Assaults in the lake and looting of merchant and cargo ships have accompanied sea transport from the earliest times. The pirates operated from fast-sailing and easily maneuverable ships, but they did not limit themselves to raiding vessels in open waters. They often made landfalls to plunder supplies and raid ports with their abundant stores of goods. Maritime piracy increased in step with the upsurge of trade in the High Middle Ages, until the state power in the Late Middle Ages became strong enough to crack and finally break it. At the same time, a more organized form of piracy gained ground as a weapon in a complicated, grand political power game.

 

The pirate has always been a counter symbol. This essay is a short, exploratory study of the connection between the sea and the web read through the figure of the pirate, between 'coming from the sea' and 'originating from everywhere and nowhere' set against the territorial order of the land. The sea has, presumably ever since the first boat was put into the water, been associated with freedom and excitement in the imagination of land-based man. Staring out over the sea and dreaming away; seeing the outline of a foreign ship on the horizon with goods and stories from around the world (or with ravaging soldiers); to put to sea, to seek fortune on foreign shores, to discover unknown lands and forgotten treasures. All this and more connects the sea with the longing for freedom. The sea is the opposite of country life. In 1608, perhaps the most important thematization of the status of the sea as free was published, when the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius presented his Mare Liberum (the free sea), which became the standard-setter for the legal status of the sea, and in which he states that no nation can monopolize the sea and prohibit others access there- to: 'The sea is as impervious to physical appropriation as the air; it cannot be added to the property of any nation'