There is a certain sense of the surreal to read news stories about pirates. Real news stories about real pirates. Not Johnny Depp arrr-harrring in another “Pirates of the Caribbean,” but pirates hijacking ships in the Gulf of Aden, for example.

Last week, the Pentagon reported that “39 ships have been hijacked in the Gulf of Aden, and U.N. Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said that pirates off Somalia had taken in an estimated $25 million to $30 million in ransom in 2008,” according to the Associated Press.

Meanwhile, the report included that the British killed a number of pirates during a shipboard battle. India sank a pirate boat. German helicopters thwarted a piracy situation aboard a British ship.

With exception of helicopters, it certainly sounds like something from a pirate movie. These situations aren’t set several hundred years ago but in the 21st century. Yet, they revolve around an age-old Middle Eastern standard in piracy: Ransom, which bears resemblance to our nation’s first war on terror and one of the United States’ first military operations.

The opening lines of “The Marine Hymn” refer to America’s past battles with pirates: “ ... to the shores of Tripoli.” Granted, the Barbary Coast pirates waged a different kind of terrorism on Americans than al Qaida. The pirates preyed on American and European ships at sea usually for gold and plunder, but it was a campaign of terror all the same.

“There are, to be sure, significant differences between the predators of long ago, and the mass murderers of today,” wrote Lewis Lord in a 2002 edition of U.S. News & World Report. “The Barbary (pirates), from the rogue states of Algiers, Morocco, Tripoli and Tunis, specialized in what (President) John Adams termed ‘avarice and fear.’ Preferring plunder to politics, the pirates terrorized people not to satisfy an ideological passion but to collect blackmail and ransom for the deys, beys and bashaws who ruled what was known as the Barbary Coast.”

By the late 18th and early 19th centuries, piracy was nothing new. It had been around for centuries.

“Piracy is an ancient profession,” writes David Reinhardt in his book, “Pirates and Piracy.” “In the Mediterranean, piracy flourished as an adjunct to the growth of the maritime commerce.”

Piracy plagued the Greeks and the Romans. King Minos of Crete built a navy to battle pirates. And though pirates were feared and despised by powerful nations, many poorer populations found the idea of piracy, and becoming a pirate, appealing.

Thucydides, a Greek historian living from approximately 460-400 B.C., wrote of pirates (translated): “Such a profession, so far from being regarded as disgraceful, was considered quite honorable. It is an attitude that can be illustrated even today by some of the inhabitants of the mainland whom successful piracy is regarded as something to be proud of ...”

In destroying the navy of Rhodes, which had policed piracy for years, Rome inadvertently inspired hundreds of sailors to become pirates in the second century B.C. Though the Romans attempted to crush piracy, the pirates developed a pattern of control within the Mediterranean during the next 40 years.

“Ports in Italy were closed,” Reinhardt writes. “The pirates even raided Rome’s home port of Ostia, where according to Marcus Tullius Cicero (a Roman politician, speaker, and philosopher), ‘almost before Rome’s eyes the consul’s fleet was captured and destroyed.’”

At the time, Rome was the world’s superpower. Pirates threatened the Roman way of life, inhibiting Rome’s dependency on food from its colonies. Threatened with starvation and economic ruin, Rome’s senate set out to eliminate the pirates and, within three months, the threat was mostly eradicated.

But pirates persisted. They were dealt a stronger blow when the Roman Empire collapsed and trade upon the seas no longer flourished. While their numbers dwindled in the Middle Ages, pirates survived but limited their attacks on merchant ships of North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean.

In many ways, America spurred the rebirth of piracy.

“Although throughout the Middle Ages, piracy was common practice, it was not until the discovery of the New World and its vast stores of riches that pirates once again became masters of the sea,” Reinhardt writes.

Following Christopher Columbus’ voyages, Europe learned of the new American continents. In their efforts to exploit and settle this New World, European nations established American colonies.

To colonize, these nations needed ships to sail across the Atlantic Ocean — ships to carry goods to and from the American colonies and ships to explore and trade on other distant shores. During this age of sail, European nations built vast navies, and these ships and their tempting treasures inspired the resurgence in piracy.

From the 16th to 18th centuries, pirates raided ports and attacked ships at sea. With strongholds throughout pockets of Europe and the Caribbean, pirates plundered and raided. Many pirates worked independent of any nation, while others — often called “buccaneers” and other names — were supported by one nation to prey on the ships of other nations.

This was the age of pirates, buccaneers and freebooters such as Capt. Henry Morgan, Bartholomew Roberts, Henry Every, William Dampier, Capt. William Kidd, Edward “Blackbeard” Teach. It is this era of piracy, and this brand of pirate, that has been popularly portrayed in works like Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island,” and movies like “Pirates of the Caribbean.” Yet, these pirates robbed, plundered and killed. To some countries, they were terrorizing scourges; to others, they were given the quiet blessing of the nation.

By the early 1700s, this infamous era of piracy in the Caribbean was coming to an end due to increased naval strength of the English in the region, and the more famous and daring pirates had either died, been killed or had been captured. But the pirates of the Barbary Coast continued plying their trade.

Sponsored by the rogue governments of Tripoli, Algiers, Morocco and Tunis, the Barbary Coast pirates were still active by the time the American colonies declared independence, became states and then a nation.

Like Blackbeard and other Caribbean pirates, the Barbary Coast pirates and their backers preferred riches to ideology. European nations had, essentially, surrendered the proposition of destroying the Barbary pirates and instead paid them tributes of gold and materials. The tributes worked like a ransom or “protection money.” It was extortion. The tribute was to work as a trade off to the leaders of the rogue states — we pay you and you leave our ships alone.

Religion, for the Barbary pirates, was a factor then as it is now with terrorists, Lord writes. “The (Barbary) pirates were Muslim, their captives Christian. Prisoners who converted to Islam escaped hard labor and landed cushy jobs. Those who disparaged Allah risked being impaled or roasted alive.”

In the late 1700s, following the European tradition, the newly formed United States also paid tribute to the Barbary Coast for safe passage of its infant navy and shipping. Like Europeans, tributes had mixed results for American shipping.

In 1785, still a “loose confederation of 13 squabbling states,” the Americans lost two ships to Algerian pirates who enslaved the crews but, with neither a president nor enough money to pay tribute or a ransom, Congress was helpless to free the captured Americans or stop the Barbary pirates from attacking American ships.

Following George Washington’s election as the newly constituted president, he assigned Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson to assess the American situation regarding the Barbary pirates. Addressing Congress, Jefferson reported that Americans must decide “between war, tribute and ransom.” An American navy was needed. Congress agreed but voted not to fund the construction of new ships.

With word coming in 1792 that the captured Americans might “abandon Christ and country,” Congress approved a ransom payment of $54,000 to Algiers. The money, however, never reached its destination. Meanwhile, pirates captured 11 more American ships, killing and enslaving their crews. The surviving American sailors remained imprisoned until the U.S. paid $642,500 and pledged an annual tribute of naval supplies.

For the next decade, Americans built a navy and paid the state-financed pirates $2 million. By 1801, Jefferson was president and Tripoli wanted more money.

“Jefferson abandoned Adams’ policy of following the British example, and paying tribute, and instead sent the ships Adams had built ... to blockade Tripoli (1803-05) and teach it a lesson,” writes historian Paul Johnson. Jefferson also approved a land mission, which led to the words in “The Marine Hymn.”

In 1805, under the direction of American diplomat William Eaton, American Marines with Arab and Greek mercenaries crossed the deserts from Egypt to the shores of Tripoli, “where the Marines led a charge that took the pirate state’s second-largest city,” notes Lord.

America’s troubles with Barbary pirates did not end there. A bargain was struck which traded prisoners and Tripoli agreed it would no longer expect American tribute, though the U.S. paid an additional $60,000 in ransom. But piracy as a form of terror against Americans continued for several more years.

During the War of 1812, Barbary pirates harassed American shipping until President James Madison had enough. In 1815, following the end of the 1812 war, Congress approved Madison’s call for war against Algiers. Two naval squadrons cannonaded the Algerians into surrender.

“Piracy against America, as an act of governments, came to an end,” Lord writes.

Following the American lead, European nations discontinued their tributes to Barbary pirates and their sponsor nations. Europeans then conquered the region, beginning decades of colonial rule there.

Now, with oil to be ransomed, piracy returns to the seas.