The Panther Bay
Pirate Blog

This year (2011) marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the US Civil War . Many people may be surprised that a substantial amount of controversy still exists in some quarters (most notably the South ) about the causes of the war. Most historians recognize the critical issue was slavery. Southern states had an economy and culture built on plantation-style slavery. Northern states were more manufacturing oriented and agriculture was rooted in smaller, free hold land farms. Norther states were also becoming more populated, and this helped fuel anti-slavery sentiment to the point it became a breaking point. States' rights were at issue, but the tinderbox that ignited the war was slavery. (And absent slavery, it's unlikely civil war would have erupted although this is also disputed.)

The question of slavery is also central to the plot underlying Isabella's quest for her own identity in the The Pirate of Panther Bay . The backstory, as readers know, includes Isabella as an escaped slave. She is a pirate because she has little choice. If she were captured, she would be returned to the sugar plantation or, more likely, executed. (The classroom guide can be found here .) Here relationship with Juan Carlos pivots on her identity as an independent person. Juan Carlos's resistance to Isabella is based on his traditional understanding of Isabella as a woman and as a slave. (Recall the scene in El Morro when Juan Carlos is confronted by Maria.)

Historically, Isabella's background as an ex-slave is not without precedent. Slave traders were frequent targets for pirates. Peter Leeson's research in The Invisible Hook notes that Africans, presumably ex-slaves or men destined to be slaves, made up 25 percent to one third of some pirate crews.

Of course, we know the end of the US Civil War: The northern states won and slavery (thankfully) was banished from the freest nation on earth after hundreds of thousands died on both sides. The fact that the historical legacy of slavery continues to stir emotions nearly 150 years after its abolition is a telling sign of its impact on the human character and how we define ourselves in the modern era. In this sense, Isabella, despite being a pirate, is very much a modern woman.

In need of a pirate themed stage play? Check out this musical stage play titled "Mary of the High Seas ." The playwrite describes it as:

"...a historical action-adventure drama musical, set in the turbulent world of the back streets of London, the battlefields of Flanders and the action and adventure of the high seas.  Raised as a boy to hide the truth of her brother’s death Mary’s romantic life is complicated, making passion all the more critical to this true story.

"The course of the musical takes Mary from a selfish young tomboy with a huge chip on her shoulder, to gregarious young war hero, to a self-reliant pirate with the heart of a lion… in the body of a woman… disguised as a man."

It looks like the first production will be in the summer of 2011 in England.

 

I ran across a recent editorial in the Bangkok Post lamenting the ongoing piratical activities off the cost of Somalia and in the Indian Ocean. Despite the efforts of the European Union and contingents of naval forces from many nations, including the Thai navy, four Thai vessels and 77 Thai seamen are still the hands of pirates awaiting ransom. Overall, the pirates now hold 25 vessels and 601 hostages.

So far, the successful interventions disrupting pirate activities seem to be sporadic and ad hoc, not systematic. To be fair, finding pirates is like looking for a needle in a haystack. But the problem remains real and persistent.

This begs the following thought: At the end of the day, it may be up to the shipping companies to staff their vessels with a real deterrants such as private security forces that can confront the pirates directly and effectively. A coordinated, top-down strategy may not be the most effective one. Rather, a decentralized approach at the ship-level may be the only way to create a meaningful deterrant. Mobilizing frigates and destroyers may create a substantial visible presence in ports of call, but a few well armed security forces on a ship may be more effective.

This approach has other advantages. Shipping companies can choose the strategies that they seem would be most effective. Some companies may want to convoy ships. Other comapnies may want to stay with individualized or ship-level customized security arrangements. Still others (and I'm not advocating this) might decide they are just willing to pay the ransom given the risks.

Regardless, I think a decentralized approach may be more effective than a centralized one given the vastness of the problem and the economics involved.

Peter Worthington , a columnist with the Toronto Sun, apparently has some of the same instincts I do when it comes to dealing with modern day pirates. From a recent FrumForum blog post on dealing with pirates:

"As long as ransoms are paid, piracy will continue. Last year, U.S. Navy SEALS shot and killed three pirates holding the skipper of an American ship, the Maersk Alabama, and rescued him.

"Yet in another incident, the Dutch navy captured pirates and freed 20 hostages – and then let the pirates go. Like Canada, the Dutch felt they had no legal right to hold the pirates – an attitude that hardly dissuades piracy.

"At least the American solution results in three fewer pirates in the Gulf of Aden, and is something the civilized world might consider dealing with in the coming year."

In case there was any doubt that moder pirates are simply misunderstood, this article describing the deplorable conditions of their hostages from Agence France-Presse should be sobering. Pirate enterprises are businesses. They ransom their cargo or the vessels. The seamen operating the ships are of little practical value, so they are treated according to what their expected price in the negotiation process--low.

Note this account from the captain of the Iceberg, a Panama-flagged cargo ship captured in March 2010:

"Diseases have appeared among crew members, some have haemorroids, one has lost his eyesight and another has serious stomach problems," the ship's Yemeni captain Abdirazzak Ali Saleh told AFP by phone.

"The water we have is unclean and we have only one meal a day, boiled rice, that's it. The crew is suffering physically and mentally," he said, adding they had been locked up in a room of five metres square for close to nine months.

In October, the Iceberg's 3rd officer Wagdi Akram, a father of four, jumped overboard in a fit of dementia. The pirates fished him out dead.

A video shot last month and obtained by AFP shows two crewmen unzipping an orange plastic casing to reveal the Yemeni sailor's body kept in a freezer with a few bags of ice to keep it cold.

"The body is still in the freezer but we have no diesel to run the generators," the captain said.

The issue is that humans hold little value in this negotiation-drive form of modern piracy.

"When a yacht is caught, the sailors are worth more for the pirates than the boat. But in most piracy cases, the value of the vessel itself and its cargo is what guarantees to the captors that a ransom is paid," Ecoterra explained [an international human rights nonprofit group monitoring piracy].

"The crew's welfare becomes a very low priority, with pirates wishing they didn't have more people to feed and shipowners sometimes wishing they didn't have a crew preventing them from pulling off an insurance scam and sinking the vessel," the spokesman said.

Pirating remains a nasty business when it comes to human.

Kenya is a pretty important nation on the east coast of Africa, and its in the center of the piracy controversy. Recently, Kenya's supreme court ruled that its government could not prosecute pirates because their crimes occurred outside Kenyan territory.

Leaving aside the legal validity of the question (which is an interesting one), what might happen if other nations used the same legal reasoning and stopped prosecuting pirates? Right now, shipping companies can rely on the legal systems of the nations with which they do business to prosecute pirates. Without them, these companies would be forced to rely on their own means of protection.

For years, the shipping companies seemed content to pay off the pirates since their activity was little more than extortion. The resulting profitability of piracy allowed these illegal enterprises to flourish. Not surpringly, lots of "entrepreneurs" entered the market to take advantage of "untapped" revenues since the shipping companies seemed unwilling to turn off the spigot.

Now, shipping companies (and high profile cases such as the chandlers ) seem to be turning off the spigot .

Are the pirates better off being prosecuted in nations with established legal systems and rules, or by shipping companies unbound by international law? Something worth thinking about..if I were a modern day pirate.

I ran across this report on the UK's efforts to control piracy off the Somali Cost. The captain discussed how fufilling the mission was because they disrupted potential pirate activities. From Panorama News:

"Once the suspected pirates spotted the helicopter and boarding team, four of the suspected pirates took one of the smaller boats and tried to flee to shore. The remaining men stopped in the water and when the Lynx helicopter hovered overhead they tried to get rid of their ladders overboard.

"After the Royal Navy boarding team confiscated all the pirate gear, thus ensuring that the gang could no longer pose a threat to merchantmen, they were transferred to the remaining skiff.

"Speaking about the incident, the Commanding Officer of HMS Montrose, Commander Jonathan Lett, said:

"The disruption of a pirate gang in the Somali Basin by a NATO warship was very rewarding. Our actions prevented suspected pirates from heading out to sea to prey on innocent merchantmen. HMS Montrose continues to help keep the seas safe."

But, I have to wonder, is this all we can hope for? A few ladders and rocket propelled grenades are small items to replace when the pirate gangs are getting millions in ransom for their cargo.

Piracy shouldn't just be managed through disruption of activities. It needs to be eradicated as a serious threat to human life and economy.

I think this incident really shows the inherent limits of using the modern military to rein in piracy. Private shipping companies need to step up to the plate and national governments need to let them.

Some people in Somalia are apparently getting very serious about thwarting piracy. They are so serious, in fact, that the Mogadishu government is mulliing a proposal to hire a private company, Saracen International, to train a 1,000 person anti-piracy police force, according to an Associated Press report published in the Las Vegas Sun. The intiative is all quite secretive. Saracen is already training a 1,000 member strong police force for the northern part of the nation unrelated to piracy activities. The funding is coming from an "anonymous" donor nation that has "deep pockets."

Hmmm. Here's more from the Las Vegas Sun report:

The Somali government will decide in the next three weeks whether to have Saracen train the anti-piracy force in Mogadishu, Nur said. Another program to train up to 300 men for the presidential guard is also being considered.

If approved, that could mean up to 2,400 men would be trained by Saracen International. The mystery donor also has promised to pay the men and equip them with everything except arms. The total cost of the project is unclear.

A European Union-led program to reform the Somali army is training and paying for 2,000 men at a cost of around $13.2 million, indicating that at such a level of expenditure, the anonymous donor nation has deep pockets.

The donor insists on keeping its identity secret, citing concerns over terrorism, according to a presentation about the company given to Nairobi-based diplomats on Friday and provided to the AP.

Somali pirates have never been known to retaliate against nations that have sent warships to patrol the Somali coast, but the al-Qaida-linked Somali insurgency launched suicide bombings in Uganda that killed 76 people in July. Uganda is a main contributor to an African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia.

The mystery donor is paying for the services of a former American ambassador for war crimes, Pierre Prosper, and a former CIA deputy chief of station, Michael Shanklin. Prosper is being retained as a legal adviser to the Somali government on issues of transparency and anti-corruption, and Shanklin is a security adviser.

Prosper and two other Americans _ former army officer Michael Newton and lawyer Robert O'Brien _ gave a presentation Friday to the international community about the proposed projects.

Supposedly, the Somali government launched a 500 member navy last year to combat piracy, but the status of the program is a mystery (including what happened to the people and guns).

Former South African military forces are increasingly being asked (and commissioned) to provide protection for private and commercial vessels sailing through the Red Sea to protect against pirate attacks. Apparently, national laws limiting firearms are hampering some of these efforts. Citing "national security" concerns, private security forces are having trouble meeting requests for added security in real time.

Of course, every nation has a legitimate right to protect itself, and have laws that protect their soveriegnty, but I wonder how limits on small arms serve this purpose. It seems like a hold over from decades past. Small arms are not used to take over ships in port; they are used to take over ships already at sea. The real threat in ports would be large explosives, not rifles, pistols, or even rocket-propelled grenades (the weapons of choice for contemporary pirates).

Just a few thoughts. Perhaps its time to rethink these regulations in light of two realities: the persistent rise of piracy and the inherent limits of modern navies to patrol these waters with sufficient density to deter the pirates.

Bellbrook, OH – Sick and tired of vampires during the holiday season? Want to see the twighlight of the Twilight book series? That’s what iZs Press thinks by announcing the first “Stuff Isabella the Pirate Day,” a light-hearted holiday event promoting SR Staley's historical action-romance, The Pirate of Panther Bay. Staley’s young-adult novel follows the exploits of Isabella, an escaped slave who turns to piracy to preserve her freedom in the 1780s.

Copies of the critically acclaimed novel can be purchased at amazon.com (paperback and kindle versions), bn.com, and borders.com. Buyers preferring a copy signed by the author, they can use the secure order system on the book’s web site, www.pantherbay.com. Buyers from pantherbay.com will also get free shipping upgrade to first class delivery to make sure their books arrive on time for the holidays.

“Everyone should have a smart, take no prisoners pirate on their bookshelf,” says Staley. “Isabella is an inspired gift for the holidays and the perfect antidote to those readers ready to move beyond neck bites for entertainment. The pirate Isabella—a teenage female pirate captain to boot—knows all to well the stakes if she fails to keep her crew in line and defend her pirate ship against the notorious Spanish pirate hunters trolling the Caribbean Sea. Who wouldn’t want to open it as a stocking stuffer or a Hanukka gift?”

Reviewers have called the Pirate of Panther Bay a “swashbuckling tale of piracy, action and romance” (www.allbooksreview.com) and a “grand high seas adventure any teen would love; many adults as well (www.youngadultromancewriters.com). John Lehman, former publisher and editor of  of the literary magazine Rosebud, has said SR Staley “masterfully captures a sword fight, building tension it seems hard to believe possible short of seeing it on a huge movie screen” (www.bookreview.com).

Buyers ordering on-line should not be concerned if amazon.com, bn.com, or borders.com claim the book is out of stock during the holidays. IZS Press is prepared to ship copies to these book distributors in real time as orders are received so that The Pirate of Panther Bay arrives in plenty of time for the holidays.

Background: Women Pirates

Isabella’s story is unique in fiction as well as the real world of pirates. While several well-known pirates were women, they were rare. Pirates were a superstitious lot, and women were almost always considered bad luck.  Most pirate codes explicitly banned woman from their vessels. Captured woman were often raped, murdered and thrown overboard.

But Isabella’s leadership role is not without historical precedent. Mary Read and Ann Bonny, the most infamous female pirates of the 18th century “Golden Age” of Caribbean piracy, were known for their cutthroat fierceness. They were tried and convicted of piracy in 1721, but saved from the hangman’s noose by “pleading their bellies.” It was against English law to hang someone who was pregnant.

The 16th century Irish pirate queen and captain, Grace O’Malley, pillaged English shipping and coast villages in rebellion against England’s encroachment on Ireland, and as a way to fund her growing estates. Jailed and about to be hanged, she managed to be released and even befriended Queen Elizabeth I at one point.

Staley says perhaps the most strong-willed female pirate captain was Cheng I Sao (aka Mrs. Cheng). At the height of her power in the early 19th century, Mrs. Cheng led a pirate confederation that included fleet of more than 300 vessels and almost 17,000 pirates, plundering villages, ships, and shipping routes throughout Southeast Asia. Her influence was so broad, and her grip on the “brethren” of the Chinese coast so firm, the Chinese government gave up trying to subdue her by force. Unlike most pirates, she died peacefully at the age of 69 after a negotiated “retirement” in Canton (now Guangzhou).

About the Book

 

The Pirate of Panther Bay is set in 1780 on the Caribbean Sea. Isabella becomes captain of the Red Tide after her lover, the previous captain, dies. But her first command is put in jeopardy when her crew demands results and she doesn't deliver. It doesn't help that she's only 18-years-old, an escaped slave and falling in love with one of her enemies—Juan Carlos, a young Spaniard captured during her first battle. She should have killed him, and her mercy sends her life into a maelstrom of mutiny, imprisonment and revenge.

\Contact the author at pantherbay@aol.com.

Visit the web site: http://www.pantherbay.com.

Here's what readers are saying about The Pirate of Panther Bay:

“A great adventure romance!”

-- Robert, Chapel Hill, NC

“The sword fights leave you breathless. Add that to the intense love story, and you just might feel the rocking of a ship while you read!”

-- Morgan, Sarasota, Florida

“I didn’t want to put it down. Isabella’s character is different from anything else I’ve read -- a girl pirate who can take care of herself!”

-- Carly, Kettering, Ohio

“An engaging swashbuckler that leaves the reader wanting more.”

-- Heidy, Bellbrook, Ohio

“Staley has done a wonderful job of weaving historical elements into the story line while keeping them relevant and interesting.”

-- Colleen, New York, NY

“With each turn of the page, you are drawn in by the adventure and romance.”

-- Gary, West Milton, Ohio

“A fun and exciting adventure book that the whole family can enjoy reading.”

-- Alex, Bellbrook, Ohio.

Here's what reviewers say about The Pirate of Panther Bay (full reviews available at www.pantherbay.com):

• “The brilliant descriptive powers of author S.R. Staley allows the reader to … feel the intense emotions as the sword fights and cannon fire fuel the imagination.” (youngadultromancewriters.com)

• “A swashbuckling tale of piracy, action, and romance, The Pirate of Panther Bay is a well-researched and entertaining trip. There are enough sword-and-cutlass battles to excite anyone. Female readers will especially enjoy the strength shown by the main character, whose inspiring spirit is worthy even of Hollywood.” (AllbookReviews.com)

• Because of this lovelorn central character the book sometimes seems more romantic novel than adventure yarn, but S.R. Staley puts plenty of zip into the action sequences. [H]e masterfully captures a sword fight, building tension it seems hard to believe possible short of seeing it on a huge movie screen…. There's fine description plus conspiracies and colorful characters galore, but what I liked best was the irony of the story…. Robert Louis Stevenson would have loved this book. I sure did.” (John Lehman, founder and original publisher of Rosebud,  on Bookreview.com.)

• If you are looking for an expertly written, unique, and original pirate-themed book, then this is the book for you. (readerviews.com)

• Part adventure story, part history lesson, but 100 percent pirate, Staley has crafted a tale that will stir your emotions and your mind. Whether you're young or old, The Pirate of Panther Bay will forever change the way you think about buccaneers. ¶ (Tim Bete, Author of Guide to Pirate Parenting, and director of the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop)

• This adventurous tale takes a circuitous journey that remains true to the real world of pirates and Spain’s desire to reign over the New World. ¶ (Cindy Vallar, Pirates & Privateers)