America, F--- Yeah!Follow

I was listening to this story on my way into work today and was kinda wondering the same thing - would the US respond and how aggressively?...and did the pirates know it was a US ship?

They had also mentioned that it had taken all night for the pirates to gain control of the ship. I guess they didn't secure things very well. I was trying to picture though, how these guys, in their little outboards get control of great big cargo/oil vessels. These vessels are HUGE. How do they get on board in enough force to subdue the ships crew?

Anyway, score one for the the cowboys. That'll teach them wimpy-butt pirates to mess with the Americans.

I think you guys should just leave it to England. They've been fighting pirates for centuries.

The problem with this plan is that the Somalians don't have enough military hardware. They'd need to find some sort of a source for modern weaponry. Hrm.

ftfy

Which RPG do they use, Pirate Quest?

PotBS of course. It's the bestest.

Srsly, firing a grenade at a tanker full of oil seems a bit dicey.

So it seems that the pirates, when escaping, took the ship's captain hostage. The crew negotiated to release their pirate captive for the captain. But when the crew released the pirate, the pirates said "neener, neener" and still have the captain.

Americans: Good at kicking ***, not as good at negotiating with pirates.

This isn't to diminish from the fact that they overpowered the pirates and took their ship back.

The ships that the pirates take vary in size, some are huge, and some... not so much. But the crews on these ships are generally very small. Every dollar spent on payroll is one less dollar of profit, so the ships are usually only manned with the minimum required by law for that class of ship. Very rarely is this more than 25, and its usually much less. Of that crew, only three are likely to even be awake during the early morning hours that pirates favor for attacks. One on the bridge, one down in the engineering spaces and one rover. If you can picture a ship 900 feet long and 100 feet wide, with a single rover walking the decks in the early morning hours, its not terribly difficult to imagine how easily the pirate can slip alongside or directly behind the ship and get aboard.

There is usually an area at the stern of the ship where the deck is much lower than elsewhere, and this is where the pirates usually choose to board. If they can't do it by stealth, they can usually do so with an impressive display of firepower the effectively puts an end to any resistance. Once aboard, most pirates just want to take whatever cash and easily marketable goods they can and get off again. Taking the entire ship is fairly unusual, but becoming more common as the pirates get more organized. There are some simple precautions that most ships take in waters known to be frequented by pirates, which include lighting the entire ship up, and having every fire hose spewing water into the air. Ships that do these simple things are letting the pirates know that they are taking precautions against boarders. The pirates usually have no trouble finding easier pickings elsewhere. Carrying weapons aboard to defend the ship is a problem when the ships enter the territorial waters of different nations. Each of them has different laws, and most of them flat out prohibit ships entering their waters from having any sort of firearms on board.

When a ship is taken, its not uncommon for the entire ship's cargo to turn up on the black market, while the ship itself is repainted and re-documented with bogus papers, and used by the pirates for smuggling. The pirates are not just small gangs of thugs, they're well organized, well connected, organized crime rackets. The Malacca Straits, between Malaysia and Sumatra, sees a huge volume of international shipping, and has hundreds of pirate attacks every year. There, part of recent upsurge in the volume of pirate attacks has to do with commercial fishing vessels. They gobble up every fish they can find, leaving nothing (or at least very slim pickings) for the local fisherman. With their livelihoods gone, they turn to piracy to survive. Since entire local economies are now based on piracy, the authorities in both countries have a difficult time getting any sort of cooperation from the locals, making investigations and prosecutions difficult.

Piracy is getting more and more expensive for the shipping and insurance industries every year. When it will become enough of a concern that the industrial nations of the world decide to make a concerted effort to eradicate it is anybody's guess.

I just want to be a pirate. I think the eye patches and hook arms are nifty.

But, on a serious note, do whatever to keep our ships and cargo safe. Enough people get shot, not so many people are going to be willing to eff with our shiz.

+1

To all the land-lubbers out there... 'means "no".

Strangely (or not), a lot of the Somali pirates see themselves as 'volunteer coastguards' protecting their coastline from foreigners who come into their coastal waters to steal their fish stocks, thereby removing the pirates income as most of them were fishermen before taking up piracy, and also to deter the illegal dumping of industrial and nuclear waste wich over the last dozen years or so wich has caused numerous deaths in the coastal communities.

I'm not defending hostage taking and such, but to treat this situation as being isolated from the events of the recent history of the region is not going to help in the solving of the problem.

Sadly of course, this is exactly how it will be treated.

They're fighting for the high life. I mean literally. They can't get Miller High Life over there.