We all know what a pirate is.

We've seen swashbuckling movies, watched Peter Pan read Treasure Island, and perhaps ventured on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland.

Pirates are the waterborne baddies who steal boats hide their loot.

Skulk, drink and party with abandon in their island hideouts.

If this defines pirates, the Salish Sea is no stranger to the genre.

The water border with Canada made it ripe for opium smugglers aided by the rough lattice of misty archipelagos and pillageable targets.

It was a haven for those who trafficked in human beings.

There were those who came by boat to rob and steal from isolated waterfront communities, or who would ransack nets, holding the flashing silver treasure of sockeye salmon.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, nautical outlaws were a salty scourge on Puget Sound.

A newspaper reported in 1903, "Camano Island, Whidbey Island, and San Juan fairly swarm with pirates and smugglers who, owing to the many small indentations of the islands, are able to carry on their nefarious business in safe distance from the law."

Their prey and profits included opium and bringing in illicit Chinese workers banned from the US, as human cargo from British Columbia In this era, profits could still be made by the little guy or a small gang using fast sailing sloops or skiffs with gas engines to dodge in and out of the sounds complex waterways.

In 1893, a newspaper described the scene "the opium ring of the Northwest is a fearful, shadowy impalpable something, shadowy in form, but most substantial in fact" a master of the game was a Confederate veteran who swore he'd never do an honest day's work for the Union after the war, and he never did.

Lawrence Larry Kelley moved to the region in the 1870s and started a more than 25 year career smuggling.

His bases of operation included Sinclair and Guemes Islands in the San Juans, the latter has a Kelly's Point marking where he launched his smuggling activities.

Despite multiple arrests, escapes, including one from McNeil Island Federal Prison in 1886.

His career lasted well into his 70s.

Newspapers called Kelly the "King of the smugglers."

Opium was legal to use in Washington and B.C.

at the time, but the U.S.

put heavy duties on it, doubling the price.

To circumvent the tariffs, Kelly and others snuck smokable opium refined in Victoria across the border, bound for ready buyers and distributors in Port Townsend, Bellingham, Seattle, Tacoma, Everett, Olympia, Astoria and Portland.

Kelly was also known for being paid to smuggle Chinese men into the U.S., where they were banned but a desired part of the labor force.

It was said that he had boats specially fitted to hide human cargo.

If about to be caught by government agents, he could dump these men into the sea and sink them forever.

A horrific story circulated that Kelly, once through overboard 13 men in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

When the winds died and he knew his sloop couldn't outrun an approaching U.S.

revenue cutter.

It wasn't proven, but such stories persisted and gave his image the coloring of a ruthless blackbeard.

Kelly wasn't alone There was Henry Ferguson, aka "the Flying Dutchman" also known as Henry Wagner in Canada, who one newspaper called" The Terror of the Islands of Puget Sound."

He was said to have once been a member of the notorious Hole-in-the-Wall gang, of Butch Cassidy fame, which he denied.

He was wanted in Utah for train robbery.

He came west and started a seagoing crime spree.

He was an intimidating figure.

A wanted poster described him as having eyes of steel gray bowed legs, who carried a 44 caliber Colt revolver and double barreled shotgun Ferguson admitted to smuggling opium an estimated 9,000 pounds of it but he was more notorious for hijacking cargoes from small trading vessels He also robbed banks at gunpoint in B.C.

He robbed a post office on Whidbey Island, Twice!

He stole a shipload of oats Yes, oats!

from a warehouse in Stanwood He was caught in a 1901 shootout at his Whidbey Island hideout and did a stint at the state pen in Walla Walla His sprees came to an end when he was caught while burglarizing a general store at the coal port of Union Bay on Vancouver Island, where he was accused of shooting and killing a constable.

He was convicted and was hanged in Nanaimo in the summer of 1913 Perhaps the most lucrative and prevalent acts of piracy involved an unexpected commodity salmon The salmon canning industry moved from the Columbia River to Puget Sound in the late 1800s and fishing was little regulated and took on an industrial scale.

Enormous runs of fish came through the Salish Sea and many were caught by giant trap nets permanent fixtures that funneled running salmon by the millions into nets.

At places like Point Roberts, Lummi and Whidbey Island and Boundary Bay, fishers, legal and illegal, were essentially strip mining the resource.

Many of the traps were run by the canneries but there were independent operators too But the huge nets of fish proved to be easy pickings when trap nets were full An enterprising fish pirate would come along on a dark and choppy night and help themselves to the captive fish Sometimes they bribed watchmen, if there were any Buyers were easy to find If, say, salmon was selling for 75 cents apiece, a quick nightly raid on a trap net could easily yield 2000 salmon That was an easy $1,500 in turn of the century money Eager fish buyers would meet the pirates off shore The fish taken alive from the nets were often fresher than salmon available from local fishing boats, so offloading the stolen salmon was easy Dealers rarely questioned the source since the fish, unlike cattle, weren't branded Some of the thieves didn't have to hide.

Expert salmon thief Bert Spider Jones told an interviewer, quote, "Everybody in Anacortes called me Fish Pirate Jones.

I didn't care what they called me just so I was making money."

He did so on nightly trap raids As time went on, fish pirates got bolder They could attack Canadian nets and hide in the US or vice versa As trap owners increased security some fish pirates operated in armed gangs A large pirate raid in 1909 at Point Roberts was said to have liberated $10,000 worth of sockeye at gunpoint In 1910, a sheriff's raid made arrest of a gang that was said to have taken $30,000 worth of fish about a million in today's dollars Talk about scaling up The second decade of the 1900s brought about a sea change for Puget Pirates Smokeable opium was eventually banned in the US and Canada, illicit immigration declined Overfishing damaged the salmon runs and a ban on traps eliminated piracy's fast money and easy pickings Rum running later boomed with prohibition but the Wild West period of piracy was over