River pirate
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A River pirate is a type of pirate, who operates along a river. The term "river piracy" has been used to describe many different kinds of pirate groups, which carry out riverine attacks in Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, and South America.
Contents
History[edit]
Asia[edit]
In Asia, river piracy is a major threat, even to the present-day. The "Yangtze Patrol", from 1854 to 1941, was a prolonged naval operation, protecting American treaty ports and U.S. citizens, along the Yangtze River of China, from river pirates and Chinese insurgents. During the 1860s and 1870s, American merchant ships were prominent on the lower Yangtze River, operating up to the deepwater port of Hankow 680 mi (1,090 km) inland. In 1874, the U.S. gunboat, USS Ashuelot, reached, as far as, Ichang, at the foot of the Yangtze gorges, 975 miles (1,569 km) from the sea. During this period, most US personnel found a tour in the Yangtze to be uneventful, as a major American shipping company had sold its interests to a Chinese firm, leaving the patrol with little to protect. The added mission of anti-piracy patrols required U.S. naval and marine landing parties be put ashore several times to protect American interests. Currently, in Southeast Asia, in a region known as the "Golden Triangle", illegal drug trafficking, of heroin is an major international law enforcement problem. One of the worst criminal cases, dealing with Asian river pirates, occurred on October 5, 2011, called the "Mekong River massacre". A Chinese cargo ship hauling 900,000 amphetamine pills worth more than 3 million dollars, was attacked and hijacked and 13 crewmen were killed. The hijackers were later caught and executed, by the Chinese government in 2012.[1][2][3]
Europe[edit]
In the Balkans, the medieval Narentines, of the 9th-10th-century, were known for their piracy, on the river Neretva. The Ushkuiniks were medieval Russian Novgorodian river pirates, from the 10th-14th-century, were a Slavic version of the Vikings, through fighting, killing, and robbery. In the 16th century reign of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, the legendary Yermak Timofeyevich, the explorer and soldier, was a Russian Cossack, river pirate, along the Volga or possibly Don River. Yermak was later pardoned for his crimes and became the "Conqueror of Siberia". Today, modern piracy exists, on the Danube River, in Serbia and Romania.
North America[edit]
River piracy, in late 18th and mid-19th century America, was primarily concentrated along the Ohio River and Mississippi River valleys. River pirates usually operated in isolated, frontier settlements, which were sparsely populated areas lacking the protection of civil authority and institutions. They resorted to a variety of tactics, depending on the number of pirates and size of the boat crews involved, including: deception, concealment, ambush, and assaults in open combat, near natural obstacles and curiosities, such as shelter caves, islands, river narrows, rapids, swamps, and marshes. River travelers were robbed, captured, and murdered and their livestock, slaves, cargo, and flatboats, keelboats, and rafts were sunk or sold down river.
After the Revolutionary War, American river piracy began to take root, in the mid-1780s, along the upper Mississippi River, between Spanish Upper Louisiana, around St. Louis, down to the confluence of the Ohio River, at Cairo.
In 1803, at Tower Rock, the U.S. Army dragoons, possibly, from the frontier army post up river at Fort Kaskaskia, on the Illinois side opposite of St. Louis, raided and drove out the river pirates.
Starting in the late 1790s, Stack Island became associated with river pirates and counterfeiters. In 1809, the last major river pirate activity, on the Upper Mississippi River, came to an abrupt end, when a group of flatboatmen, meeting at the head of the "Nine Mile Reach," decided to make a raid on Stack Island and wipe out the river pirates. They attacked at night, a battle ensued, and two of the boatmen and several outlaws were killed. The attackers captured 19 other men, a 15-year-old boy and two women. The women and teenager were allowed to leave. The remaining outlaws are presumed to have been executed.
From 1790-1834, Cave-In-Rock was the principal outlaw lair and headquarters of river pirate activity in the Ohio River region. The notorious cave, is today, within the peaceful confines of Illinois' Cave-in-Rock State Park. In 1797, it was anything but peaceful, as Samuel Mason, who was initially a Revolutionary War Patriot captain in the Ohio County, Virginia militia and a former associate judge and squire in Kentucky, led a gang of highway robbers and river pirates on the Ohio River. Mason started his criminal organization in Red Banks and was driven out by regulators, sweeping through western Kentucky and first set up his new operation at Diamond Island, followed by Cave-In-Rock, and later, along the Mississippi River, from Stack Island to Natchez, Mississippi.
During Samuel Mason's 1797-1799 occupation of Cave-In-Rock and after his departure, the name of Bully Wilson became associated with cave; a large sign was erected near the natural landmark's entrance, "Liquor Vault and House for Entertainment." Wilson may have been an alias for Mason, a front man for his criminal operation, or another outlaw leader who ran a gang of pirates in the region. The Harpe Brothers who were allegedly America's first serial killers, were highwaymen, on the run from the law in Tennessee and Kentucky and briefly, joined Samuel Mason's gang at Cave-In-Rock. Peter Alston, the son of American counterfeiter, Philip Alston who through his father, became a river pirate and highwayman at Cave-In-Rock and made the acquaintance of Samuel Mason and Wiley Harpe, following them to Stack Island and Natchez. Around the late 1700s to early 1800s, on the Illinois side of the Ohio River, north of Cave-In-Rock, Jonathan Brown led a small gang of river pirates at Battery Rock.
The lower Ohio River country was routinely, patrolled by the U.S. Army, with troops, garrisoned at Fort Massac, as constabulary against Native Americans, colonial raiders from Spanish Upper Louisiana Territory, and river outlaws in the region.
Between 1790 and 1820, the legendary Colonel Plug also, known as Colonel Fluger, ran a gang of river pirates on the Ohio River, in a cypress swamp, near the mouth of the Cache River, which was below Cave-In-Rock and Fort Massac and just above the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Plug's tactics were to sneak aboard, personally, or have one of his pirates, secretly, go into the hull of a boat and either, dig out the caulking between the floor planks or drill holes with an auger, causing the boat to sink and be easily attacked. The boat and the cargo would later be sold down river.
James Ford, an American Ohio River civic leader and businessman, secretly led a gang of river pirates and highwaymen from the 1820s to the mid-1830s, on the Ohio River, in Illinois and Kentucky.
River piracy continued on the lower Mississippi River, from the early 1800s to the 1840s, these river pirates were mainly, organized into large gangs similar to Samuel Mason's organization around Cave-In-Rock or smaller gangs under the operation of John A. Murrell, which also, existed, from the 1820s to the mid-1830s, between Stack Island and Natchez, in the state of Mississippi.
The decline of American river piracy occurred, over time, starting as early as 1804 and ending by the 1840s, as a result of direct military action taken and the combined strength of local law enforcement and regulator-vigilante groups, that uprooted and swept out pockets of outlaw resistance.
South America[edit]
Africa[edit]
Popular culture[edit]
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One of the earliest depictions of river pirates, in motion pictures, was the 1928 silent film, The River Pirate.
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The fun, romanticized, Hollywood version of the historical river pirate, from the 1956 Walt Disney film, Davy Crockett and the River Pirates.
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The 1962 film, How the West Was Won, portrayed river piracy, on the Ohio River, with a brief ambush of river travelers, in the American epic, of the "taming of the Western frontier".
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The 1966 film, The Sand Pebbles is about the fictional, United States Navy river gunboat, USS San Pablo, patrolled the Yangtze River, for river pirates and Chinese insurgents in the politically, turbulent, 1920s China.
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The 1985 film, Rambo: First Blood Part II, portrayed the actual, ruthlessness and brutality of Southeast Asian river pirates.
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The 2008 film, Rambo, portrayed the actual, ruthlessness and brutality of Southeast Asian river pirates.
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ Rodgers, pg. 44-47
- ^ "River Pirates of Cave-in-Rock". niu.edu. Retrieved 24 April 2015.
- ^ "Myanmar's army recovers captured Chinese boats". townhall.com. Retrieved 24 April 2015.