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The Times – Barbary pirates struck as far north as Iceland<br/> Bribery was no answer to the coastal raids. History Notebook by Graham Stewart

Skipping the million or so kidnappings and getting right to the entertaining bits (the end of this really made me laugh):

The Church organised payment for their release: collection boxes were fitted with the inscription “For the Recovery of the Poor Slaves” and Rome organised huge hostage payments. It was like Ethelred the Unready’s proffer of Danegeld all over again, with similar consequences. The pirates increased the price for the return of stolen goods and people.

The lightly protected vessels of the new United States provided such easy pickings that the future President John Adams concluded it was more sensible to give “one gift of two hundred thousand pounds” than to risk “a million annually” in lost trade. By 1800 the US was paying a fifth of its federal revenue in bribes to the Barbary coast.

Eventually the brigands pushed their luck. Thomas Jefferson concluded the one-off cost of war would be less than eternal tribute- paying. By 1815 the US Navy and Marine Corps were strong enough to deliver punishing blows. But it was the French who delivered the coup de grâce, by colonising Algeria.

That solution is unlikely to appeal to those now grappling to suppress Somali piracy. Occupying Somalia has already been tried.

Hehehe.