Gian Piras (1682-) was an Italian pirate who was active in the Straits of Madagascar during the Golden Age of Piracy.
Biography[]
Gian Piras was born in Venice, Republic of Venice in 1682, and he served aboard merchant ships as a youth. Piras was later pressed into the service of a pirate crew after his ship was captured off East Africa, and he became a pirate himself. By the age of eighteen, Piras was in command of five pirate ships in the Straits of Madagascar, and he plundered Indian, Muslim, and European (mostly Portuguese) merchant vessels as they traded goods with the locals.