River piracy

For other uses, see River capture.

River piracy happens in Europe, with vessels suffering from river pirate attacks on the Serbian and Romanian stretches of the international Danube river, i.e. inside the European Union's territory. River piracy is also, a huge problem, along the Mekong River, of Southeast Asia.

River piracy, in late 18th-mid-19th century America, was primarily, concentrated along the Ohio River and Mississippi River valleys. In 1803, at Tower Rock, the U.S. Army dragoons, possibly, from the frontier army post, up river at Fort Kaskaskia, on the Illinois side opposite St. Louis, raided and drove out the river pirates.

Stack Island was also, associated with river pirates and counterfeiters, in the late 1790s. In 1809, the last major river pirate activity took place, on the Upper Mississippi River, and river piracy in this area came to an abrupt end, when a group of flatboatmen raided the island, wiping out the river pirates. From 1790–1834, Cave-In-Rock was the principal outlaw lair and headquarters of river pirate activity in the Ohio River region, from which Samuel Mason led a gang of river pirates on the Ohio River.

River piracy continued on the lower Mississippi River, from the early 1800s to the mid-1830s, declining as a result of direct military action and local law enforcement and regulator-vigilante groups that uprooted and swept out pockets of outlaw resistance.

See also

• River pirate