High Seas Hostages

High Seas Hostages: For centuries, captured crews and passengers have been used as currency, leverage, and a reason for war. Barbary corsairs seized thousands of Europeans and Americans, pushing the young United States into its first overseas wars, and modern hijackings have repeatedly brought governments to the brink of confrontation.

Yusuf Karamanli: The pasha of Tripoli demanded higher tribute from Washington, and in May 1801 his men chopped down the flagpole at the US consulate. The gesture was a declaration of war and launched the First Barbary War.

USS Philadelphia: The frigate ran aground off Tripoli in October 1803, and about 300 American officers and sailors, led by Captain William Bainbridge, spent nearly two years as hostages. Their captivity pushed Washington toward a more aggressive campaign.

Stephen Decatur: In February 1804 the young naval officer led volunteers aboard a captured ketch, sailed into Tripoli harbor disguised as a merchant vessel, and burned the captured Philadelphia under the pasha's guns. Britain's Admiral Nelson reportedly called it the most daring act of the age.

Schooner Maria: Algerian corsairs seized the American schooner Maria and the ship Dauphin in July 1785. Twenty one Americans were enslaved, and some stayed in captivity for more than a decade while Congress argued over how to pay.

Treaty of Tripoli: Signed in 1796 and ratified in 1797 to secure peace and the release of captives, this treaty declared in Article 11 that the US government was not founded on the Christian religion. The Senate ratified it with little debate.

Sidi Haji Abdrahaman: Tripoli's ambassador to London met John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in 1786, and when asked why his state attacked ships of nations at peace with it, he said they were lawful prizes and cited religion. He reportedly named a price for peace of roughly 30,000 guineas, and Jefferson's report hardened American views.

Thomas Pellow: A Cornish boy captured by Barbary corsairs in 1715 at age 11, he was taken to Morocco, forced to convert, and served as a soldier under Sultan Moulay Ismail. After 23 years he escaped and published his memoir in 1740.

Moulay Ismail: The Moroccan sultan used thousands of European captives as laborers on his enormous palace city at Meknes. In 1699 he also sent an embassy to Versailles seeking to marry a daughter of Louis XIV, who declined.

Baltimore Ireland: On 20 June 1631, Algerian corsairs raided this Cork village in the dead of night and carried off more than a hundred villagers, mostly English settlers. The captives were sold in Algiers, and only a few ever returned.

Jan Janszoon: This Dutch privateer turned corsair, who also took the name Murad Reis, led raids as far as Iceland in 1627, carrying off about 400 people in what Icelanders call the Turkish Abductions. He later became governor of the Moroccan port of Sale.

Miguel de Cervantes: Captured by Barbary corsairs in 1575 while sailing home from Naples, the future author of Don Quixote spent five years as a slave in Algiers. He made four escape attempts, and a religious order and his family raised his ransom in 1580.

Bombardment of Algiers: In August 1816 a British and Dutch fleet under Lord Exmouth pounded Algiers, forcing the dey to free more than 1,000 Christian captives and promise to end the practice. France conquered Algiers in 1830, ending the corsair state.

Achille Lauro: Four Palestinian hijackers seized the Italian cruise ship in October 1985, killed wheelchair user Leon Klinghoffer, and tossed him overboard. US Navy jets forced the plane carrying them to land in Sicily, where American and Italian forces briefly faced each other on the runway.

MV Sirius Star: Somali pirates seized the Saudi supertanker in November 2008, hundreds of miles off Kenya, with two million barrels of crude aboard. A ransom reportedly around three million dollars was dropped by parachute, and several pirates drowned in their getaway boat.

Maersk Alabama: In April 2009 Somali pirates boarded the American cargo ship, and after the crew retook it, the pirates took Captain Richard Phillips hostage in a lifeboat. After five days, Navy SEAL snipers shot three captors from the stern of the USS Bainbridge.

MV Faina: Somali pirates took this Ukrainian freighter in September 2008, and its cargo turned out to be 33 Soviet made T72 tanks plus heavy weapons. Warships shadowed the ship for months until a reported ransom of 3.2 million dollars freed it in February 2009.

Santa Maria: In January 1961 Portuguese dissident Henrique Galvao and about two dozen men boarded this liner as passengers and seized it at sea to protest the Salazar dictatorship. The voyage of roughly 12 days ended in Brazil with Galvao granted asylum, and the stunt embarrassed Lisbon.

USS Pueblo: North Korea captured the US Navy intelligence ship in January 1968 and held 82 crew members for eleven months. Crewmen flashed their middle fingers in propaganda photos and called it a Hawaiian good luck sign, and the ship is still displayed in Pyongyang.

SS Mayaguez: Khmer Rouge forces seized this US container ship in May 1975. American Marines stormed an island where the crew was believed held, but the sailors had already been freed, and more than 40 US service members died in the operation.

Trent Affair: In November 1861 a US warship stopped a British mail steamer and seized two Confederate envoys, James Mason and John Slidell. Britain sent thousands of troops to Canada before Lincoln's government released the men.

Robert Jenkins: A British captain claimed Spanish coast guards sliced off his ear in 1731, and in 1738 he reportedly displayed it before Parliament. The outrage helped trigger the War of Jenkins' Ear against Spain in 1739.

Henry Every: In 1695 the English pirate captured the Mughal treasure ship Ganj i Sawai, which carried pilgrims and a fortune. The Mughal emperor responded by seizing East India Company traders and threatening to halt trade, which spurred an unprecedented global manhunt.

Arctic Sea: In July 2009 this Maltese flagged freighter with a Russian crew vanished in European waters after armed men reportedly boarded it. It was found weeks later off Cape Verde, and rumors of a secret cargo have never been fully settled.

Brig Betsey: A Moroccan sultan's cruiser seized the American brig in 1784, making it the first US vessel captured by a Barbary state. The crew's release led to a 1786 treaty with Morocco that is often cited as the longest unbroken treaty relationship in US history.