Seized by skulls and crossbones

For the United States Navy it must have been déjà vu.

The recent episode involving pirates off the Somali coast — when the Maersk Alabama was hijacked, its captain held hostage and later freed after US snipers shot dead three pirates — was a repeat of similar incidents nearby almost 200 years ago.

Back then it was the Barbary pirates who ruled the waters off the coast of present-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya.

Piracy has been around for as long as men have sailed the seas. Thousands of years ago, pirates were attacking merchant ships in the Mediterranean.

Perhaps the most famous hostage in the history of piracy was Julius Caesar, who was captured by pirates while he was on his way to Rhodes.

He was released only after a hefty ransom was paid. But, being Caesar, he later attacked the pirates — and had all his tormentors crucified.

The image of a pirate in popular imagination is of someone such as Captain Jack Sparrow, Johnny Depp's character in Pirates of the Caribbean, or Long John Silver, the fictional outlaw in Robert Louis Stevenson's classic Treasure Island — a swashbuckling adventurer on the high seas leading a life less ordinary.

The reality, though, was very different. Most of these men were ruthless murderers and outlaws who preyed upon unsuspecting merchants.

Most also died horrible deaths: in combat, from starvation, disease or execution. Some were left to die slowly and painfully — by being marooned on a desert island without food or water — as a punishment for murders they committed on board.

Depp's character Jack Sparrow is based on one of the most successful pirates of all time — the Welsh-born Bartholomew Roberts (1682-1722). But Roberts was nowhere as adorable as Sparrow. He was a merciless brigand who is said to have looted an astounding 450 ships.

He came to be known as “Black Bart'', because of his jet-black eyes and black beard.

His reputation for brutality (setting a ship and its cargo of slaves on fire when the owner of the captured ship refused to pay the ransom, for instance) was such that many ships gave up without a fight.

He died fighting in 1722 off the coast of West Africa. Fifty-four captured members of his crew were hanged.

Historically, pirates were divided into three categories: privateers, buccaneers and corsairs.

Privateers

Privateers were pirates authorised by governments, with a letter of marque, to plunder ships of enemy nations during wartime.

Privateering officially ended in 1856, with the Declaration of Paris, which stopped the issue of the letters of marque.

England benefited most through this practice. In today's world, this activity would surely qualify as a form of state-sponsored terrorism.

Sir Francis Drake (1540-1596), a national hero in Britain, who was also called “the Queen's pirate'', is perhaps the best-known privateer. He made his name attacking Spanish vessels in his famous ship, the Golden Hinde.

The son of an ordinary farmer, he went on to become vice-admiral and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth I in 1581.

His biggest catch was the Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de la Conception. It is said it took his men a week to transfer the loot to their own ship. He died of dysentery, off the coast of Panama.

Drake's cousin, Sir John Hawkins (1532-1595), made his fortune not only by plundering ships but also through the slave trade. He, too, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth I.

Perhaps it is due to his involvement in the slave trade that his reputation today lies in tatters in the United Kingdom.

Captain William Kidd (1645-1701), a Scottish privateer, suffered a worse fate. Initially in his career, he was a captain with a trading fleet in New York.

Later, he became a privateer in the Caribbean, attacking French vessels.

He began piracy as captain of the Adventure Galley, on board which he killed his gunner following an altercation. On his return to the United States, he learnt he had been branded a pirate.

Kidd's political patrons in Boston did not come to his rescue and he was sent to England to face trial. He was sentenced to death on one count of murder and five counts of piracy, and hanged on May 23, 1701, at Execution Dock, Wapping, in London.

His body was left to hang in a gibbet (an iron structure) on the River Thames until it rotted away, as a warning to would-be pirates.

Buccaneers

Though the term “buccaneers'' today is synonymous with pirates, it was originally used to refer to pirates who exclusively attacked Spanish shipping interests in the Caribbean.

Perhaps the most infamous buccaneer was Frenchman François L'Olonnais (1635-1667).

Throughout his blood-soaked career, he preyed on Spanish vessels in the Caribbean.

Such was his cruelty that he is said to have cut out the heart of a Spanish prisoner, chewed on it and stuffed it into the mouth of another prisoner as a warning to others.

As fate would have it, L'Olonnais himself was — quite literally — torn apart by cannibals after a failed incursion near the Gulf of Honduras, and eaten.

Dutchman Roche Braziliano (Rock the Brazilian), born in 1630, was based in Brazil and operated from Jamaica against Spanish ships.

He was a contemporary of L'Olonnais and both men knew each other.

Given to the bottle, it is said Braziliano would threaten to kill anyone who refused to drink with him when ordered to do so.

He once also roasted two farmers alive for refusing to part with their livestock.

No one knows for sure when or how he died but it is believed to be near Jamaica, in either 1671 or 1673.

Alongside Kidd, Black Bart and L'Olonnais, he is among the nine historical pirates featured in the hit videogame Sid Meier's Pirates.

Corsairs

The corsairs were pirates operating in the Mediterranean. They mainly attacked ships off the coast of North Africa and southern France.

The most infamous of these men were the Barbary corsairs, chief among them the Barbarossa Brothers.

Aruj and Hizir Barbarossa had the most fearsome reputation, operating out of Djerba, near Tunis.

They attacked European, mainly Spanish, vessels, and were on the payroll of the North African sultans. Both were born in the 1470s.

Their father was a soldier in the powerful Moorish army. Aruj was killed in 1518 in action with a Spanish fleet and Hizir took command.

He went on to become the Sultan of Algiers. He promptly allied himself with the Ottoman empire, gaining access to their vast resources.

He continued his war against Spanish interests, especially in Majorca.

The only thing surprising about his death in 1547 was that he died of natural causes.

By the 16th century the corsairs had established a pirate empire in northern Africa, which came to be known as the Barbary States.

It was in the early 1800s that these Barbary corsairs — descendants of the Barbarossas — came in contact with the US Navy off the coast of Tripoli, in what came to be known as the Barbary Wars (1801-1805).

During this time, William Bainbridge, an American naval commander was taken hostage and held captive for 19 months.

He and his crew were eventually released, after $60,000 was paid in ransom and Tripoli promised free trade routes.

One irony which may have been lost on the Somali pirates who seized the Maersk Alabama was that the snipers who killed three of their comrades were aboard the USS Bainbridge, named after William Bainbridge.