Happy Birthday Marines: “The Marines performed with honor at the first war proclaimed by our new nation. In 1801, when Thomas Jefferson became president, he refused to accede to the Barbary pirates of Tripoli’s demands for an immediate payment of $225,000 and an annual payment of $25,000. This refusal brought about the first ‘war’ the U.S. would fight as a country. The first line of the Marine hymn, ‘from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli’, references the 600-mile march across the Libyan Desert of a group of Navy men and others to capture the port city of Derna, Tripoli. It took a concerted effort by England, France, Spain, and the United States to end over 400 years of Muslim piracy on the Barbary Coast.”
“Arrrhhh and Avast!” The blogging pirate at “Pirate’s Cove” longing for the bygone days of the now beloved Carolina pirates, is bemoaning that the Somalian johnny-come-lately horde of black-hearts is diluting the pirate gene pool with stupidity DNA. Consider this from “The Virginian Pilot”:
The incident occurred in international waters, about 25 nautical miles off the central eastern coast of the troubled east African nation. Why the men opened fire is unclear, but their decision to take on Navy ships in a 30-foot fishing boat was “not too smart at all,” said Cmdr. Jeff Breslau, a Fifth Fleet spokesman in Bahrain. “If somebody shoots at us, they can pretty much expect to die because we will return fire,” Breslau said by telephone. Breslau could recall no other instance in which pirates had fired on Navy ships in that area.
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