Red markers indicate pirate attacks during 2008 as of Oct. 21. Yellow markers indicated attempted piracy. Credit: International Maritime BureauFrom Live Science:
As long as traders have been sailing the open seas in ships laden with goods, there have been pirates sneaking alongside, trawling for booty.
Today, sophisticated pirates who hijack trade ships are responsible for billions of dollars in losses every year. The problem is particularly rife off the northeast coast of Africa, where no fewer than 9 vessels, including one loaded with tanks, were being held for ransom as of yesterday.
Pirates are popularly associated with the eye-patched, peg-legged buccaneers who ransacked the ships of colonizing powers in the 17th and 18th century Caribbean, a period historians call the "Golden Age" of piracy (One historian traces modern capitalism and the current financial crisis to the privateering of this pirate heyday).
But robbers-by-sea were in action around the world for centuries before that, and have continued unabated in the centuries since — though their look, modus operandi and treasures have changed over the years.
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