'Robbin Hoods Men'

There is a very interesting interview in today’s Guardian with Asad ‘Booyah’ Abdulahi, a Somalian pirate chief. He talks about something that I have seen mentioned elsewhere, but which has been suppressed in most reports of the recent piracy incidents: that he and other Somalian pirates were originally fishermen who were driven to piracy following heavy harassment by foreign boats fishing in Somalian waters, which made it impossible for them to gain a living as peaceful fishermen.

He is reported as saying, ‘We consider ourselves heroes running away from poverty. We don't see the hijacking as a criminal act but as a road tax because we have no central government to control our sea.’


Thomas Checkley, Marriner, Saith, That he knows John Shuan the Prisoner at the Barr, That he belonged to the Tanner Frigot, One John Stover Master, and sometime in March last the said Ship or Frigot was taken in the prosecution of her Voyage from Pettyguavus to old France by Capt. Samuel Bellamy and Monsieur Lebous. they pretended to be Robbin Hoods Men. That Shuan Declared himself to be now a Pyrate, and went up and unrigged the Maintopmast by order of the pyrates, who at that time forced no Body to go with them, and said they would take no Body against their Wills.

Trial of Simon van Vorst and Others. [October], 1717
in Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period. Illustrative Documents (1923), ed. John Franklin Jameson

Thanks (as so often) to Project Gutenberg, which has put the whole book online.


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