18 U.S.C. § 1661 — Robbery ashore

This section defines a specific crime as piracy and sets its punishment. It applies to a person engaged in a "piratical cruise or enterprise." It also applies to a person who is part of the crew of a "piratical vessel" — a ship engaged in piracy. If that person leaves the ship and goes onto land, and then commits robbery on shore, this section treats that act as piracy. The law calls this person a pirate. The punishment is imprisonment for life. The statute does not define "piratical cruise," "piratical enterprise," or "piratical vessel." It uses these terms without spelling out their exact meaning here. In short, this section extends piracy law to robbery committed on land, as long as the robber came from a ship already engaged in piracy. The robbery itself does not have to happen at sea. The connection to a piratical ship or voyage is what brings the on-shore robbery under this section. The punishment, life imprisonment, is the same regardless of how much was stolen or who the victim was.

The record shows that this section was enacted on June 25, 1948, as part of chapter 645, 62 Stat. 775. The source credit lists no subsequent amendments, indicating that the text has remained unchanged since its original enactment. The 1948 act in question was a broad recodification of federal criminal law, consolidating numerous scattered statutes into a unified Title 18 of the United States Code. This effort is generally understood to have been undertaken to organize and clarify existing federal criminal provisions rather than to create substantial new policy. Many sections enacted through this 1948 recodification, including provisions addressing piracy and maritime crimes, trace their substantive origins to earlier statutes dating back to the early republic, when Congress first exercised its constitutional authority to define and punish piracy under the law of nations. The specific provision addressing robbery ashore by members of a piratical crew appears to reflect longstanding federal concern with maritime crime and the historical treatment of piracy as a particularly serious offense warranting severe punishment. However, the record here does not establish the specific legislative reasoning behind this provision's inclusion or its particular phrasing within the 1948 recodification. Without access to the underlying legislative history or predecessor statutes that were consolidated into this section, one cannot state with confidence the precise circumstances or congressional deliberations that produced this exact text.