River piracy

River piracy has happened and still occurs, on all the continents, except Antarctica. In Europe, allegations were made from 2006 that Romanian river pirates had attacked vessels from Bulgaria on the Danube, while the Romanian government responded by accusing captains of fabricating stories while illegally selling their own cargo and evading customs. There were further allegations of Danubian piracy on Ukrainian vessels in 2012 but in only one case were there allegations of actual attacks on crews: more properly the incidents amounted simply to theft from cargo vessels. River piracy is also a huge problem along the Mekong River, of Southeast Asia.

River piracy, in late 18th-mid-19th century America, was primarily, concentrated along the Ohio River and Mississippi River valleys. In 1803, at Tower Rock, the U.S. Army dragoons, possibly, from the frontier army post, up river at Fort Kaskaskia, on the Illinois side opposite St. Louis, raided and drove out the river pirates.

Stack Island was also, associated with river pirates and counterfeiters, in the late 1790s. In 1809, the last major river pirate activity took place, on the Upper Mississippi River, and river piracy in this area came to an abrupt end, when a group of flatboatmen raided the island, wiping out the river pirates. From 1790–1834, Cave-In-Rock was the principal outlaw lair and headquarters of river pirate activity in the Ohio River region, from which Samuel Mason led a gang of river pirates on the Ohio River.

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