Pirates of the Adriatic - The Uskoks - The Pirates of the Caribbean Didn't Have All the Fun

Hear the word "pirates," and you probably think of the Pirates of the Caribbean in the 17th century's Golden Age of Piracy. Swashbuckling freebooters plundering the Spanish Main, swinging on ropes and burying chests of doubloons.

While Hollywood and adventure novels have given these buccaneers most of the press, they were hardly the only pirates to ravage the seas. One of the stranger, and most dangerous, bands of pirates were the Uskoks who terrorized the Adriatic Sea in the 16th and early 17th centuries.

The Adriatic separates Italy from the Balkan peninsula. The Balkans have long been a buffer between western Europe and the Islamic east. When the Ottoman Turks began pressing westward against Christian Europe in the 15th century, it was the Balkans that took the brunt of the attacks. (And indeed the area remains plagued with ethnic and religious strife to the present day.)

The Uskoks were originally Christian Serbs and Croats who were driven from their homes by Ottoman invasions. They retreated northwest and became excellent guerrilla fighters raiding the Turks. (It's not clear just how they picked up the name Uskok - the word itself means "turncoat" or "ambusher.")

Eventually they ended up on the Adriatic coast, around the port of Senj in present day Croatia. At the time, the region belonged to the Austrian Empire, which was at first quite happy to see the Uskoks. Worried themselves about Ottoman expansion, the Austrians were trying to plant buffer colonies in the area to provide a defensive line. Austrian Emperor Ferdinand I gave the Uskoks land and promised to pay them an annual military subsidy.

However, the promised subsidy was rarely paid and, looking for income, the Uskoks turned to piracy. The Adriatic wasn't like the Caribbean. The waters around Senj were shallow and scattered with small islands. Rather than the large, cannon-studded ships of the Caribbean pirates, the Uskok pirates used fleets of small boats that could navigate the bay and disappear up creeks and inlets. Before long they were the scourge of Ottoman shipping.

Their small boats also allowed them to quickly land a force along the coasts, and the Uskoks would also sometimes raid Turkish coastal towns and ports. Their strategies were more reminiscent of the Vikings than of the Caribbean pirates, but they proved startlingly effective. They were so successful that their numbers began to swell as outlaws and cutthroats from around Europe began coming to join them. Their motivations began to shift from revenge against the Turks to pure profit.

Trouble for the Uskoks began with the rise of Venice as a major sea power in the region. The Venetians signed treaties and trade agreements with the Ottomans. Venice is at the northern tip of the Adriatic, and so trade between them had to go right past the Uskoks. The Venetians began providing escorts for Ottoman ships to protect against Uskok raids. Even though Venice was Christian, since they had allied with their Turkish enemies, the Uskoks began to see them as fair game. They began attacking Venetian shipping as well as raiding Venetian island colonies.

This began to stir up trouble with their Austrian hosts. Austria was basically using the Uskoks as privateers and that's the problem with privateers - how to keep them focused on your enemies and stop them from raiding your neighbors. The Venetians complained to Austria. Austria at first tried to downplay the whole situation because the Uskoks were doing a pretty good job of keeping the Turks occupied. Then the Venetians tried fighting back against the Uskoks, but were hampered in what they could do because they didn't want to offend Austria.

Eventually Austria had to agree the Uskoks were getting a bit out of hand, and tried to rein them in. But, especially since they'd been stiffed on the promised subsidy, the Uskoks didn't consider themselves privateers in Austria's service so much as free pirates. Austria tried without success to reduce the attacks, but by 1615 the situation ended up leading to war between Austria and Venice.

It was only at the conclusion of this war, in 1617, that the "Uskok problem" was settled. As part of the agreement that ended the war between Austria and Venice, the Uskoks' ships were broken up and they were resettled inland - far from the temptations of the coast and the Adriatic shipping lanes.
Nonetheless, the Uskoks left their mark on the region, and wrote a fascinating - if rather bloody - chapter in the history of piracy.