High Barbaree

Somali pirates --wikimedia commons

Do you like stories and songs about pirates?  Very often the folksingers and writers of yester year actually told stories of real events when they sang their ballads.  Some songs lend themselves to modern events, as does the song "High Barbaree."

Now the song has a colorful history, as a traditional sea shanty that was popular with British and American sailors alike.  The story is of a sailing ship that encounters pirates off the Barbary Coast.

But an even earlier version of the song speaks of two merchant ships, one French and the other English, who got into a war on the seas, resulting in the French throwing the crew of the opposing ship overboard and were then overtaken and defeated.

There is another version of what the song is about, with its lyrics somewhat different than the others and it tells the story of European and North American traders who were involved with North African pirates in the 18th and 19th centuries.

And it is that third version of events that resembles the stories about pirates today, as they come from Somalia with the same intent, to overcome those they capture on the seas, hold for ransom or steal the goods aboard ships.  The song story is told here with modern illustrations.

'