In 1717, the notorious pirate Blackbeard was hunted down by two Royal Navy sloops, decapitated and his crew hanged. The golden age of piracy was soon to end. But 300 years later, it is on the rise again, and the Navy has fewer “resources” to combat it than in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The admission, in a government report in the Commons, has shocked MPs who fear little is being done to combat piracy, up by 168 per cent since 1992.
The modern pirates’ most deadly haunts are the Strait of Malacca, off Indonesia, the Gulf of Guinea and off Somalia. Since 1992, there have been more than 3,500 attacks, killing 340 sailors and passengers. Last year alone, 150 were assaulted by pirates and 650 were kidnapped.
MPs on the transport committee have urged the Government “to take the upward trend of violent attacks seriously, and to take action to reverse it”.
Between 1993 and 2004, UK-flagged ships were involved in 32 piratical encounters. In 1992, Captain John Bashforth died from gunshot wounds, after his ship was boarded off Indonesia. The yachtsman Sir Peter Blake was shot dead by pirates in 2001 while anchored in the Amazon.
The Navy said it patrols known pirate areas and would intervene on the high seas in answer to a distress call. But the Navy is not permitted to take on pirates inside national waters, where many attacks are made.
They need to hire ninja’s… just kidding. Truthfully they need to work the political scene to be able to go after them if necessary. Plus they probably need faster hard hitting boats to counter the pirates. Speed wise pirates use a variety of boats, but one of the reasons the US Navy has been talking about Littoral craft has been because of Destroyers, Cruiser and Carriers not really being designed to handle small craft. The modern navy’s need smaller (closer to water line) craft with “smaller” guns (say a modern 20 or 40 mm Bofors) that can pore a lot of fire at small targets. A revamp Phoenix close in defense system could work… but it would need to be adjusted to work with ships that have small radar signatures, relatively slow moving and also that would change the Rules of Engagement. Plus modern ships can go relatively fast… but pirates will start using faster ships to counter.
The articles I’ve read from the US Navy go into detail how difficult it gets. The bright spot are the stories like the yacht that was set upon by pirates that was able to fight them off and outrun them… with only minor damage from RPGs. (Happened about a year ago, and I can’t seem to be able to find the story in Google News.)
Tags: Interesting, Naval, News
This is a topic near a dear to my heart. So much so, that I wrote a book and screenplay about it called “Hunt of The Sea Wolves.”
Few people realize what is happening in the Far East as modern-day pirates, who are in fact terrorist plotting to use ships as weapons of mass destruction.
One type of ship is of interest to terrorists. They’re called LNG ships. These ships carry up to 30-million gallons of liquified natural gas. Just one has the explosive power of 55 atomic bombs. Imagine, if you will, if a determined band of terrorists were able to hijack one of these ships, sail it into a major port city and blow it up.
That is what the “Hunt of the Sea Wolves” blog is about. Admittedly, it is a shameless plug for my unpublished book, but there is quite a bit of information about modern-day pirates/terrorists.
John Chadwell
[...] had just written not that long ago that the US Navy has started to feel overwhelmed by the pirating going on. And even with this [...]