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Ariver pirate is apirate who operates along a river. The term has been used to describe many different kinds of pirate groups who carry out riverine attacks in Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, and South America. They are usually prosecuted under national, notinternational law.
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In Asia, river piracy is a major threat even today. The "Yangtze Patrol", from 1854 to 1949, was a prolonged naval operation, protecting Americantreaty ports and U.S. citizens along theYangtze River from river pirates andChinese insurgents. During the 1860s and 1870s, American merchant ships were prominent on the lower Yangtze, operating inland up to the deepwater port ofHankou 680 mi (1,090 km). In 1874, the U.S.gunboatUSS Ashuelot reached as far asIchang, at the foot of the Yangtze gorges, 975 miles (1,569 km) from the sea. In 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 andmarine landing parties to be put ashore several times to protect American interests.
Currently, in a region known as the"Golden Triangle", river piracy, combined with illegal trafficking of heroin, poses a major international law enforcement problem. One of the worst criminal cases involving Asian river pirates occurred on 5 October 2011, called the "Mekong River massacre". A Chinese cargo ship hauling nine hundred thousand amphetamine pills, worth more than three million dollars, was attacked andhijacked, and thirteen crewmen were killed. The hijackers were caught and executed by theChinese government in 2012.[1][2][3]
In theBalkans region, of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, themedievalNarentines, of the ninth and tenth centuries, were known for their piracy on the RiverNeretva.
TheUshkuiniks were medieval RussianNovgorodian river pirates from the tenth to fourteenth centuries, aSlavic version of theVikings, through fighting, killing, and robbery. In the sixteenth-century reign ofTsar Ivan the Terrible, the legendary explorer and soldierYermak Timofeyevich, was a RussianCossack river pirate along the Volga or possibly Don River. Yermak was later pardoned for his crimes and became the "Conqueror of Siberia".
Modern piracy exists on theDanube River inSerbia andRomania. Allegations were made from 2006 that Romanian river pirates had attacked vessels from Bulgaria on theDanube. The Romanian government responded by accusing captains of fabricating stories while illegally selling their own cargo and evading customs.[4] There were further allegations of Danubian piracy on Ukrainian vessels in 2012[5] but in only one case were there allegations of actual attacks on crews: more properly the incidents amounted simply to theft from cargo vessels.
American river piracy in late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth century was primarily concentrated along theOhio River andMississippi River valleys. River pirates usually operated in isolated frontiersettlements, 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, includingdeception,concealment,ambush, and assaults in opencombat near natural obstacles and curiosities, such as sheltercaves,islands, rivernarrows,rapids,swamps, andmarshes. River travelers wererobbed, captured, andmurdered, and their livestock,slaves, cargo, andflatboats,keelboats, andrafts were sunk or sold down river.
Toward the end of theRevolutionary War, after their escape fromNew Madrid,Spanish Upper Louisiana Territory, John Turner and thecounterfeiterPhilip Alston joinedChickasaw Indian leader, James Logan Colbert and a mixed, roving band ofNatchez refugees, Cumberland settlers, and Chickasaw, numbering around 600, made piratical attacks against Spanish shipping on theMississippi River in 1781 and 1782.[6][7]
After the Revolutionary War, American river piracy began to take root in the mid-1780s along the upper Mississippi River, betweenSpanish Upper Louisiana, aroundSt. Louis and theconfluence with the Ohio River atCairo. In 1803, atTower Rock, the U.S. Armydragoons, possibly from the frontier army post up river atFort Kaskaskia, oppositeSt. Louis, raided and drove out the river pirates.
Starting in the late 1790s,Stack Island became associated with river pirates andcounterfeiters. In 1809, the last major river pirate activity on the upper Mississippi came to an abrupt end, when a group offlatboatmen, 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 nineteen other men, a fifteen-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 to 1834,Cave-In-Rock was the principaloutlaw lair and headquarters of river pirate activity in theOhio River region. The notorious cave is today within the peaceful confines ofIllinois'sCave-in-Rock State Park. In 1797, it was anything but peaceful, asSamuel Mason, who was initially aRevolutionary WarPatriot captain in theOhio County, Virginiamilitia and an associate judge andsquire in Kentucky, led a gang ofhighway robbers and river pirates on the Ohio. Mason started his criminal organization inRed Banks and was driven out byregulators sweeping through westernKentucky, so set up his new operation atDiamond Island, followed by Cave-In-Rock and later,along the Mississippi River, from Stack Island toNatchez, Mississippi.
During Samuel Mason's 1797–1799 occupation of Cave-In-Rock and after his departure, the name ofBully 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. TheHarpe Brothers, who were allegedly America's firstserial killers, werehighwaymen on the run from the law inTennessee and Kentucky, and briefly joined Samuel Mason's gang at Cave-In-Rock.Peter Alston, the son of counterfeiterPhilip Alston, became a river pirate andhighwayman at Cave-In-Rock and made the acquaintance of Samuel Mason andWiley Harpe, following them to Stack Island and Natchez.
From 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 atBattery Rock. The lower Ohio River country was routinely patrolled by theU.S. Army, with troopsgarrisoned atFort Massac asconstabulary against Native Americans,colonial raiders fromSpanish Louisiana, and river outlaws in the region.
Between 1790 and 1820, the legendaryColonel Plug, also known as Colonel Fluger, ran a gang of river pirates on theOhio River, in acypressswamp near the mouth of theCache River, below Cave-In-Rock andFort 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 thehull of a boat, and dig out thecaulking between the floorplanks or drill holes with anauger, causing the boat to sink and be easily attacked. The boat and the cargo would later be sold down river.
James Ford, acivic 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 around Cave-In-Rock, or smaller gangs under the operation ofJohn A. Murrell, which also existed from the 1820s to the mid-1830s between Stack Island and Natchez,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 locallaw enforcement andregulator-vigilante groups that uprooted and swept out pockets ofoutlaw resistance.
From 1866 to 1877, theNew York Citywaterfront was infested with gangs of river pirates along theHudson andEast Rivers. River piracy consisted mainly of pirates stealing goods and cargo from ships in open water and docked along the waterfront piers. Many of the river pirates that formed to these gangs were well organized and consisted mainly of working class Irish Americans and Irish immigrants. The most notorious New York river pirate gangs were theCharlton Street Gang,Hook Gang, andPatsey Conroy Gang.
In the mid-1860s theCharlton Street Gang was led by the female pirateSadie "the Goat" Farrell. Sadie the Goat modeled herself and her gang after the "pirates of the Golden Age" by flying the "Jolly Roger" flag aboard their ship and making victims walk the plank.
The Charlton Street Gang raided small cargo and merchant ships and operated within the territory of New York City,North River, ofNew York Harbor,Hudson River, from theHarlem River, as far asPoughkeepsie andAlbany, New York.
After the Charlton Street Gang murdered people in pirate raids in theHudson River Valley, the Charlton Street Gang was attacked and dispersed by localvigilantes in the region. Following this setback the Charlton Street Gang decided to return to New York City and commit onlystreet crimes never to return to river piracy again. By 1869, the gang disappeared from the scene.
The eventual decline of river piracy in New York City began in 1876 when theNew York City Police Department under the command of Police SergeantGeorge W. Gastlin organized the "Steamboat Squad" in which armed police patrols in boats confronted and arrested the river pirates in New York harbor.[8]
An increase in crime at the border between the United States and Mexico onFalcon Lake[clarification needed]. The lake is a 60-mile (97 km) long reservoir of theRio Grande that was constructed in 1954 and is known forriver piracy and as a drug smuggling route of the Mexican cartels in the ongoing conflict known as theMexican Drug War.
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In recent years, river pirate activity on theAmazon River has been on the rise in various countries around that river.[9]
In northern Brazil, due to the lack of investments in security, river pirate activity skyrocketed. Attacks againstoil tankers, cargo boats and fishermen became very frequent in this region.
In Colombia, paramilitary groups and drug cartels committed numerous hijackings, and looting of boats and kidnapping are also frequent.
