Howard Pyle, via wikimedia commons
I’ve always loved pirate stories, ever since I read Treasure Island as a kid. That book more than any other created the image we all have of a pirate—the one-legged, swearing ruffian with an eye patch and a parrot on his shoulder. Remember the name of the tavern that Jim Hawkins’ family owns? Stevenson named it “The Admiral Benbow Inn,” a reference totally lost on me. I had no idea that John Benbow had been an actual person, until I started researching the Barbary Pirates. Benbow was a famous fighter of the Barbary pirates.
John Benbow
After Ferdinand and Isabella kicked the last of the Moors out of Spain, in the late 1400s, many of the Moors joined forces with the Barbary states—Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers—all parts of the Ottoman Empire. These understandably-disgruntled Moors became pirates who preyed on Christian ships. Piracy in the southern Mediterranean became a huge problem from the 16th to the 18th centuries.
The pirates and their government sponsors created a huge extortion racket; they demanded bribes from the big European powers (England, France, Spain, and Holland) in exchange for not attacking their ships. The European powers got sick of having their ships plundered and their citizens kidnapped. And they got very sick of having to pay enormous ransoms in order to secure their citizens’ release. So they agreed to pay this protection money to the state-sanctioned pirates, in exchange for having their ships left alone. (Meanwhile, most of these European powers had their own pirates working for them. Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh were pirates who reported to Queen Elizabeth.)
The American colonists had enjoyed the protection of the British prior to the American Revolution. The British had been paying the bribes to the Barbary states to protect colonial ships from being attacked by pirates. But after the Revolution, that protection went away (for obvious reasons). When Thomas Jefferson became president and found out that he was expected to pay huge sums to the Barbary pirates, he was deeply unhappy about it. He refused to pay, and the Barbary states declared war.
It’s the American war you’ve never heard of. It happened between the end of the American Revolution and the beginning of the War of 1812–from 1801 to 1805.
The Barbary pirates started attacking American ships and taking hostages, forcing the prisoners to work as slaves. Jefferson sent the fledgling American navy to the Mediterranean to fight the pirates. And the Americans prevailed, kind of. This impressed many of the European powers, who also began standing up to the pirates, and eventually everyone banded together and the era of Barbary pirates came to an end.
French Ship under attack by Barbary Pirates by Aert Anthonisz. (1579/1580–1620) c. 1615