Piracy

World Heritage Sites connected to 'Piracy':

  • Belize Barrier Reef
  • Campeche Faced almost constant attacks by English and Dutch buccaneers/pirates for c150 years after founding in 1540 For pirate names see link. (The town's Baseball team is called the "Campeche Pirates"!); link
  • Cidade Velha
  • Cocos Island AB: "The human historical record includes pirates..."
  • Coro and its Port Attacked by Pirates and Privateers 1567, 1595 and 1659. Its fortifed Cathedral was used as a refuge. In 1659 the English pirate Christopher Mings with 3 ships took booty worth £200-300k in raids on Coro and 2 other Venezuelan ports.
  • Kasbah of Algiers “A Turk corsair Khair-al-din .. founded his capital in Algiers in 1516”. He is better known in Europe as “Barbarossa” and under him and his successors Algiers became one of the main ports of the “Barbary Pirates” for several centuries. As part of a combined European attempt to wipe out the piracy the city was bombarded on 27 Aug 1816 by an Anglo-Dutch fleet and c1000 Christian slaves held there were freed.
  • Kronborg Castle The toll to pass through the Sound by Kronborg castle was levied from 1429 ostensibly as a compensation to Denmark for keeping the sound free from pirates. Crews from “Danziger Fribyttere” (Pirates from Danzig) were hanged at the castle. But there was still a lot of piracy in the area and this would have been known to Shakespeare. Hence Hamlet is captured by Pirates, and, in the play, 2 pirates deliver a note to Horatio at Elsinore informing him that Hamlet has returned to Denmark
  • Medina of Tétouan
  • Panamá Viejo Henry Morgan 1670, Buccaneers 1671
  • Portobelo-San Lorenzo Francis Drake 1596, William Parker 1601, Henry Morgan 1668
  • San Pedro de la Roca Castle Houses the Museum of Piracy
  • Santo Domingo Francis Drake 1586
  • Stralsund and Wismar Home of the Victual Brothers, a companionship of privateers who later turned to piracy (14th century)
  • Visby Occupied by the Baltic Pirates "The Victual Brothers". They made it their HQ in the Baltic until they were attacked by the Teutonic Knights in 1398 when the city was destroyed.; link
  • Willemstad