Captain Hook
S'Moe.
Posted on 11/05/2005 3:35:54 PM PST by FairOpinion
A luxury liner sailing off the coast of Somalia fended off an attack by gunmen in speedboats early Saturday morning in an area notorious for piracy.
None of the mostly American passengers aboard the Seabourn Spirit were harmed but one crew member was lightly injured as they repelled the attackers without returning fire.
The crew used an on-board loud acoustic bang to fight off the attackers, leading them to believer they were under heavy fire.
Since March 2005, there have been 23 attacks against oceangoing vessels, including one against a ship delivering food from the U.N.'s World Food Program.
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
Who exactly were these "pirates"?
Fair enough.
Yay! Going on a cruise in December. Just what I wanted to hear.
Fortunately, it's in the Caribbean. The only ships I'll probably see will be Cubans floating to Florida.
That works: ONCE
Now that they know it was phoney, what are they going to do on the return voyage?
Some or most of these pirates are presumably doing it for money, but then I think I read somewhere that some of this money is also funding terrorists.
So what's the difference between terrorists and pirates? I think pirates are terrorists of the sea, and of course it gives the MSM another less inflammatory word to use, instead of using the word "terrorists".
Summary: The number of pirate attacks worldwide has tripled in the past decade, and new evidence suggests that piracy is becoming a key tactic of terrorist groups. In light of al Qaeda's professed aim of targeting weak links in the global economy, this new nexus is a serious threat: most of the world's oil and gas is shipped through pirate-infested waters.
Since many shipping companies do not report incidents of piracy, for fear of raising their insurance premiums and prompting protracted, time-consuming investigations, the precise extent of piracy is unknown. But statistics from the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), a piracy watchdog, suggest that both the frequency and the violence of acts of piracy have increased in recent years. In 2003, ship owners reported 445 attacks, in which 92 seafarers were killed or reported missing and 359 were assaulted and taken hostage. (Ships were hijacked in 19 of these cases and boarded in 311.) From 2002 to 2003, the number of those killed and taken hostage in attacks nearly doubled. Pirates have also increased their tactical sophistication, often surrounding a target ship with several boats and firing machine guns and antitank missiles to force it to stop. As Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister Tony Tan recently warned, "piracy is entering a new phase; recent attacks have been conducted with almost military precision. The perpetrators are well-trained, have well laid out plans." The total damage caused by piracy-due to losses of ships and cargo and to rising insurance costs-now amounts to $16 billion per year.
More details emerging -- they are trying to downplay the attack, but just found another article, where they say the ship was actually hit with some RPG-s.
(Someone also needs to ask BBC, why "pirate" is in quotes.)
===
Passengers tell of 'pirate' attack
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4410826.stm
Edith Laird, from Seattle in the US, told the BBC News website she was only four rooms away from where a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) hit the Seabourn Spirit, about 100 miles (160km) from the Somali coast.
"My daughter saw the pirates out of our window. There were at least three RPGs that hit the ship, one in a stateroom four doors down from our cabin.
......
"I looked out of the window and saw a small boat with about five people in it about 20 yards (20m) away.
"One of them clearly had a rifle. Later I realised that two of them had rifles and one had some kind of rocket launcher.
"They were firing the rifle and then fired the rocket launcher twice. One of the rockets certainly hit the ship - it went through the side of the liner into a passenger's suite. The couple were in there at the time so it was a bit of an unpleasant experience.
Related article:
Cruise line re-evaluating route following pirate attack
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1516478/posts
NPR referred to them as "alleged" pirates.
As if they needed an eyepatch and parrot for confirmation.
Or should I have called it N-P-aaarrrrrgh?
Captain Hook
S'Moe.
Well I have a couple of ideas.....
Every ship should have appropiate weaponry to destroy pirates. And it ought to be a major crime to fail to report an attack.
so do I
As I tried to say on another thread (and botched it), I'm wondering if they had another Achille Lauro op in mind.
Sounds like it's time for armed merchant ships like in WWII.
Are these 2 of the absolute most repulsive POS pig/swine people on the planet? Along with the other blind "sheik" responsible for the first World Trade tower bombing in 93 defended by the wonderful and oh so attractive fat ugly commie lesbian Lynn Stewart.
How do all of these repulsive scumbags get away with this? Why aren't they all dead?
Give lifetime passes on the cruise ships to retired SeALS, and maybe some female Marines to keep them company, under the condition that they provide security. Problem solved.
But even they need weapons to use, which the cruise ships need to keep on hand, including some serious weapons to sink the attacking vessels.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.