Captain Jack Rackham may not have spent much time considering the natural beauty of all the places he visited in his pursuit of plunder. Dressed in his colourful pirate costumes he would have felt totally at home in his new world. Captain Rackham was also notorious because he sailed with two female companions, Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Jack’s life as a pirate however,did eventually catch up with and he was captured, tried and hung in Jamaica in 1720.

People today working in the various resorts, know the legends of the Caribbean. They enjoy the stories,and tell them as part of folklore and to entertain.

Despite the substantial rise in piracy off Somalia and in the Gulf of Aden, the amount of the ransoms being paid by western shipping to the Somali pirates is small compared to that lost in the Straits of Malacca. It is only a small percentage of the value of fish illegally poached by foreign vessels operating without permission in Somali waters.

Here is one explanation why so much attention is placed on Somali pirates. Somalia has been marked as one of the countries where a “radical” Islamic government is presented as a threat to western interests. The possibility of direct military action is a real possibility after the failure of the invasion by an Ethiopian force used to check the creation of a new government. The Somali pirates provide a convenient image to be held in contempt.