Did pirates ever really exist? If so, when and where did they sail?
by 
Daydreamer
ANSWERS: 1
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Absolutely! Pirates have existed all over the world; the Wikipedia article (address below) mentions those in or from the West Indies, Holland, England, France, Indonesia, and Malaysia. The Caribbean has a well-deserved reputation for being infested with them (they didn't just make it up for the movie/ride). The golden age of piracy spanned the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in large part because of privateers who were paid by their governments to capture the ships of enemy nations. The legality of that declined as that period ended, and (defying common sense) so did the actual practice. Over the last decade or so, there has been a substantial increase in piracy in southeast Asia. Pirates in motorboats can easily overcome the small crew of larger, slow cargo ships. They strike not for the cargo itself but for the possessions of the crew and contents of the ship's safe. Wikipedia has tons more to say about pirates old and new: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates
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