It ought to be...

But I think we need to talk about root causes -- in other words, we need to take a task force and shoot up their home base.

I posted a perfectly respectable "Avast!" but it disappeared. Your website is anti-pirate. On behalf of the Lords of the Sea, I protest. Pirate culture is a much-celebrated tradition, right up there with not flossing your teeth and leering at wenches.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not actually sure what the implications are in terms of international waters, that famous no-mans-land. Do we want police out there policing? Probably, yes. Whose police? And what are they policing for? Does it turn into a floating customs service...? I don't want the British government's hands on my drugs and pornography, do you? On the other hand, shipping is the primary way we haul goods (and pollute the oceans, incidentally) maybe we need to form some fledgling international-government-ish-thing that can one day turn into the government they had on Star Trek. Dunno.

Part of the much-celebrated tradition is getting their arses kicked. I should know. I am genetically tied to the town that gave us Captain Kidd. Plus Canada has a pirate tradition of its own.

Time for Canada to start building a super destroyer called "The Oake Island" to roam the seven seas.

My first thought is, who the heck sends out a honking huge oil tanker on the high seas with only 25 unarmed crewmen. Oil people pi55 money. They could up that by say, 200 well armed bozos who still subscribe to soldier of fortune and think that J Jonah Jameson had a great haircut, and save bazillions.

Yes, some part of me thinks let the oil people foot the bill of protecting their own on the high seas. Some part of me snickers at the idea of dirt poor Somalians benefitting from their little adventures sticking it to the oil man. Then the adult in me kicks in and I start fantisizing about nuking all the harbours in the country and keel hauling the pirates just to teach the rest of the ne're do well folk in the world that we don't take kindly too such things.

Thats it. I'm re-watching M and C this weekend.

Nuking is a bit much.

Cruise missiles are plenty harsh enough.

Or good old-fashioned solid projectiles. (Exploding shells, if you must be twentieth century about it.)

***

But who needs the international customs service? How about just an international custom that pirates are pursued, then drawn, quartered, and their bodies placed in gibbets in port towns?

They traded Coco!

My apologies, I was using the gamer definition of "nuke" which essentially parlays into "blow up a lot with fire and smoke and sinking of ships" not necessarily the traditional def.

Where oh where are the jet packs and neutron weapons that Reagan promosed us.

It does seem a bit puzzling to me why those responsible for an asset worth millions carrying a cargo worth millions wouldn't hire on a couple of fellows with ready acces to those stinger things the US sent to Osama to fight the reds back in the 80's. They seemed to be a very efficient way of making baddies go away forever.

My grandfather in WWI was exactly that in the UK merchant marine. We have a picture of him next to a gun mounted on a ship.

I am sure that having 25 people on a ship is the bare minimum needed to pilot the thing from place to place. Gotta keep costs down you know to keep that profit up. And heck, if they get in trouble, they know all those that need/want the oil will jump to help them.

I'm a cheapskate, but I'd still pay for that one guy with a shoulder-held rocket launcher.

I should think a cutting out raid with full Apocalypse Now helio support - right down to the Wagner and the napalm - would sober the pirates up right quick.

However, the hostages - of which there are 250 or so - are a consideration.

Mercs aboard might be a thought.

Or using those clever flying machines, which Hornblower would have given his left nut for, to shoot up any speed boats more than, say, ten miles offshore would have a salutary effect.

Or maybe we should simply declare Somalia a bank and give it several billion dollars by way of bailout.

Defending a moving object with a thick steel hull, with a deck more than a few metres above the waterline shouldn't be all that hard against a few dozen people in speedboats with RPGs. I mean, its a floating castle. Easier if they had oil to heat up and drop on any ladders that spring up against the sides.. hey, wait a minute...

That would be rather Mad Max meets Waterworld.

Which makes it really, really awesome IMHO

I don't want the British government's hands on my drugs and pornography, do you?

It's going to be the Indian government's hands on it... and who ships porn by sea in this century? They can have the drugs as long as the scotch keeps flowing.

Defending a tanker isn't as easy as it sounds. It may be a sheer hull but there are ladder rungs welded into the hull for maintenance purposes and for pilots to come aboard. Remember, people unfamiliar with these huge ships have to board them and disembark from them every time they come into a port.

Also, keep in mind that there's no time limit, and small speedboats can go back to the mothership for more ammo at any time, whereas the tanker has only the ammo it can carry. And most don't carry any.

Pirate RPGs would not penetrate a double-hulled oil carrier but it certainly would punch through a single-hulled bulk carrier or cruise ship. Also, you don't have to punch through the hull so much as get a lucky hit on the bridge and wipe out a half dozen guys. Or just save your ammo and only fire on the unlucky fellas that are defending the boarding point. After a dozen RPG rounds and some dead they will get the message, you are coming aboard and there is nothing they can do about it.

The rest of the crew will cave rather than be hunted down once your initial boarders have scaled the hull.

Hmm.. This is like in college when one late night we sat in an empty pub hypothesizing on how one would topple the statue of liberyt and get away with it. (Oh how happy we are that those plans written on beer stained paper were not kept...shudder).

All true Chris. I was unaware of the ladder rungs and seriously, civvies on a big boat are likely to snap into a puddle of tears at the sight of a few dead sailors. Yes, looks to me like one must have a defence system in place on an oil ship, a trained mini-defence force and an armoured bridge.

I'll email you the designs later.

LOL. Yeah this seems a bit like the stuff I would doodle during 5th grade math.

Actually I think the more common boarding method is to have a lowerable staircase for pilot boarding and an old school rope-and-wood pilot's ladder as a backup. So, still not easy from a pirate perspective, you still have to convince somebody topside to let down the stairs/ladder.

At any rate though it is not like these oil carriers have giant bulletproof gunwales for people to hide behind and resist. For most of the longitudinal hull there is no gunwale you can duck behind, just a post-and-bar safety railing.

Your only "safe" points would be at the bow or stern, where there are larger gunwales, or in the superstructure. Which is only safe to the degree that it resists RPG and small arms fire.

I suspect at this very moment there are marine engineers at work figuring out how to remove the footholds and up-armor the bridge.

Oh and as far as Canada's position on the war on pirates...a Canadian, CMDR Robert A. Davidson, is commanding NATO's Combined Task Force 150 (CTF-150) right now.

Of course CTF-150 has about 2.5 million square miles to patrol, from the southern Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Aden, and only about 8 ships to do it. They also provide pickets for the American CVBGs in the Gulf, and that is, no doubt, where the majority of the effort is being focused.

So my bet is Canada is notionally against piracy but--having insufficient assets to patrol that huge swath of territory--is functionally for it.

Actually I am mistaken, we only held command until September. Current CO of the surface action group is Danish Royal Navy Commodore Per Bigum Christensen.

Egad. Vikings in charge of anti-pirate operations. Harry Turtledove couldn't come up with a better book idea...