[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 34 (Tuesday, March 8, 2011)]
[House]
[Page H1595]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                  PIRATES OF THE SEA: DEJA VU OF 1801

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Poe) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, the pirates are back. These are not 
the Blackbeard, eye-patched, hook-for-a-hand, peg-legged kind of 
pirates from the Hollywood movies. The modern-day pirates are skilled, 
rich, violent, armed with automatic weapons, and are driven by a 
business that is generating up to $7 billion a year.
  My constituents from Texas, Bill Rouse and his wife Judy, have 
navigated the oceans for years. Recently, they and another group of 
international navigators and sailors decided that Somalia and the 
Somalian pirates had made the seas too dangerous to sail in that 
region, forcing them to transport their ships and boats by barges to 
safer ports. Bill said that we cannot allow a bunch of thugs to take an 
entire ocean away from the world. And that is exactly what these 
pirates are trying do. They have taken control of parts of the ocean 
and are trying to mock the most powerful nations on Earth, including 
ours.
  Days before the ill-fated American ship Quest left for their journey, 
Bill asked Scott Adam to join them in transporting their boats. Adam, 
the skipper, said of the Quest, the Quest was circumnavigating the 
globe, and it was a lifelong quest. And they continued on their trip, 
although it turned out to be doomed, in the Indian Ocean. Just a week 
after Scott Adam and three other Americans were captured, they were 
executed pirate-style after Somali pirates captured the ship the Quest.
  Pirates have also hijacked and kidnapped a Danish family. Bill Rouse 
has also met with these people on this doomed ship. This family, 
including small children, is now on the Somali mainland, still held 
hostage. Their captors have arrogantly warned that any military effort 
to save them will result in their immediate execution.
  Bill has told me of other stories about the tight-knit community of 
people sailing in that region from all over the world. And they have 
been forced off of the sea because of the pirates. There are not enough 
resources to respond to these constant threats; and these pirates not 
only kidnap, murder, and hold for ransom small boat owners, but attack 
freighters and other commercial vessels as well.
  In just 2010, Somali pirates hijacked 53 ships and held a total of 
1,100 hostages for ransom; and pirate attacks have increased 
dramatically in recent months. Here is a drawing of the recent attacks 
of the pirates in the Indian Ocean. The red represents all of the 
pirate attacks between March of 2009 up until October of 2010. But the 
blue, which you see just as much of, represents the attacks by pirates 
in the Indian Ocean in just the last 4 months.
  Piracy is a growing business because nations pay the ransom. Every 
dollar paid in ransom is helping the pirates of the seas finance their 
cause, expand their reach, and their thirst is even getting greater for 
more bounty and loot. Despite an increased international naval 
presence, the Somalian pirates are getting bolder, and they are getting 
more violent.
  America has been dealing with the threat of pirates since the days of 
our Founding Fathers, over 200 years ago. During the youngest years of 
America, the Barbary states would blackmail American ships and the 
United States by demanding money in return for the safety of U.S. ships 
that crossed the Mediterranean Sea. For years, the United States and 
European governments paid the humiliating tribute to protect the ships, 
but then in 1801 the Barbary pirates felt the wrath of the United 
States when Thomas Jefferson sent the United States Navy and the United 
States Marine Corps to take care of business with the Barbary pirates.
  This was the most famous action of the marines during this time. And 
the phrase, ``from the shores of Tripoli,'' has been immortalized in 
the marine hymn. Jefferson sent a clear message to the Barbary states 
and their pirates: don't mess with the United States. And they didn't 
for 200 years. The Somalian pirates should study a little American 
history. If they would, they'd find out that there will be a day of 
reckoning that will eventually come to them and their evil ways. Thomas 
Jefferson destroyed them. We will see what happens now.
  Our Constitution gives us the authority in article I, section 8: ``To 
define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas.'' 
These ocean lines are essential to American commerce and travel, and we 
must do everything in our power to stop the pirates off the Somalian 
coast. These pirates of the seas must find out that if they continue to 
mess with the United States, they will find themselves in a deja vu of 
1801. And they, like the pirates before them, will disappear in the ash 
heap of history.
  And that's just the way it is.

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