Piracy is a tradition of the sea with many cultures considering that harvesting the bounty of the surface of the ocean to be no different than harvesting the bounty of its depths.
The FoolsGold posting on a yachting blog about a nation's viewpoints on piracy was deleted by the blogging yachties who didn't care to be reminded of the truth at this particular time.
The post was nothing more than a description of a nation wherein people in its very agrarian southeast sector openly supported piracy with even the wives of wealthy landowners routinely attending open-air auctions of pirate booty. Also discussed in the posting was the more industrialized northeast sector of the country wherein major merchant firms in three separate cities make a fortune selling weapons and various naval stores to pirate vessels in the Indian Ocean. On the outskirts of that country's northeast sector there is a common practice of showing false lights on moonless nights so that sailing vessels will think it to be a lightship and will turn onto a rocky shore. The blog post mentioned that locals who harvested the cargo obviously had no particular interest in the continued safety of any sailors who happened to make it to shore alive.
This blog post that was deleted by the yachties happened to end with the tag line that the nation being described was quite obviously the United States during the 19th century.
How often we forget our history. England likes to take great pride in its seafaring tradition. Well, let us not forget that the English Crown took all property if there were "but one man or beast" aboard a shipwrecked vessel. It was therefore quite common for residents in the area to make certain that shipwrecked sailors did not survive, lest the cargo be taken by Crown revenue agents rather than local merchants.
Traditions of the sea? Or simply a very convenient lapse of memory on our part?
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