“Although throughout the Middle Ages, piracy was common practice, it was not until the discovery of the New World and its vast stores of riches that pirates once again became masters of the sea,” Reinhardt writes.

Following Christopher Columbus’ voyages, Europe learned of the new American continents. In their efforts to exploit and settle this New World, European nations established American colonies.

To colonize, these nations needed ships to sail across the Atlantic Ocean — ships to carry goods to and from the American colonies and ships to explore and trade on other distant shores. During this age of sail, European nations built vast navies, and these ships and their tempting treasures inspired the resurgence in piracy.

From the 16th to 18th centuries, pirates raided ports and attacked ships at sea. With strongholds throughout pockets of Europe and the Caribbean, pirates plundered and raided. Many pirates worked independent of any nation, while others — often called “buccaneers” and other names — were supported by one nation to prey on the ships of other nations.

This was the age of pirates, buccaneers and freebooters such as Capt. Henry Morgan, Bartholomew Roberts, Henry Every, William Dampier, Capt. William Kidd, Edward “Blackbeard” Teach. It is this era of piracy, and this brand of pirate, that has been popularly portrayed in works like Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island,” and movies like “Pirates of the Caribbean.” Yet, these pirates robbed, plundered and killed. To some countries, they were terrorizing scourges; to others, they were given the quiet blessing of the nation.

By the early 1700s, this infamous era of piracy in the Caribbean was coming to an end due to increased naval strength of the English in the region, and the more famous and daring pirates had either died, been killed or had been captured. But the pirates of the Barbary Coast continued plying their trade.

Sponsored by the rogue governments of Tripoli, Algiers, Morocco and Tunis, the Barbary Coast pirates were still active by the time the American colonies declared independence, became states and then a nation.

Like Blackbeard and other Caribbean pirates, the Barbary Coast pirates and their backers preferred riches to ideology. European nations had, essentially, surrendered the proposition of destroying the Barbary pirates and instead paid them tributes of gold and materials. The tributes worked like a ransom or “protection money.” It was extortion. The tribute was to work as a trade off to the leaders of the rogue states — we pay you and you leave our ships alone.

Religion, for the Barbary pirates, was a factor then as it is now with terrorists, Lord writes. “The (Barbary) pirates were Muslim, their captives Christian. Prisoners who converted to Islam escaped hard labor and landed cushy jobs. Those who disparaged Allah risked being impaled or roasted alive.”

In the late 1700s, following the European tradition, the newly formed United States also paid tribute to the Barbary Coast for safe passage of its infant navy and shipping. Like Europeans, tributes had mixed results for American shipping.

In 1785, still a “loose confederation of 13 squabbling states,” the Americans lost two ships to Algerian pirates who enslaved the crews but, with neither a president nor enough money to pay tribute or a ransom, Congress was helpless to free the captured Americans or stop the Barbary pirates from attacking American ships.

Following George Washington’s election as the newly constituted president, he assigned Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson to assess the American situation regarding the Barbary pirates. Addressing Congress, Jefferson reported that Americans must decide “between war, tribute and ransom.” An American navy was needed. Congress agreed but voted not to fund the construction of new ships.

With word coming in 1792 that the captured Americans might “abandon Christ and country,” Congress approved a ransom payment of $54,000 to Algiers. The money, however, never reached its destination. Meanwhile, pirates captured 11 more American ships, killing and enslaving their crews. The surviving American sailors remained imprisoned until the U.S. paid $642,500 and pledged an annual tribute of naval supplies.

For the next decade, Americans built a navy and paid the state-financed pirates $2 million. By 1801, Jefferson was president and Tripoli wanted more money.

“Jefferson abandoned Adams’ policy of following the British example, and paying tribute, and instead sent the ships Adams had built ... to blockade Tripoli (1803-05) and teach it a lesson,” writes historian Paul Johnson. Jefferson also approved a land mission, which led to the words in “The Marine Hymn.”