As long as people have sailed the oceans, there have been pirates, or sea robbers. Travelling by sea, their goal is to steal cargo and valuable goods, or take hostages, from other ships or coastal settlements, using violence if necessary. The Romans complained of pirate attacks in the Mediterranean Sea. The Vikings of Scandinavia, who dominated European seas between the 8th and 11th centuries, were highly successful pirates. Between the 1680s and 1720s, during the Golden Age of Piracy, pirates were particularly active in the Caribbean Sea. They also operated off the coasts of North Africa and Arabia, in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. Pirates still roam the oceans today, and are a constant threat in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Somalia in east Africa.

Ancient world

The earliest known instances of piracy date as far back as the 14th century BC, when tribes known as Sea Peoples threatened ships sailing in the Aegean Sea and eastern Mediterranean Sea. Historians know little about the Sea Peoples. Originating perhaps on Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus or around the Aegean Sea, they are said to have invaded the New Kingdom of ancient Egypt on several occasions.

The most notorious ancient pirate peoples were the Illyrians, who lived on the east coast of the Adriatic Sea. They were a constant threat to the Roman Republic until their defeat in 229 BC. During the 1st century BC, pirate states grew up along the coast of Anatolia (present-day Turkey). On a voyage across the Aegean Sea in 75 BC, Julius Caesar was kidnapped and briefly held by Cilician pirates.

The best-known pirates of medieval Europe were the Vikings, seaborne warriors from Scandinavia. Their English name came from the old Norse word vikingr, meaning "someone who goes on an overseas expedition" or, simply, “pirate”. Between the 8th and 11th centuries, the Vikings were lords of the sea—no other European people had such fast and strong ships. They raided the coasts of Western Europe as far south as southern Spain. They also attacked the coasts of North Africa and Italy. Some Viking raiders travelled along the rivers of Eastern Europe as far as the Black Sea.

​​​​​​​The first recorded Viking attack was in 793 on a monastery on the island of Lindisfarne, off the northeast coast of England. In their raids, they stole valuables, farm animals and even the local inhabitants as slaves. The Vikings took most of the slaves in raids on the British Isles and the Slavic lands of eastern Europe. Many were shipped east to Constantinople and Baghdad where they could be sold for large profits.

From the 16th century onwards, corsairs sailed from Muslim cities such as Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, on the Barbary Coast in North Africa. The rapid expansion of the Ottoman Empire, an Islamic power, was behind these attacks on the shipping of Christian powers: the Barbary pirates considered themselves as ghazis, holy Muslim warriors, carrying on the fight against Christians dating back to the Crusades that began in the late 11th century.
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Brandishing their guns and curved nimcha swords, the Barbary corsairs plundered Christian ships and coastal towns, carrying off captives to be sold as slaves. The corsairs attacked the coasts mainly of Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, but they also ventured as far north as the British Isles, the Netherlands and even Iceland. Long stretches of the Italian and Spanish coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants for fear of corsair raids.

​​​​​​​The corsairs captured more than a million people to be sold as slaves in North Africa and the Ottoman Empire between the 16th and 19th centuries. The most famous corsair was the Ottoman Albanian Hayreddin, known as Barbarossa ("Redbeard"), who was active in the early 1500s. A few corsairs, such as the Dutch Jan Janszoon and the Englishman John Ward, were European privateers who had converted to Islam.
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Until the mid-17th century, the corsairs used galleys, powered mainly by oars. These were later replaced with swift, highly maneuverable sailing vessels such as xebecs and brigantines that proved extremely difficult to hunt down. It was only by the 19th century that European navies countered the threat.

Privateers

In the early 16th century, the Spanish started to transport gold and silver back from their conquered lands in the Americas in large treasure ships called galleons. Rival European colonial powers hostile to Spain—chiefly England, France and the Netherlands—sent out ships to attack and plunder the galleons. Rather than use their own navies, they employed privateers (short for “private men-of-war”), merchant seamen authorized to capture other vessels for their cargo or to hold them to ransom. They were given written permission to do so, called a letter of marque, by their king or queen (or colonial governor). The privateer captain and the monarch would later share the spoils. One of the most famous English privateers was Sir Francis Drake, who was backed by Queen Elizabeth I.
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Following the English capture of Jamaica from the Spanish in 1655, privateering in the Caribbean took off. Colonial governors of Jamaica issued letters of marque to local raiders, called buccaneers, to attack the Spanish treasure ships and ports. Henry Morgan, the Welsh buccaneer, was particularly successful. From his base in Port Royal, Jamaica, he launched several devastating raids on ports on the Spanish Main between 1668 and 1671.

The practice of privateering was carried out by all the colonial powers. The Barbary corsairs (see above) of the Mediterranean, authorized by the Ottoman Empire, were privateers. Privateers made up a large proportion of warships during the 17th and 18th centuries, and were active both during the American Revolutionary War and US Civil War.

In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, many privateers based in the Caribbean turned to piracy. Between the 1680s to the 1720s, a period known as the Golden Age of Piracy, the pirates of the Caribbean were at their most successful. They captured and looted treasure ships as far away as the coast of West Africa and the Indian Ocean as well as those sailing between the Americas and Spain. Operating out of pirate havens, including Nassau, on the island of New Providence in the Bahamas, and Sainte-Marie, an island off the northeastern coast of Madagascar, battle-hardened gangs of pirates, armed to the teeth, were a constant menace to shipping. The Golden Age came to an end as European nations strengthened their navies to offer greater protection for merchants and to hunt down pirates. Acts of pardon and rewards for informants also helped stamp out piracy.

Modern piracy

Piracy has never died out. In the 20th and 21st centuries, ships plying the waters between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean off the Somali coast and in the Strait of Malacca (between the Indonesian island of Sumatra and Malaysia) have been regularly targeted by pirates armed with automatic firearms. Other active areas include the South China Sea and the Niger Delta. Pirate gangs often use small motorboats to attack and board ships, a tactic that takes advantage of the small number of crew members on modern container vessels. They often aim to steal the personal belongings of the crew and the contents of the ship's safe, rather than the cargo itself. These attacks usually occur in international waters, making it difficult for navies to respond effectively.