Re: Pirate Havens in FT

>RBW wrote:I'd go for planetoid or artificial substitute, with generous 
liberty parties (to places that don't mind "freelance merchants" - after
all,
you have to sell the loot somewhere, so their existence is something of
a prerequisite for piracy). Keep the ships out of sight...

Caribbean piracy was possible, AFAIK, because Spain wanted a monopoly on
the merchant traffic to her colonies--buying raw resources at a low
price
and selling manufactured good at an artificially high price.  A
buccaneer
(usually French or English) would snap up a Spanish ship and, mostly,
sell
the goods to the Spanish colonists. 

So you'd want to pick a route with colonies nearby.  You might even get
tacit cooperation from colonial officials, eg they might warn you if
they
know there's a cruiser division arriving -- in return, you sell your
loot
to the official's company at 50% of the monopoly price, they mark it to
80%
of the monopoly price, everyone's happy except the insurance companies.

>Does anyone know why  Spain never took out Port Royal, or other such 
>buccaneer centers?

>You can mount a lot more guns and armour on something that doesn't have
to float.

True but that doesn't explain why Spain never dropped a battalion or two
off to deal with the problem.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
mail2web - Check your email from the web at
http://mail2web.com/ .