So as to maintain my claim to being the place for Pirate-related blogging on the Web, I give you the latest maritime marauding: The seizure of a 280-foot luxury yacht and its crew by dastardly sea dogs.

Where it happened isn’t surprising. Piracy’s inception made the Aegean rotten with slave-slinging scaliwags. In the time of Rome, it was Cilicia, in Turkey. Later, the Caribbean became the latter-day Cilicia. Now, it’s Somalia and the Maldives.

Pirates seized control of a French luxury yacht carrying 30 crew members Friday in the Gulf of Aden off Somalia’s coast, the French government and the ship’s owner said.

Attackers stormed the three-mast Le Ponant as it returned without passengers from the Seychelles, in the Indian Ocean, toward the Mediterranean Sea, said officials with French maritime transport company CMA-CGM.

..Pirates seized more than two dozen ships off Somalia’s coast last year.

Denmark’s government paid a ransom to win the release in August of the crew of a Danish cargo ship that was hijacked by Somali pirates some two months after they were taken captive.

The pirate havens may change, but their tactics and aims remain the same. Now’s the time for ransoms to be exchanged and swift vessels to race back to their hidden ports.

Granted, they did antagonize the French. It could end in one of the spontaneous paroxysms of violence that offended French engage in to earn their Napoleonic heritage. Watch this space to see if it’ll be bullets or dubloons for the captors of La Ponant.