Warships save cruise liner

In true Viking fashion, the Danes are proving to be more than a match for the dastardly pirates infesting water off the Horn of Africa:

A Danish navy spokesperson refused to name the vessel involved but a Danish media report said the cruise ship Nautica, carrying 400 passengers and 200 crew was the target of the latest attack by Somali pirates.

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They alerted the French who scrambled a helicopter which was able to chase away the pirates:

A French navy warship, alerted by the Danish Navy, scrambled a helicopter to the scene, which sent the pirates fleeing, TV2 News said.

The pirates are making a lot of money hijacking commercial ships and holding them for ransom (usually paid by the ships insurers) - I think that keeping a ship full of tourists would be a huge mistake for the following reasons:
1. American tourists are really hard to please - imagine if they cancelled the midnight buffet
2. The USA would be forced to try rescue the hostages
3. More Blackhawks would be shot down
4. More terrible Hollywood movies will be made about Blackhawks getting shot down.

Seriously though ... usually adding international tourists to your collection of hostages usually ends in a bloody mess for all concerned.

reply to post by deltaalphanovember


I agree that capturing international tourists would be a bit like poking a bear with a stick. Bad things tend to happen when you do that.

They alerted the French who scrambled a helicopter which was able to chase away the pirates:

Why "chase away the pirates"? Why not sink their sorry behinds to the bottom of the ocean? I really hope some country ends up having the cajones to actually take the fight to them.

You can say that again. You start just plain killing them before they even get to the ship problem is solved. At this point it's pretty obvious if your going to be hijacked in a ship.

Just don't run your speed boat towards them unless you want to die, easy fix.



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[edit: removed unnecessary quote of entire previous post]
Quoting - Please review this link


[edit on 1-12-2008 by 12m8keall2c]

In WW2 commercial vessels were armed. Not just with rifles either. There needs to be several cannons on each ship or at least people armed with fifty caliber machine guns and shoulder fired rockets. Hooray for the Danes and the French!!

The pirates are just more fear for mankind that is an operation that does not need to be planned or funded. If it were perceived as a problem to anyone that matters (controls) in this world it would be over at this point.

Edit: Given to hot bad for activity is so near the middle east I suspect it is being saved for use in the plans for middle east conflicts. A good, blurry trouble starter.

[edit on 12/1/2008 by roadgravel]

reply to post by Karlhungis


These pirates are in it for the money - they are not terrorists - and have no particular political axe to grind. In fact they love the US (the US Dollar that is) and have a kind of gangster culture which many Americans would be familiar with.

Here is a link to a terrorist hijacking in 1985 of the Achille Lauro:

The terrorists kill a disabled American tourist, 69-year-old Leon Klinghoffer, and throw his body overboard with his wheelchair.

Achille Lauro

Here is a link the UN Pirate Map which plots Somali pirate activity:
UN Somali Pirate Map

They are not terrorists... they are criminal capitalists lol what started whole mess was when trawlers starting depleting there fish stocks... they had to survive.. I will call them terrorists when they start killing crewmembers..

Somalis are so desperate to survive that attacks on merchant shipping in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean will not stop, a pirate leader promises.
A French warship keeps guard over commerical vessels in the Gulf of Aden last week.

A French warship keeps guard over commerical vessels in the Gulf of Aden last week.

"The pirates are living between life and death," said the pirate leader, identified by only one name, Boyah. "Who can stop them? Americans and British all put together cannot do anything."

The interview with the pirate was conducted in late August by journalists employed by the Somali news organization Garowe. The complete interview was provided to CNN last week and provides a glimpse of why piracy has been so hard to control in the region.

Recorded on grainy video, the interview took place in the Somali port city of Eyl, now a center of pirate operations. Eyl is on the east coast of Somalia in the autonomous territory of Puntland. It is a largely lawless zone, considered extremely dangerous for Westerners to enter.

The Puntland government said two unidentified Western journalists were taken hostage Wednesday as they attempted to report on pirate activity.

Boyah said that the piracy began because traditional coastal fishing became difficult after foreign fishing trawlers depleted local fish stocks. Traditional fishermen started attacking the trawlers until the trawler crews fought back with heavy weapons. The fishermen then turned to softer targets. Video Watch why fishermen turned to piracy »

"We went into the deep ocean and hijacked the unarmed cargo ships," Boyah said.

"For the past three years, we have not operated near the Somali coast. We have operated at least 80 miles [out], in international waters."
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When merchant shipping started avoiding the Somali coast, Boyah said, "we went to ships traveling other routes."

Over the past year, the number of pirate attacks has increased dramatically. The International Maritime Bureau cites more than 90 pirate attacks off East Africa so far in 2008. When attacks are successful, the hijacked ships are taken to Somali waters, where the ships and crew are held until a ransom is paid. See how pirate attacks have increased »

Ships recently captured include a massive Saudi supertanker laden with crude oil valued at more than $100 million and a freighter carrying Russian-built tanks.

The hijackings have been profitable. Kenya's foreign minister, Moses Wetangula, estimates the pirates have been paid more than $150 million during the past year. One pirate gang wants $2 million dollars to release a Yemeni freighter and crew seized last week.

Facing increasing disruptions through one of the busiest sea lanes in the world, several countries have sent warships to patrol the area. There have been reports of skirmishes between pirates and naval forces, but the military presence does not concern pirate leader Boyah. He boasts the pirates literally sail in a vast ocean beneath the radar of the warships. Video Watch how piracy thrives off Somalia »

"No ship has the capability to see everything," he said. "A ship can see 80 miles or so [on radar]. It cannot see us at all. No one can do anything about it."

Boyah said it is unlikely the Puntland regional government would ever crack down on piracy because government officials are involved in financing the piracy and collect a cut of the ransoms.

"They motivate us. It's their money and their weapons," Boyah said. "Thirty percent belongs to them."

The Puntland foreign minister, Ali Abdi Aware, denied government involvement with the pirates, including taking bribes. The minister cited the arrest of six pirates earlier this year as evidence it is acting to stop piracy.

Pirate Boyah said he is unimpressed with the arrests by Puntland authorities.
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"The pirates are at sea and Puntland does not approach them. The pirates are on land and Puntland does not approach them," Boyah said. "They arrest some small people and tell the world that they captured pirates, but they are liars."

While Boyah may have been outspoken about the government's ineffectiveness, he did not allow interviewers to show his face, an indication that even in this lawless country, pirates still have some fear.
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how about we send out decoy ships. Rig em with alot of explosives and let it slip into their hands. Once they take the bait you can just sit back and enjoy the fireworks.

I see this as an excellent business opportunity for org's such as Blackwater. Provide escort ships to these commercial freighters.

End of problem.

Originally posted by groingrinder
In WW2 commercial vessels were armed. Not just with rifles either. There needs to be several cannons on each ship or at least people armed with fifty caliber machine guns and shoulder fired rockets. Hooray for the Danes and the French!!

There should be some sort of locked room where the captain and crew have access to firearms in order to protect themselves.
This could lead to civilians being killed which is no good. But it might scare off many future hijackers because of the risk of people on board being armed. They might think twice.

The crew would just have to make sure no hijackers posed as tourists and then try and raid the arms and hijack it that way.

I have recently posted a thread where sonic weapons were used against the pirates - this failed miserably. The general consensus is that the best thing to use against these pirates is good old-fashioned guns. Big ones that go BANG and make real holes in people.
Sonic Weapon used against Pirates

One person with a barrett .50 and Raufoss_Mk_211 ammo the pirates would be fishfood.
End of problem.

en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...
.

I have 2 solutions:

1) Heavily armed merchant vessels manned by a particular nation's Navy undercover as merchant vessels .... something similar to the Royal Navy "Q Ships" during WWI and WWII that were used to trick German U-boats into thinking "oh a merchant vessel ripe for the sinking" and bam that "crane" turns into a 2pdr AT gun and that "hose" into a Vickers MMG. The Germans also did something similar in both world wars as well.

en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...

As stated above, the US Navy also had "Naval Armed Guards" on all USMM vessels during WWII that manned the ship's guns and trained the ship's crew to fight back.

2) Require every merchant vessel and cruise liner entering that part of the world to have a mercenary security team onboard the ship equipped with small armed and a few crew served weapons.

[edit on 4-12-2008 by ChrisF231]

It's the Absalon! I posted a picture of that ship back in May. Here it is:

On the other hand.

There is no set procedure under international law for attacking pirates.

So who cares? Well, any belligerant nation who wants to start a war can simply say that what you call pirates actually have a "letter of marque" to stop and search vessels....for pirates.

And you just committed an act of war by detaining them.

All it would take for Libya, Venezuela, ..... or maybe North Korea, to launch a "retaliatory" strike against a major power would be the pretext that the same ship had just attacked "part of our navy" engaged in piracy suppression.

Sound like an irrelevant scenario?

Before you answer, you ought to read up on the First and Second Barbary Wars, in which the major world powers (and the young American republic) were sucked into war based on just such a pretext.

In the name of Piracy suppression, the nascent United States found itself on the verge of a land war in the Sahara, and finally ended up paying ransom to the Pasha of Tripoli after they got in over their heads.

So, that's what's going on, why no one wants to "sink the pirates."

.

[edit on 4-12-2008 by dr_strangecraft]

This wasn't a freighter, it was a cruise ship. Why would there be a cruise off the coast of Somalia to begin with?

reply to post by Yarcofin
Generally speaking, your question is irrelevant. However, considering the recent turmoil in the area, it makes you wonder what a cruise ship was doing there.

Anyway, I am "glad" that a country other than the US took some military action. I'm tired of being associated with a government who is resented for being the "world police". Granted, it is only one case, but it still feels nice.



[edit on 12/4/2008 by prototism]