Pirates plying their trade for thousands of years

"How do masts and sails turn differently on pirate boats?" asked a young patron at Wauconda Area Library's summer STEM program.

Pirates - robbers of the seas - have been plying their trade since ships first set sail.

Accounts of piracy date to 14,000 B.C. and reveal that men and women have been capable of commandeering and looting unsuspecting sea travelers. While dramatic stories of Blackbeard, Long John Silver and Captain Kidd conjure mayhem and piracy in the Caribbean, in truth, all bodies of water have been spoiled by thieves and hailing from everywhere on earth.

"Pirates were the original recyclers," Joshua Smith, U.S. Merchant Marine Academy professor, author and interim director of the American Merchant Marine Museum, said in describing the pirate's preference for whatever was at hand. "Their vessels were seldom purpose-built; they generally operated on ordinary merchant vessels they had acquired somehow. They did like fast ships, however, which made it easier to both run away and attack. Thus pirate ships had masts and sails just like regular ships."

Because pirates were cheaters and thieves on the run, they didn't necessarily put much thought into a particular quality or style for their ships.

Angus Konstam, author of "Piracy: The Complete History" and 70 other history, biography and pirate-themed books, said pirate ships could take many different forms.

"The sails on pirate ships were no different from those on other ships of the time. Ignore the title of the Black Sails TV show, or Lego pirate ships with skull and crossbones on them. Pirate ships came in a range of types and sizes, from small one-masted sloops and two-masted brigantines to big three-masted sailing ships like Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge. All of them had plain canvas sails - in fact, decent sails were often taken from vessels the pirates captured, to replace their own ones."

There was no minimum size for a pirate ship. As Smith explains, pirates used almost any kind of water craft.

"Seaborne predation sometimes occurs in vessels as small as canoes," Smith said.

Since piracy requires navigational skills on top of whatever qualifications are needed to steal and possibly kill for personal gain, it's hard to understand why someone might consider embarking on this dangerous, lawless and immoral activity. Smith discussed the complex charades pirates might undertake to acquire their booty.

"Hijacking was a new kind of piracy developed in the South China Seas in the 1800s, whereby disguised pirates boarded a steamship as passengers then rose up and took it over, generally forcing the crew to operate the vessel for them. Like land-based bandits, pirates usually have to have a base, a place where they can sell or otherwise dispose of the goods they have acquired," Smith said. "Most stolen property was usually sold at a fraction of its true worth."

Piracy continues to be a serious issue with estimated losses ranging upward of $16 billion annually. The Somalian coast in East Africa is a key area for piracy along with the Far East, Indian Ocean, South America and the Caribbean.

Smith offered this reason for continued interest in this age-old profession: "In my opinion, as long as there are inequalities in wealth, there will always be some form of piracy being perpetrated. For some it was and remains a matter of survival, while for others it is a matter of greed."