Hi, this is the author weighing in on a couple of points. Thanks to everyone for their comments and listening to the story.
So onto the question of whether it's morally reprehensible to glorify pirates. I think equating golden-age pirates (1600's-1750's) with Somali pirates is missing some important history. First off, many old school pirates had originally been pressganged (kidnapped and enslaved) into servitude as soldiers or sailors. So, when a ship mutineed it often was a slave rebellion. And (I find this fascinating) pirate ships were some of the earliest places where a modern-style democracy was practiced, where captains and quartermasters were elected and shared power. Not always, but this was the norm back then. Also, they were one of the first places where people of mixed race lived and worked as equals.
While I also despise a lot of the violence those pirates were up to back then, I think raiding ships who's sole purpose was to bring goods back from the colonies that countries like England maintained via mass amounts of violence and terror is less morally compromised than it might seem. I think of it as thieves stealing from thieves.
Also, there's pretty interesting evidence that there was almost no violence when ships under pirate attack chose surrender. There's an interesting book--The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates--that goes into the reasons why it was standard practice that any ship who surrendered was treated well and left with plenty of provisions to get to a port, and how it was a pretty kick-ass economic model.
I'd also like to point out that I find it interesting that when people think of piracy, they imagine themselves back then as being the people with money. Uh, almost everyone was dirt poor. Tons of people were starving. Tons of people were subsistent farmers living to the average age of 35. Most people were forced to live lives governed entirely by those people who most of us weren't: the landed gentry and royalty. When some of those people rebelled, I think it's okay to think they were cool.
Thanks for your reply, Katie. I hate to continue talking about it, because I really didn't find the story all that objectionable, although it was a middle-of-the-scale story for me. Many of those things you said about the carribean pirates are also true of modern pirates. You do have a point about the pressing of sailors into service, although I think it's a murky matter at best, since there are many conflicting sources. Shanghai'ing people was a common practice for everyone back then, and I think not too few pirate ships may have pressed a few deckhands, doctors or cooks into service when they saw the need.
As for pirate democracy, I remain skeptical. To me, it falls under the same category as the gang charter of the Hells Angels or the Latin Kings. Sounds great, until you realize it's a democracy enforced by how many guns you have pointed at you.
Stealing from thieves: There's a reason why piracy is one of the few means of income for your average Somali fisherman. When Japanese, Vietnamese, and Chinese fishing companies figured out that the lack of a stable government in Somalia also meant no enforcement of fishing regulations, it didn't take them long to traul the Somali coast bone-dry of fish, leaving almost nothing for the locals. Depite the occassional cruise ship or tanker ship, most of their targets are small fishing vessels.
No violence on surrender: A good portion of money from piracy comes from ransoming people, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that dead people don't ransom very well. In fact, most prisoners say that they were treated fairly well by the Somali pirate (food, water, etc), except for that whole kidnapped at gun-point thing. The other half of piracy money comes from theft of cargo and vessels. Your typical cargo ship and freight may net several millions of dollar on the black market, and most of the time the crew is ransomed or released without molestation. In many instances, pirates have collaborators among the crew members. Again, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that it's a lot easier to bribe the crew off than it is to have a shoot out with them.
People being dirt poor: Same with modern pirates. The average Somali or Indonesian pirate are dirt poor peasants in most cases, with very few economic alternatives, whereas the a single successful run can set them up for life.