Jamaica Bay Forum

[Blackbeard]

January 13, 2010, 9:00AM
Imagine British merchant ships of the 18th century battling Blackbeard with a stern lecture and the vain hope that a distant warship might show up in time to stop the pillaging.

Yet that has been, until recently, pretty much the response from cargo ships that today ply the waters of the pirate-heavy Gulf of Aden.

However, as piracy in the region grows, those hope-for-the-best tactics from the United States and the international maritime community are increasingly ineffective.

Ships are now taking matters into their own hands, using armed guards to battle the pirate horde. Who can blame them?

Merchant mariners can’t be expected to leave their fortunes to the good will of lawless criminals. That kind of fatalism has been disastrous for shipping companies traveling the gulf, situated between Yemen and Somalia, especially as pirates grow more heavily armed and aggressive.

Where the passive approach has worked, it’s been because captured ships have paid hefty ransoms. Somali pirates have built a brisk trade on that willingness. A multinational armada of 15 ships sent out to protect commercial carriers has proven helpful but thin. There’s just too much water to patrol, 1 million square miles, in fact.

There were 324 attempted pirate boardings around the world in the first months of 2009, according to the International Maritime Bureau, a trade organization based in London. That is up nearly 70 percent from the same time period the year before.

Even insurance companies, which worry about liability, are becoming more supportive of guns on board. Some offer discounts for clients who employ them. That’s because insurers are frequently on the hook for ransom payments.

Those ships that haven’t resorted to on-board arsenals have hesitated largely because maritime law is a confusing cross-wind of jurisdictions and liability is a worry. The alternative to arming vessels, however, is to allow U.S. ships to be sitting ducks in dangerous waters. That’s unacceptable.

The Maersk Alabama, a U.S.-flagged container ship, was hijacked off the coast of Somalia in April. The crew tried to fend off the boarding pirates, who wielded AK-47s, with ice picks and galley knives, the only weapons at hand. The captain of the ship was taken hostage and saved only because of the heroic work of Navy SEAL snipers.

In November, pirates again tried to attack the Maersk Alabama. This time, armed guards on board repelled the hijackers with small arms fire and sound pulses that are painful to the human ear. It was a classic example of how merchant mariners can and should respond to Somali pirates — with canny force and a refusal to be victimized.

The water off the Somalia coast remains dangerous. Pirates should be on notice that, more and more, they aren’t immune to the violence.