Piracy at its best

Yesterday, I went to a meeting of the Arizona Corsairs. I'm now a member and I'm on my friend Shirley's ship, The Heart of Darkness. Our Jolly Roger has a picture of the Fierce Beast of Cair Banaugh from the Holy Grail on it. 'Tis a fierce beast!
It turns out that this group, the Arizona Corsairs, does A LOT of work for charity. I really like that. Plus I get to talk like a pirate and raid and pillage.
The history of piracy is fascinating. From all the research I've done, I've discovered that the average lifespan of a European pirate once they were shanghai'd into it was 2 years. Dude - aaargh! 2 flippin' years! I guess this is mostly because it's hard to find port in European waters.
On the other hand, in Asia - Indonesian, Chinese and Japanese pirates actually passed it on. The whole family did it. It kind of sounds like Mafia on the water, with the result being entire lives spent living as pirates. So their life spans were considerably longer. Plus, one family might have 100 ships in their employ, compared to 1 European ship under some guy who's trying to wing it on his own.
European pirates got their crews from their prisoners. You could turn pirate, or they'd kill you. What a choice.
In Somalia, the reason they have pirates is because their economy tanked. Famous for their tuna fishing, other countries started poaching their waters when they realized the Somalians didn't have the dough to back up an enforced over the water border patrol. They also threw all their trash in Somalian waters, which pissed everybody in Somalia off. They originally attacked ships out of retaliation for this, and then realized it was incredibally lucrative to do so, once they collected a hefty ransom. So, there you go.