Pirates of the Adriatic: The Bora’s Wrath

Piracy, power, and survival on the Adriatic frontier: How Dalmatian pirates defied empires, and turned the Adriatic into the most dangerous sea

By: Sasa Fegic

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

The Adriatic is a narrow sea, but it has always been full of secrets. Between its mountains and islands, whole empires rose and fell, and in the spaces between them, pirates made their living.
Pirates of the Adriatic tells the story of the Kačić pirates of Omiš and the Uskoks of Senj — fierce, desperate sailors who defied popes, doges, sultans, and emperors. They built swift boats and struck without warning, surviving by taking what they needed from anyone who passed their coast.

This is not the story of romantic swashbucklers. It is the story of hunger, of geography, of men and women caught in the narrow space between empire and survival. It is a tale of raids in the moonlight, of wind screaming down from the mountains, of oars pulling hard through the dark while a galley gives chase.
This isn’t a book about romantic pirates with parrots and treasure maps. It’s about survival, knives, hard seas, and small towns that told the big powers to go to hell. It’s about blood on the deck, cheap wine back in port, and the kind of courage you only find when you’ve run out of options.
Drawing on history, legend, and the character of the sea itself, Pirates of the Adriatic show how piracy here was not an accident but an inevitability — shaped by cliffs, currents, politics, and the unrelenting need to endure.

This is a story of survival on a hard sea. It’s about hunger and courage, about small boats defying great empires, and about the sheer audacity of men who had nothing to lose. It is a book about men who lived by the oar and the blade. About towns that clung to rock faces and dared the world to come and take them. And about a narrow sea that still remembers every shadow that once crossed its surface.

Packed with history, atmosphere, and the drama of life on the edge of empire, Pirates of the Adriatic brings this wild, dangerous chapter of maritime history to life — and shows how a handful of outlaws turned a narrow sea into their own.

Read it slowly, as you might listen to the waves at night. You may hear something — the creak of an oar, the echo of voices long gone — and wonder if the story is really over, or if the Adriatic is still telling it.