Pirates & Privateers

[David Manley]

A xebec was a product of its environment -- Med winds are flaky, and there's (relatively) not a lot of maneuvering room; so in order to take best advantage of what wind there is, one needs fore-and-aft rigging, even on "big" ships. However, outside the Med, the xebec isn't nearly as brilliant -- it's just another sloop- or schooner-sized unit. So I don't see the xebec as being a huge seller, unless there's a huge untapped market for "Barbary Wars" small-unit actions.

Which there probably is, given the extensive US involvement

[csadn]

Which there probably is, given the extensive US involvement

I'm not so sure -- most people are, tragically, ignorant of the fact the US's first overseas war involved Fighting Islamic Terrorist Hijackers....

[Berthier]

I'm not so sure -- most people are, tragically, ignorant of the fact the US's first overseas war involved Fighting Islamic Terrorist Hijackers....

I'm going to regret this no doubt, but I hardly think the Barbary Wars are in any way relevent to the current world situation. They were pirates who plundered ships and sold people into slavery for wealth. This is essentially what the western world had been doing for centuries at the time anyway, that is, plundering each other's ships, enslaving populations up and down the West African coast and slaughtering Christians of the "wrong" denomination (specficially but not exclusively, England and Spain in their wars). The modern concept of terrorist hijackers of any religion is completely misplaced in this context.