Something for everyone!

Pirates can, in fact, be connected to pretty much anything, but to demonstrate pirates' broad-based appeal, a quick round-up of piracy headlines, before we head to the collections of the Mariners' Museum in Newport News.

For the military technology geek: The Vienna-based company Schiebel Group, known for its work with mine-detection and UAV technology is, as Danger Room notes, advertising a robotic helicopter as a pirate detection system.

The three-year-old Camcopter design is popular with organizations working to “de-mine” old battlefields, and with oil companies, for pipeline monitoring. But the 10-foot-long, 200-pound bird, can also be flown from tankers and other large vessels, in order to search ahead for pirates, according to Schiebel. The company told Aviation News, in June, that a Saudi tanker operator has already “shown interest” in buying Camcopters for Somalia duty. But it’s worth noting that the US Coast Guard stresses alert watchmen, sailing fast, and pulling up a ship’s ladder — not some expensive technology – as the best methods for beating pirates.

For the type of people who read the Foreign Policy blogs every morning: Japan's parliament has authorized the use of force by the Japanese Navy against Somali pirates, raising more questions about the future of Japan's pacifist constitution.

For people interested in international maritime law: A NATO warship recently captured a group of pirates who tried to hijack a Singaporean freighter, stopping the hijacking with no casualties but later releasing the pirates. NATO has been criticized before for being too gentle with captured Somali pirates, and the organization does not have a detainment policy; the arresting warship must follow its own national laws.

For readers of biography: The Providence Journal published a biographical sketch of Thomas Tew, a late 17th century pirate and privateer, who operated off the coast of Africa, raiding Mughal ships. Probably.

In the 17th century there was a pirate from Rhode Island. Or perhaps he was a privateer. Maybe he wasn’t from Rhode Island after all. These are the kind of “facts” that float to the surface when one stirs the murky brew of hand-me-down history that has fermented for centuries, from a time when legend often was prized over fact, and records, if kept, have crumbled to dust.

As Catherine noted the other day, however, the beauty of our project is that it doesn't actually matter who Tew really was or what he really did. Intersubjective understandings and cultural representations of piracy are based on myth-making. What's interesting here is the continued interest in Tew's roguish deeds -- not whether Tew actually did them.

For the history buff: There's a movement afoot in Scottish Parliament to clear Captain Kidd's name following research that indicates that Kidd may have been framed by King William III, "who wanted to appear tough on piracy but who also stood to profit from the goods which Kidd seized." The tale of Kidd's hanging is pretty grisly -- the rope snapped the first two times -- and his body was tarred and hung along the banks of the Thames as a warning. The Scottish MP behind the motion has cast it in terms of justice, noting the problematic ambiguity of the privateer/pirate distinction:

"I think these types of incidents, whenever they happen, have a lesson and a morality for all time because otherwise we allow people to get away with breaking the law and breaking rules and we allow governments to get away with punishing people wrongly. I don't expect that there's going to be a mass campaign in the streets for something that happened 300 years ago but I do expect that people are going to be worried about the fact that someone can be used and abused in that way by the state, whatever time in history. If someone is accused and hung for something that he didn't actually do, when he was operating for the government and he was doing the job properly, that comes down to a criminal act on the part of the government not on him."

For the local TV viewer like you: The Discovery Channel and the Military Channel recently aired a program on the capture and rescue of the captain and crew of the Maersk Alabama, with a local man from Norfolk, VA playing the role of Abduwali Abduqadir Muse, the accused pirate awaiting trial in New York.