Pirates: Piracy and Golden Age

Josh Davis FYE 102 Paper 1 9/28/2012 Golden Age Pirates vs. Modern Day Pirates Piracy has been around before the time of the pyramids. Once merchant ship began to deliver goods to other countries, others realized the financial gain that could be made by stealing those goods and selling them themselves. Pirates have ruled the seas at different times. Once Europeans settled in the American colonies, pirates plundered towns along the coast and attacked almost every ship they came in contact with. During the 18th century, wars gave rise to privateering; a legal form of piracy.But, after the War of 1812, this was no longer tolerated. Government put an end to most piracy but, today there are still pirates. By comparing the pirates of the Golden Age with the pirates we have today, we can gain knowledge of how piracy has evolved and changed. Execution was and still is an honored method of dealing with pirates. Merchant ships have always found themselves victim to pirates. In November 1998, p irates hijacked a ship off the Chinese coast. Its name was the Cheung Son. After binding and gagging all the crew members, the pirates killed them and threw their bodies overboard.This ship and its cargo were never seen again. Police eventually discovered pictures of pirates celebrating onboard the Cheung Son. They arrested all thirty-eight pirates. A court found all guilty. Thirteen were sentenced to death, one to life in prison, and the rest were sentenced to twelve years. During the Golden Age, many pirates were hung or executed in some way. After Captain William Kid was hung, his body was tarred and placed in an iron cage. The government put it on display as a warning to other pirates. Likewise, another pirate, named Edward Teach, had his decapitated head put on display as a warning also.Punishment was and is a rarity for pirates. Often, pirates escape with their â€Å"treasure†. Golden Age pirates and Modern day pirates share three requirements to flourish. Both need a p lace to sail where the rewards are substantial. During the Golden Age, the only way to transport goods was by ship. This gave pirates access to an unlimited amount of goods and treasures. Today, small high-speed vessels can easily catch up to larger vessels. The plunder is equally rewarding, but easier to convert into cash. Both generations of pirates need hunting grounds where the risk of detection is small.Golden Age pirates patrolled near Africa, the American and European coast, and as far north as the Caribbean. Today’s pirates thrive off the coasts of Africa and South China. Finally, they both need a safe haven. Port Royal offered a safe place for Golden Age pirates to stay. Many of Indonesia’s islands provide a safe haven for today’s pirates. Weaponry and Technology are very different today than three hundred years ago. Swords and muskets were the weapons of choice for Golden Age pirates. Today, pirates wield automatic rifles and modern communication techn ology.Past pirates used wooden ships with large crews and used cannons to defend their ships. Today’s pirates used small fast boats with small crews. Golden Age pirates attacked any ship that crossed their path, â€Å"crime of opportunity†. Today’s pirates plan their attacks and select victims before they even leave shore. â€Å"The truth is that modern piracy is a violent, bloody, ruthless practice†¦ made the more fearsome by the knowledge on the part of the victims that they are on their own and absolutely defenseless and that no help is waiting round the corner† Captain Jayant Abhyankar, Deputy Director of the International Maritime Bureau 1999.This statement still held true during the Golden Age. Efforts to end piracy began during ancient times. This Island of Rhodes was the first to include piracy in their maritime laws. In the Golden Age almost every nation had established maritime laws. Sir Charles Hedges, a judge of the British Admiralty Cour t during the late 1600’s, says â€Å"pirates are thieves who seize a ship and/or its cargo through violent means upon the sea†. Despite many legal attempts to stop piracy an international definition of piracy did not exist till 1958.Article 15, 1958 Geneva Convention of the High Seas and Article 101, 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea defines piracy as â€Å"a violent seizure on the high seas of a private ship or the illegal detainment of persons property aboard said ship for the purpose of private gain, nor can a government commit an act of piracy†. Piracy in the Golden Age devastated the trade economy. Hundreds of ships carrying numerous amounts of goods were plundered. Today, piracy hardly dents the two trillion dollar a year shipping industry. In 1997 losses amounted to â€Å"$. 32 for every $10,000† J.Gottschalk. This leaves little financial incentive for companies to deal with the problem. Violence was and is still very common amongst pirates. No one knows for sure show many people were murdered by Golden Age Pirates but, its number was staggering. Modern day pirates have left a dent themselves. During a five year period the UN High Commissioner said that an estimated 2,283 women were raped and 592 people were kidnaped. This was in Vietnamese alone. In 2000 there were 182 ships that were attacked. Almost half were in the South China Seas according to the Worldwide Maritime Piracy.Captain Abhyankar wrote in An overview of Piracy Problems; â€Å"A total of 202 incidents were reported in 1998. The majority of these attacks were violent. At least 79 persons have been killed and 35 injured during piracy†. Clearly piracy is still a problem. Piracy is as much of a problem today as it was years ago. Pirates of the golden age and pirates of today are more similar than not, but, they do have differences. We have seen that pirates need three common requirements to thrive and their differences in weapons and technology.Piracy has been around for too long and needs to end. Work Cited Abidi, Shahkar. â€Å"Piracy puts trade in choppy waters,† DNA 12 April 2012 Baldwin, James. â€Å"Dodging Pirates in Southeast Asia,† SailNet, 1 March 2002 â€Å"Drop in Piracy Incidents,† Portsworld. com Malaysia, 25 July 2005 Ellis, Eric. â€Å"Singapore’s New Straits: Piracy on the High Seas is on the Rise in Southeast Asia,† Fortune International (Asia Edition), 148:6 (29 September 2003), p. 24 www. cindyvallar. com. â€Å"Pirates and Privateers the History of Maritime Piracy†, 2006

The Eradication of Smallpox essays

The Eradication of Smallpox essays Although it has taken a huge collective effort by many individuals and nations, the eradication of smallpox was mainly brought about by the pioneering efforts of Edward Jenner. Smallpox had been killing humans for over 3000 years and has been referred to as one of the greatest all-time scourges to mankind. One of the first known efforts to fight this horrible disease by immunization was in China where powdered scabs of smallpox pustules were blown into the nostrils of healthy persons through a tube. This method of immunization was called variolation and involved taking samples (which consisted of vesicles, pus from pustules, or ground scabs) from patients who had a mild form of the disease and inoculating the material into other persons through the nose or skin (Hopkins 24). The practice of variolation came to Europe from the East at the beginning of the 18th century by Lady Mary Wortley Montague, and English aristocrat. Lady Montagues husband was an ambassador to the East for England and while in Istanbul, she observed their method of variolation. She was so impressed by the Turks method that she had her 5-year-old son inoculated then her 4-year-old daughter when they returned to England. This was the first variolation performed in England (Hopkins 38). This method of variolation slowly gained general acceptance throughout all of Europe, although it had varying degrees of success. A portion of patients treated with variolation became ill with smallpox and subsequently died from the infection or started a new epidemic, and thus there was a fear that the inoculation did not provide immunity, but just provided infection. A few innovative scientists saw that there must be a better way to provide immunity, and Edward Jenner saw this better way in a correlation between cowpox and smallpox that eventually dubbed him the father of the smallpox va ...

science rules essays

science rules essays Prepare for Tomorrow Today If everyone had known the importance of their future, they could have comprehended better the value of preparation in early life. A college education may have seemed out of reach for some individuals, who struggled in high school. A factory job or assembly line position was a more realistic goal to achieve. Throughout their childhood there was a dream of having a mansion, or a fancy car. Money was the center of their interests. They learned as they got older that these things were harder to accomplish than they imagined. People had to work long, tedious hours when they were young to get ahead for the future. There was the reality of a price to be paid in early life, but what they benefited later would be more than they could ever fathom. They would have to remember to work hard, and prove to others that they were a worthy people to take note of. This was only the beginning, however. They had to strive to do well in the community and in their place of employment. Even the little things that seemed insignificant made a bigger difference in later life. There were times when that nothing job they had meant something more later on. They could have never known when that past job supervisor could have been a place of reference for a job opportunity or an advancement. There should be a certain part of people that is devoted to their education. This will be something that will be noted later in college, or sometimes in the job that was so important for them to have. The studying may have been a little stressful at times, but if people had not learned to balance their schedule at a young age how would they cope as adults with a family, and occupation? It was a long hard road, however, the fruits of labor would be endless. Their education had much worth, and was the foundation of their future. ...

Grammarian Definition and Examples

Grammarian Definition and Examples A grammarian is a specialist in the grammar of one or more languages: a linguist. In the modern era, the term grammarian is sometimes used pejoratively to refer to a grammatical purist or prescriptivistone whos primarily concerned with correct usage.According to James Murphy, the role of the grammarian changed between the classical era (Roman grammarians seldom ventured into the field of prescriptive advice) and the Middle Ages (It is precisely on this issue that medieval grammarians strike out into new areas) (Rhetoric in the Middle Ages, 1981). Observations Edward SapirThe man who is in charge of grammar and is called a grammarian is regarded by all plain men as a frigid and dehumanized pedant. It is not difficult to understand the very pallid status of linguistics in America.H.L. MenckenMore than once, plowing through profound and interminable treatises of grammar and syntax during the writing and revision of the present work, I have encountered the cheering spectacle of one grammarian exposing, with contagious joy, the grammatical lapses of some other grammarian. And nine times out of ten, a few pages further on, I have found the enchanted purist erring himself. The most funereal of the sciences is saved from utter horror by such displays of human malice and fallibility.Umberto EcoWhen the writer . . . says he has worked without giving any thought to the rules of the process, he simply means he was working without realizing he knew the rules. A child speaks his mother tongue properly, though he could never write out its grammar. But t he grammarian is not the only one who knows the rules of the language; they are well known, albeit unconsciously, also to the child. The grammarian is merely the one who knows how and why the child knows the language. Donatus, Roman GrammarianThe discipline of grammar developed parallel with that of rhetoric during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and the two often overlapped. Grammar schools provided training necessary for a student before he entered a school of rhetoric . . .. The most famous Roman grammarian was Aelius Donatus, who lived in the fourth century after Christ and whose works were the basic grammatical texts for the Middle Ages...The Ars Minor of Donatus, his most read work, is limited to discussion of the eight parts of speech... but his fuller Ars Grammatica goes beyond strictly grammatical subjects to discuss, in Book 3, barbarism and solecism as faults of style as well as a number of ornaments of style also discussed by rhetoricians...Donatuss treatment of tropes and figures had great authority and was substantially repeated in handbooks by the Venerable Bede and other later writers. Since grammar was always more widely studied than rhetoric, and often out of Donatuss text, hi s discussion insured that these ornaments of style were known in later centuries even to students who did not study rhetoric as a separate discipline. Robert A. Kaster[In late antiquity, the] grammarian was, first, the guardian of the language, custos Latini sermonis, in a phrase of Seneca, or guardian of articulate utterance, in the description of Augustine. He was to protect the language against corruption, to preserve its coherence, and to act as an agent of control: thus, early in his history, we find the grammarian claiming the right to limit the grant of citizenship (civitas) to new usages. But by virtue of his command of the poetic texts, the grammarians guardianship extended to another, more general area, as guardian of tradition (historiae custos). The grammarian was the conservator of all the discrete pieces of tradition embedded in his texts, from matters of prosody (to which Augustine refers in his characterization) to the persons, events, and beliefs that marked the limits of vice and virtue.The two realms of the guardianship thus answered to the two divisions of the grammarians task, the knowledge of speaking correctl y and the explication of the poets...

Compare and Contrast Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 4

Compare and Contrast - Essay Example Dieting is a very common method adopted for weight control. Most people go with this option because skipping meals apparently seems easier than doing physical workout. Besides, skipping meals has an obvious and quick effect on the body. The concept behind dieting is this; since the body does not get the required nutrients and nutrition, it uses stored energy in the body in the form of fat to self-address its needs. Consumption of this stored energy results in fat loss and accordingly, weight loss. Dieting has many different forms in addition to skipping of meals. These days, a lot of diet programs have evolved that are marketed over social media and the Internet. Some of these programs are based on the consumption of a special kind of tea or medicine while other programs suggest diet plans that can be followed by the interested people. The basic concept is to limit the consumption of fat and carbohydrate in meals, boost the metabolism, and burn the calories. Exercise is another very common method adopted for weight control. This method is based on physical workout. Exercise certainly appears to be more strenuous and physically demanding compared to dieting not only because it involves physical exertion and use of muscles, but also because results take longer to show up than they do in the case of dieting. The concept behind doing exercise is to burn off the calories stored in the body in the form of fat. As an individual runs, stored energy is consumed and fat burns off. Intensity and type of exercise can vary from one person to another depending upon the level of fitness desired, age, gender, and physical stature. Normally, young males do the most intense physical workouts compared to people of all other age-groups. People do exercises in a variety of ways. Some people go to gym regularly. Other people do walk, running, or jogging. People either go to the jogging tracks or use treadmills. While dieting apparently seems easier than doing exercise, in many cases , it might be more difficult and worse than exercising daily. Highly motivated people start doing dieting by missing meals, but as their hunger increases and the motivation starts to subside, they allow themselves to eat. Since they had not eaten for a long time as a result of skipping a meal, they end up eating more than they would have eaten otherwise combined in the two meals. So skipping meals essentially becomes only delaying meals only to end up eating more than usual. Dieting consumes stored energy as a result of which, the person looks very lazy and worn out. Skin becomes lose and the person looks aged and tired even if he/she manages to lose some weight with dieting. These are only some of the disadvantages of dieting. Many diet programs that have surfaced in the recent years are ineffective and their marketed products are actually bad for health. On the other hand, physical workout is a very good exercise routine with multiple advantages. Physical workout not just helps an individual lose weight, but it also makes the individual look fresh and young. Physical workout boosts body metabolism and increases the circulation of blood in all organs of the body. This has a clear and obvious beneficial effect on the functions of the body. Comparing the two options of weight control, exercise far exceeds dieting in effectiveness and advantages. However, neither of the two methods can be considered as alone effective and sufficient in

Ass4 Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Ass4 - Coursework Example This mountain later came to be known as â€Å"Mount Kailash†. To some people, the similarity between Mount Meru and Mount Kailash has a spiritual aspect. Shiva Samhita says that their lies a Mount Meru in one’s body and only a true yogi can identify it. Certain religious pilgrims, who visit Mount Kailash, view it as a spiritual, and not a cosmological centre. A ‘kora’ is a religious practice in Tibetan. In this practice, one has to go around Mount Kailash to wash your sins and to gain enlightenment. Hence, the word pilgrimage, ‘nekorwa’, in Tibetan, means ‘making circles about holy places’. Various different ways of doing a ‘kora’ are adopted. Some people sponsor a ‘kora’ for the person who actually travels around Kailash and the blessings of this act are shared by both. Some people may complete the ‘kora’ in a day. But to gain enlightenment, you must be, spiritually, in contact with God. Answer- Hindus believe that the act of completely immersing oneself in Lake Manasarovar leads to one’s incarnation as God. Tibetans, on other hand, do not bathe in Lake Manasarovar because they do not like to dirty the holy water. Dolma La is the highest point in Kailash kora. Along the path to Dolma La, stones are stacked by pilgrims. These stones represent Mount Kailash. ‘Dolma’ is said to be the one who guided the first person to reach Dolma La. A boulder is worshipped at the place where she

The Causes of Suicide in the Military Research Paper

The Causes of Suicide in the Military - Research Paper Example (Alvarez) It is evident from the graph that the suicide rate has been almost doubled in 2008 compared to the 2003 statistics. In any case, one thing is for sure; suicide rates among American military personnel are growing rapidly in recent times because of various reasons. Even though military authorities are trying hard to reduce the suicide rates among soldiers, so far they failed to do so because of the complex reasons associated with suicides in military. This paper analyses the causes and effects of suicides in American military. Suicide rates among American military personnel have been more than that among American civilians in recent times. The above fact clearly suggests that there should be some specific reasons to the increased suicide rates among soldiers. The interpersonal-psychological theory of suicide proposes that three necessary factors are needed to die by suicide: feelings that one does not belong with other people, feelings that one is a burden on others or societ y, and an acquired capability to overcome the fear and pain associated with suicide (Bryan, et al. p.1044). Feelings that one does not belong with other people seems to be the major reason for increasing suicide rates among soldiers. ... Socializing is an essential activity required for each human being to maintain a stable mental health. Military life provides less diversity for socializing activities. It should be noted that in normal life a person’s socializing habits takes place in a diverse environment; socializing with family members, socializing with relatives, socializing with peers, socializing with opposite sex, socializing with friends etc. On the other hand, in military life, socializing is only a one way traffic; socializing between the soldiers and that also only on specific occasions. Thus feelings of loneliness or feelings that one does not belong with other people may increase among soldiers, which may finally develop frustrations and subsequent suicide attempts. Feeling of unworthiness or feeling that one is a burden on others or society is another reason for suicide tendency among soldiers. As mentioned earlier, military life provides only limited opportunities for family life as far as a so ldier is concerned. A soldier may not be able to fulfill his family and social commitments while working in the military. The failure to fulfill these commitments may generate feeling of unworthiness among soldiers. Such feelings can also cause the development of suicide tendency. Acquired capability to overcome the fear and pain associated with suicide is the third major reason for increased suicide rates among military personnel. It should be noted that soldiers are brave people and they are engaged in acts like killing of enemies. In other words, killing or dying is not a fearful act for them. Thus when the feeling of unworthiness develops, soldiers are not hesitant in committing suicide. Army