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Updated page to reflect broader range of sources, including sources on San Francisco Bay. Updated history of oyster piracy in the east, based on McCay.
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The term "oyster pirate" appeared in several literary works by [[Jack London]]. London would often use the term without any further explanation ("he was a jailbird, sailor, seal-hunter, oyster pirate, novelist, laundry worker, yachtsman, and coal shoveler"), as if everyone knew the meaning of the term.
 
In the context of Jack London's life, it refers to a specific set of conditions peculiar to the oyster industry in [[San Francisco Bay]] in the 1880s. While San Francisco Bay had a native oyster (the same species found elsewhere on the Pacific Coast), it was never very abundant. By the early 1850s, entrepreneurs began importing oysters from Shoalwater Bay (now Willapa Bay), Washington Territory. Native West coast oysters were greatlymuch inferiorsmaller toand had a different flavor than those from the East coast. When the [[transcontinental railroad]] was completed, the [[Southern Pacific Railroad]] leased land to entrepreneurs, who createdpurchased artificialsubmerged mudland from the State of flatsCalifornia and grew oysters from transplanted Eastern stock.<ref>{{cite book|last=Barrett|first=Elinore|title=The California Oyster Industry|year=1963|publisher=California Department of Fish and Game|location=Sacramento}}</ref>
 
By the 1880s the handful of competing oyster companies began consolidating into a single [[Monopoly]]. conditionsTheir ledharvest toof exorbitanta private commodity from a public pricesspace, creatingthe San Francisco Bay, led to an opportunity for the oyster pirates. The piratesPirates raided the oyster beds at night and sold their take in the [[Oakland, California|Oakland]] markets in the morning. The public disliked the Southern Pacific and the oyster growers, and liked cheap oysters. As a result, the oyster pirates had considerable public sympathy and police were reluctant to take action against them.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Booker|first=Matthew|title=Oyster Growers and Oyster Pirates in San Francisco Bay|journal=Pacific Historical Review|year=2006|month=February|volume=75|issue=1|pages=63-88}}</ref>
 
Jack London described oyster piracy in his autobiographical "alcoholic memoirs", ''[[John Barleycorn (novel)|John Barleycorn]]'', in the form of romanticized juvenile fiction in ''[[wikisource:The Cruise of the Dazzler|The Cruise of the Dazzler]]'', and from the opposing point of view of the California Fish Patrol in "A Raid on the Oyster Pirates," from ''[[wikisource:Tales of the Fish Patrol|Tales of the Fish Patrol]]''. Oyster pirating was also listed as one of London's first occupations after leaving a cannery at the age of fifteen by Abraham Rothberg in an Introduction to ''The Great Adventure Stories of Jack London'' (1967) and by Eric Hanson in ''A Book of Ages'' (2008).
 
Oyster pirates also operated on the east coast of the United States beginning in the [[Chesapeake18th Bay]]century. These disputes often focused on increased privatization of what had been public rights, providing an obvious inspiration for later West Coast activities.<ref>{{cite book|last=McCay|first=Bonnie|title=Oyster Wars and the eastPublic coastTrust: Property, Law and Ecology in New Jersey History|year=1998|publisher=University of Arizona Press|location=Tucson|isbn=0816518041|pages=246}}</ref>. Oyster pirates also appeared in the UnitedChesapeake StatesBay, especially from the second half of the nineteenth century into the twentieth century during the [[Oyster Wars]].<ref name="wennersten">{{cite book|title=The Oyster Wars of Chesapeake Bay|last=Wennersten|first=John R.|publisher=Tidewater|location=[[Centreville, Maryland]]|year=1981|isbn=0-87033-263-5}}</ref>
 
== See also ==
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