The Czar and the Pirates

MOSCOW - The last time Russia took fighting pirates seriously was more than two centuries ago, when the Empress Catherine the Great, followed by her short-lived successor Czar Paul I, backed the Knights of Malta, who in turn fought naval engagements with the pirates of Barbary - as the Arab statelets and fortress towns of the North African coast were collectively called.

Ransoming rich European hostages was a high-margin line of business for the corsairs; European hostages too poor to buy their freedom were put to work as slaves on shore, or as oarsmen for the pirate vessels. Individually, they didn't last long, but that wasn't the point from a naval point of view