I hesitated to weigh in on this discussion, given the Twain credentials of the paraticipants so far. But I will. I once worked for a Governor, who commented that "if you want to repeal a law, consider why that law was passed in the first place." I applied that approach to the question of Twain's selection of location for, and use at all of, "Pirates in the Indian Ocean" when Huckleberry Finn was dictating his life story in the early 1880s. History records no piracy in the Indian Ocean during the 1860's-'80s. However, the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 reduced the volume of shipping passing through that ocean, and in the process brought the name into American newspapers with a fair regularity in the 1870s. Great Britain maintained its hegemony over the Indian Ocean, and it was considered safe passage, but longer than the Suez. Maritime insurance did not consider a ship "lost" in the Indian Ocean unless it was not heard from for nine months. On other oceans ships were lost after six months. Piracy was occurring in the Hong Kong area when Twain was writing Huck, but it was not a big deal in newspapers. The Ilanun of Borneo, the most feared pirates in the waters around Southeast Asia (well east of the Indian Ocean, which is south and west of India) during the mid 1800s, wore sarongs and embroidered belts. Little is seen in American newspapers of that gang. The Pirates of Penzance opened in New York City in 1879, and was a big hit for years after that, performed all over the nation. Wikipedia says over a hundred companies were soon performing it, unauthorized, in America. I don't think Pirates of Penzance is set in any specific ocean, but it brought the word and concept of Piracy into a front row seat. In the November, 1870, Atlantic Monthly, Harriett Beecher Stowe provided a long, colorful tale of Captain Kidd, who died in 1701. In 1880 an article about men seeking to locate Kidd's gold on the East Coast was widely reprinted. Finally, consider the mental image of "pirates in the Indian Ocean" versus "pirates on the Atlantic" Indian Ocean presents a much more dramatic cachet Bob Stewart