Watch our procedural, bureaucratic Admiral Mullen talk about pirates and then re-visit an age of moral clarity on the matter:

Reprinted from the New Hampshire Gazette, June 21, 1771

New York, June 10: Extract of a letter from Kingston, Jamaica, April 10.

“The 18th of March last was tried and convicted at a court of oyer and terminer held here, Capt. Zachary Day, for the murder of Samuel Long, his boatswain, on the high seas;  and the day following in the same court was convicted Thomas Bell, late chief mate of a sloop belonging to Montego Bay, for piratically robbing and plundering a Spanish schooner, near Cuba, of 14,000 dollars.  This is the person who was concerned with Capt. Yarr, in October last, in the above mentioned piracy; they were convicted upon the testimony of some of their vessel’s crew, whom they had turned adrift at sea (to the number of twelve, in the Spanish schooner, after they had robbed her) without water or provisions, but who fortunately arrived here a few days afterwards.  Day was executed the 25th of March, and Bell the 1st of April; the former had taken a quantity of laudanum in rum, and was very much intoxicated, though he had with Bell, taken the sacrament the day before.  The latter died very penitent.”

So here’s the answer on what you do with Pirates, Admiral Mullen:  try them, send them a priest, give them a little rum, and then you EXECUTE THEM.