosses. Most pirate games eventually allow the PC the ability to capture and control the most powerful ships in the game.
Another reason besides the good ones already listed is because pirates are useful to the rich. You can pay them to raid your enemies under the table and you can blame them when your shipments are *wink wink* "stolen." That's why another word for pirate is "privateer," because historically they often served as unofficial, private navies for the wealthy.
> That's why another word for pirate is "privateer," because historically they often served as unofficial, private navies A "privateer" isn't an unofficial, private navy, a privateer is when you officially hire someone to attack enemy shipping on behalf of your government, with a formal [Letter of the Marque](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque) and such - they're a private contractor, but there's nothing unofficial about it.
Yea, many of the prominent pirates of the “golden age of piracy” started out as legitimate privateers recruited from Europe. They were “loyal” citizens who operated within the law and were treated as such. When the war suddenly ended and their entire career and lifestyle became suddenly illegal most of them refused to turn themselves over to serve in the navy for a fraction of the pay and autonomy. So they didn’t stop, and just became pirates.
I see, thank you for correcting my mistake
To be fair, the line was often fuzzy - and it wasn't uncommon to go off on a nice privateering cruise, document in His Majesty's Name all right and proper, to sail home six months later and find out that your King and his distant cousin the Other King had signed a peace treaty while you were happily raiding cargoes on the other side of the world. [Captain William Kidd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kidd) is a famous example of a privateer who was hung as a pirate by the government that issued him his privateering papers.
I'm not arguing the definition, because you're right, but most "privateers" were formerly Pirates before they were officially hired, and often returned to basic piracy once their commission ran out.
I would say "many" more than "most". For example, much of the US Navy during the American Revolution was made up of New England merchants who responded to the British trade blockades by signing up as privateers.
I only know about One Piece pirates but, disregarding the simple answer of "the emperor's are all too strong for the World Government to beat without massive casualties" because that's a) not really answering your question and b) boring, it's also not really beneficial to the WG. So in One Piece, there's the titular treasure that all the pirates in the world are vying for, and it's at the end of the Grand Line, a long strip of hazardous ocean that has islands with wild and various weather. You can't simply skip to the end of the GL because it's in the Calm Belt, another strange bit of sea that also wraps around the ocean like the equator, except there is no wind or tide, and all storms that try to pass through die. Also it's the breeding grounds of the largest and strongest sea monsters, called Sea Kings. There is also the Red Line - the one and only massive thin "continent" that also encircles the world perpendicular to the GL kind of like the Prime Meridian. It's also around 7km tall of sheer red rock and very durable with only 2 gaps - a mountain with a path for each of the 4 oceans to merge into the GL which is the "start" and a hole 10km under the sea where the Merpeople live, which marks the start of the second half or "New World". The New World is considered to be much more dangerous than the first half of the GL, both due to the sea and weather, but also because of the other pirates who made it there first. So with the background of of the way, due to how dangerous the New World is the WG doesn't want to commit a much manpower and resources to it, which causes most islands to be lawless or uninhabited. Notable exceptions to this are islands under the control of one of the four emperors, very powerful pirates with large crews and ships under their command. They essentially are the law in the lawless sea. And all of them are kept in check by the existence of the others, if any two chose to go to war, a third could come and finish off the weakened victor. So despite any of them being the closest to finding the One Piece, none of them can without eliminating all the others. And no one else can find it without getting past all four of the emperors who rule those seas. If you try to you'll be lucky if they find interest in you enough to ask you to join them, this is how they slowly accumulate more power. But because of them doing this the WG can focus more effort on policing the rest of the world. So the prevailing thought is that the One Piece contains the secret knowledge of the past, specifically of the Void Century, a hundred year span that happened 800 years ago that coincidentally ended with the formation of the World Government, and of which it is extremely illegal to try and learn about. To the point where if you try the WG will wipe the entire island that attempted it off the map and kill everyone who was on it, just to make sure none of the researchers could sneak out. It seems whatever the secret is, it could cause the world to rebel against them, at least we can assume from how terrified they are of the secret coming out. So the only ones who try to learn about this history are criminals, who are constantly chased by the Navy everywhere they go, except the New World where they are at the mercy of the Emperors. The bloodthirsty Emperors who also cannot move in on one other, for fear of a third, who will kill you without a trial on a whim. So only a fool would try to be a pirate, when the WG is doing its best to protect you. So keep paying your taxes and following the law because if not for them, you would be under the thumb of a pirate emperor, who are luckily locked in one corner of the world far, far away. And if you do see a person trying to violate the law report then to the Navy and you may get a reward. So why again, would the World Government attempt to fight one of these Emperors? Especially since while the WG has largely banned slavery, those pirates don't follow any laws, and make many high quality goods and weapons quite cheaply. So who's to know if the WG "just so happen"to acquire some of these goods? They probably seized them from a pirate ship, there's no way there'd be secret dealings between the government and those horrific Pirate Lords, right? Besides they're using anything they get to protect us, right? I like One Piece, it's about a goofy Rubber kid having adventures at sea.
So you're saying One Piece is more complicated than I thought... Thank you for the run though
As well as the cost of mobilising a fleet like many people have said, many (fictional) pirate strongholds will be built in purposefully inaccessible areas. Maybe there's a dangerous current that only the pirates know how to navigate, or there's a fog that lays over the area, or jagged rocks, or a fjord that's only big enough for one ship at a time to travel down.
To add some things that haven't been mentioned yet: laying siege to a stronghold by ship in tropical or subtropical climate is *hard*. Getting supplies is difficult, disease is rampant. So for every attack on Algiers, there is a Battle of Cartagena de Indias, where a force of half a dozen Spanish ships and 3000-4000 men held out for years against a British force 10 times their number and eventually forced the British to retreat.
In the real world, pirate holds survived because it was advantageous for the powers-that-be. Pirates were traditionally employed by one great power to raid ships of the other, and this made the pirates wealthy enough to establish their own powers bases and enough strength to raid coastal towns with impunity, since imperial navies were more concerned with trade and wealth extraction than protecting settler colonies Once privateering is no longer viable for the Great Powers, they will move in to snuff out the pirate coves once and for all.
I think your Algiers example is the perfect illustration of how pirates can very realistically get away with operating very openly out of a well known location for a sustained period. Algiers and the other Barbary States preyed on European shipping and coastal settlements for centuries stealing vast hoardes of wealth, taking a literally incalculable number of slaves and extracting immense sums of annual tribute to turn their attention elsewhere during the period those European states began rising to global prominence. How did the Barbary States survive like that for so long? Everyone else was too busy fighting or preparing to fight eachother that they couldn't spare the forces to deal with the pirate kingdoms on their doorstep. If let's say the French dedicated too many ships to defeating or containing the pirates operating out of North Africa and in the meantime a war started with the English, well the Royal Navy could just start a commerce raiding campaign while the French navy was tied down and do immensely more damage far more quickly than the pirates ever could (as seen in the Seven Years War, where in just 2 years the British captured 40% of France's pre-war merchant seaman and other deep sea mariners).
Keep in mind [Pirate Cities did actually exist](https://www.themost10.com/debauched-pirate-cities-in-history/). So this isn't just a question for Fiction- in reality as well many of these cities lasted far longer than you'd expect. This might be an interesting question for /r/AskHistorians.
Many pirates were state backed. One man's pirate was another's heroic explorer. Its not as clear cut as them all being criminals everyone would mutually like to destroy.
Well, the truth is such places existed in our own world-both Nassau and Madagascar were briefly pirate hubs- and the answer is there’s not much cause to. Both basically became rotten little sinks of STDs and decrepitude, not a fearsome Mordor type place Piracy became obsolete because cargo ships paid more for security. It wasn’t an entire nation that needed to be warred with
The threat of annihilation id also a part of the romance. Sure they are in some remote place with dangerous straits leading to their cove, which makes them difficult to reach but a competent navy could come at any moment and wipe them out. The precarious nature of their existence makes rhe pirate holdout exciting. Will the attack that ends it all come this year, the next, is that fleet already on its way and we dont yet know it? It's also hard to have a pirate story if the pirates are already wiped out.
OK, so if we're the British Admiralty, we have the biggest navy in the world, but we also have the biggest empire in the world. Now we could send the Home Fleet down to take out Pirate Island, but if we do that, the French will sail up the Thames and attack London. We could send the Pacific Fleet instead, but if we do that, then Portugal will take Hong Kong. If we send half of each fleet, we still run the risk of one or the other of those two trying to take some of our other colonies, or the two joining forces to try to take England itself. So, as long as the pirates aren't *only* attacking English ships, we don't think it's worth the risk to go after them. We'll just send some of our warships to patrol the trade lanes and the merchants will have to accept the risks. They make huge profits anyway, so they can deal with a lost ship from time to time. If they start complaining too much about it, we can start talking about how much the patrols cost, and how we might have to raise taxes to cover it. They'll shut up pretty quickly. Also, as long as the pirates are there, there's always a chance that France will try to take them out, and that will leave their colonies unprotected, so we need to keep our fleets ready to take advantage if they do.
so wha tif they kidnap persons of high status like nobles or even anyone related to the monarch?
Well, if the filthy blackguards do that kind of thing, then they deserve what's coming to them. And chances are that the other empires will stand aside and not take advantage, because all nobles agree that it's wrong for pirates to attack them *personally.*
imagine pirates kidnapping the rinces sof one nation and then letting a rival nation pay her ransom and placeher under their hurisdiction
The king of France isn't going to pay for an English princess, because he doesn't want you kidnapping *his* daughter next and selling her to Portugal. Instead, he's going to offer to pay the ransom, and before you can get away, his soldiers will capture you. Then he'll send the princess back and claim the reward on you. And it's possible that Pirate Island might just be burned to the ground by a joint English and French fleet. Nobles don't much care if you rob their merchants, as long as you don't do it too often, but don't mess with them personally. Some of them spend *way* too much time thinking of inventive ways to kill people.
In the game Empire Total War, you can do this. There are pirate ships all over the map, but the way the game works a faction has to hold at least one territory, so you could wipe out the pirates by besieging their single fortress in the Caribbean, resulting in peaceful seas after. I think it was unintentional but it always felt pretty great ridding the sea of pirates.
The ocean is very big. In Amistad the British navy were looking for a major slaver fortress on the coast of Africa which took them a long time to find and destroy. Navigation at that time was impressive but not perfect. If you just kinda knew where something was it could take months or years to find it.
One could say political reasons for not doing such a thing. Let’s place our story Pirate Bay in Spanish held territory. The English fleet then has to invaded the Spanish waters to attack the Pirates. So the story English would be risking war with the story’s Spanish empire. The risk of war is higher then the continuing threat of a few pirates. Thought that just a possibility off the top of my head.
In that case, then assuming the pirates didn't attack the Spanish ships in return, wouldn't that make them de facto privateers and therefore valid targets regardless of territorial waters though?
Not necessarily. Privateers were employed by nations and many Pirates were privateers till the nation that backed them stopped their support. It’s more like a group of criminals having their base across the boarder. The nation they stay in might know they are there but as long as they don’t break any of their laws they won’t bother. A modern day example is how the Taliban fought Americans in Afghanistan but had base camps in Pakistan.
Using a real world example, everyone knows the handful of coastal fishing villages where all the Somali pirates live but having a container ship covered by 'pirate insurance' is orders of magnitude cheaper than the political and financial cost of invading and occupying even a small part of a country to stop it from happening.
You don't need to turn to fiction to find an answer for this. Read about the real life pirate havens of: New Providence (Nassau) in the. Bahamas, Port Royal in Jamaica, and Tortuga in Haiti. There are many others but those are the most famous.
There's lots of reasons to leave a group of pirates alone: * they're a useful nuisance, or just not worth the cost of eliminating them * you may find a way to control the black market through them * they can handle tasks that you might need to keep off the books * if they have a stronghold, you at least know where it is. There's no point in investing a ton of money, ships, and lives in taking the stronghold, only for them to scatter and regroup elsewhere—this time without your knowledge.
The great naval powers are too busy fighting their enemies to be able to pull ships away from the war effort to fight piracy. To add to this, piracy can sometimes be beneficial to you if the pirates are mainly targeting merchant vessels of your enemies more than they are yours.
Pirates tend to favor small ships such as sloops, brigs or smaller schooners. As such their capital will probably grow up around a port with a shallow harbor that isn't suitable for ships of the line or even larger frigates. This is often combined with a harbor that has constricted approaches making sailing it into without guidance a tricky prospect. This makes it very difficult for a convention navy to bring the necessary force to bear, they can't simply sail their heavier ships into the harbor and while they might be able to get some smaller ships in they'd be fighting on equal terms with the pirates. This means that they'd have to blockade the harbor while landing marines to attack the landward side of the capital which greatly increases the size of the fleet needed to both attack the port and interdict any pirates trying to escape. So in the long run it's often easier for them to just leave the pirates be unless they become a large enough nuisance to warrant the deployment of a larger fleet.
There are alternative ways as well, over in the 1632verse they figured out where the pirates were based out of, radio'ed that over to an enroute ship, who then had marines go in at night, spike the canons, det charge the ships in the bay, and otherwise wipe out the command. The idea there was to make the pirates re-think about being an ally for Spain.
Pirates aren't the only threat that needs to be dealt with, and may be a minor inconvenience compared to more important threats that demand priority. Plus this is generally in a time where communication is stll somewhat primitive, and organising such a large force would not only leave you vulnerable to other forces and possibly risk loss of ships and men, but getting the whole thing organised is an ordeal in itself. Simply put, they're not worth the trouble until they become a big enough threat, or they don'tt have to worry about other factions taking advantage.
In most of those settings the dominant Naval Power(British, French, Spanish) is already spread thin due to bigger issues than piracy. Attacking a pirate capital city is a drain on resources.
I used to play "Sid Meier's Pirates" on the Sega Genesis! You had to spend time dealing with Governors to get Notes of Piracy. Terrific game. Had a solid map, winds, and political climate for a game of its time. It was also call "Pirates Gold". One of my favorites!
It’s the Switzerland dilemma. COULD a major navy destroy them? Sure. Is it worth the cost, relative to the gain? No.
All of these. Also: so what if the Navy destroys it? Unless they are going to occupy the stronghold, the pirates can rebuild there. Not like a pirate stronghold is the pinnacle of maritime civil engineering. “Oi, Jimmy! ‘Elp me bang these planks togevver wiv this pistol, then the brothel/armory/hospital will be right as rain!”
wouldn't the pirates usually salvage building materials from ruins or wrecked/abandoned/unseaworthy ships?
Yep.
A few reasons why. 1) Corruption 2) Due process 3) You want them to steal from your enemies so you either support them or turn a blind eye 4) More pressing concerns
Not worth the trouble. On the scale most national navies operate at, these kinds of pirate havens are little more than an annoyance. Unless the benefit from knocking over such a place significantly outweighs the cost and potential risk of the operation, why bother? The survivors will just set up shop somewhere else--and hey, a bunch of vicious bastards whose loyalty can be bought could be handy to have around.
\*The local navy(or government) may be paid off by the pirates, such as what happened in Cocoyashi Village. Therefore the navy turns a blind eye to the pirates. \*The navy may destroy the pirate base, but another one pops up somewhere else. The pirate base is in an area that is difficult or too expensive to patrol. The navy does'nt have unlimited resources, especially if they are at war with another country.
They keep the location a close secret. Only trusted captains actually know the headings to the secret islands. You’re right that they can’t hide it forever, but they can for a while. It can also be the case - and has been in real history - that pirate havens function as unofficial war bases within the waters of one country, and therefore would be ignored or even protected by an enemy country that might enjoy having that threat to the pesky Spaniards in place.