My guess is that it would be impossible for a ship of war to open fire at that range with the enemy in such close proximity to friendlies without opening up the probability of suffering casualties from friendly fire. Even if the Royal Marines were on board, a sniper shot wouldn't be enough and raking them with automatic weapons fire would be too much.
WHY allow this to happen without a fight????????
Indeed. As an example, when I as an NRA Certified Firearms Instructor give a class to a woman for her FL CCW permit, I always tell her it's never necessary to move to be robbed. Such movement to a place of privacy for the attacker is ALWAYS bad for the prisoner. Never, ever get into a car with an attacker, just because he seems to have the advantage! You'll wind up raped or dead or both. I hope that's not the case, here. There is a female among the captured. Does this demonstrate why we don't like the idea of women in direct combat positions? Sure it's easy to be progressive and sophisticated and certainly women can do the job...but there is a downside as a society when we contemplate the fate of female combatants if captured. I think this was the result of poor planning for the security phase of the operation. They didn't provide a means of resistance to any sort of assault force. Nor was there anything done to insure they had access to indirect fire as a screen. If they had a helicopter gunship nearby there would have been some precision long range fire available. All that would have been needed is the will to employ it, which still doesn't seem to have been the case.
I can't imagine American forces allowing this to happen before their eyes and not try to stop it.
It has happened in history. Remember the U.S.S. Pueblo? Taken by the North Koreans during the height of the cold war? Then there was the attack by North Korean forces against a tree cutting expedition into the DMZ in 1978. The Koreans HACKED to death with machetes and axes a tree cutting party of Americans within full view of American forces all loaded up and ready to SLAY. We did nothing. Let 'em die. It's all about the ROE or Rules of Engagement. It has to do with the spine of the administration in charge at the time and that was IIRC, the Presidency of JIMMY "The Peanut" Carter.
I thought the tree-cutting incident was in 1976? I remember our TI telling us in basic training that we might go to war with NK over it.
I see this as a tactical decision to be made by the the senior officer present. Whitehall would have no insight as to what weapon systems could or could not be brought to bear in this situation.
"t has to do with the spine of the administration in charge at the time..."
I agree.