Mr. Miller:
“t has been suggested that the existing crews of ships should receive training to act as security forces. That strikes me as silly. The training of effective security personnel takes lots of time and money, and using crew members who, after a modicum of training, would still be rank amateurs makes no sense. Leaving aside that that’s not the sort of work they had in mind when signing on as crew, they would still be inexperienced and hence quite likely to hurt themselves or other crew members accidentally.”
It strikes you as silly because you have very little idea what you are talking about.
This isn’t rocket science, ace, it’s shooting scumballs who are trying to board, or have boarded your vessel.
I have sailed for over 20 years on blue-water US-flag merchant ships, (including for Maersk Line, but never on he Alabama),have been aboard a vessel that was hit by pirates in Bangladesh, and I happen to have been a US Marine Infantryman before that…but you would blithely dismiss me as a rank amateur.
You went to Yale and UVA, and own a sailboat…frankly, color me underwhelmed.
The answer is Clausewitzian in it’s simplicity but it’s difficulty:
Arm the crews and call off the lawyers if the crew finds it necessary to use their weapons to defend their ships.
That’s it, that’s all that needs be done.
You don’t need the Navy, you don’t need to hire contracted armed mall-cops. Just arm the crews and not second-guess them.
“In the case of a confirmed pirate attack — such confirmation based on the reaction to warning shots fired into the water or well overhead by the guards — they should shoot to disable the small pirate boat. It would probably be easier to aim at the pirates themselves, but we seem to be squeamish about that sort of thing.”
A confirmed pirate attack would be announced by their trying to board. Or their using suppressive fire to make the target vessel heave-to and make their boarding easier and safer for them.
The best way to disable the pirate boat is to kill all its pirates. Worry about sinking it later, because then it’s just a derelict, see?
It is not incumbent upon me or anyone to educate any group of persons intending to commit a felony upon me that I am armed. When I choose to apprise them of this fact, the tuition for this instruction will in all likelihood be fatal.
And your notions of armed security crew standing 4 hours on and four off may explain some of the fantastically poor seamanship that I’ve observed yacht-owners engaging in in my time before the mast. I shudder to think of what kind of errors in judgment and degraded performance would happen with armed men who would be similarly sleep-deprived.
The absolute minimum is 6 hours on and 6 hours off,which happens when a ship is sailing short-handed, and you can do that for no more than a week or so before you turn into a dishrag.
In fact, the 12 hours on/12 hours off is quickly becoming world standard, since it allows you to get 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep.
