I was fortunate to attend a lecture by Professor Andrew Jameson at Honolulu's Pacific Club on April 22.
Professor Jameson is a renowned expert on Near Asia. With a Harvard PhD, he was a longtime professor at the University of California-Berkeley and has consulted throughout the world.
He traced the history of piracy from its first written mention in Homer's Iliad through the golden era in the late 1600's.
He traced today's notion of the swashbuckling pirate from Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island and expressed some criticism of the romanticized notion of pirates. In truth, pirates are, and have always been, criminals bent on unlawfully obtaining prize (whether treasure or the victim ship) by force, often involving murder, rape and mayhem.
He highlighted the hotspots of piracy today: Somalia, the Strait of Malacca and the Phillipines.
Jameson is rather unique for pirate historians because he actually was on a ship that narrowly escaped Somali pirates in 2005. He was an instructor on the ship Seaborne Spirit. This cruise ship was assaulted with automatic rifles and rocket propelled grenades but was able to outrun the pirates.
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