Stand by to Repel Boarders!
It is a long time since that command has been issued by the captain of any vessel, but as piracy looms on the high seas once again, maybe it’s time to revisit some of those fine old naval and maritime customs. Vessels used to carry a few small arms and cutlasses for just those sort of eventualities. Buccaneers who preyed on honest merchantmen knew that if the other vessel’s crew won the fight, they probably were not going to collect any loot, but could expect to be swinging from a yard arm in short order.
I’m not suggesting cutlasses and muskets, but maybe sub machine guns and shot guns and a ship’s company well trained in the use of both might be worth considering. Perhaps international law should revisit some of the old laws of the high seas, and allow the summary execution of those caught in the act of piracy. At the very least, the liquidation of pirates, like the stamping out of cockroaches, may be beneficial momentarily. The Volokh Conspiracy has a thread on the subject – an interesting development for a blog of mostly libertarian bloggers. Still, I confess I support the idea of giving pirates ’suspended sentences’ – the big challenge will be finding a mast sufficient to the task, since modern vessels no longer require sails or yard arms. Then again, maybe they could go Hollywood and have captured pirates walk the plank.
Seriously, I find myself increasingly in favor of making piracy, both maritime or airborne, a capital offense, punishable quickly. Or simply authorizing the crews to take no prisoners when defending against efforts to seize their craft. Either way, these folks need to be taken out of circulation. Permanently.
This website uses IntenseDebate comments, but they are not currently loaded because either your browser doesn't support JavaScript, or they didn't load fast enough.
Comments are closed.
PoliGazette Comments Policy
PoliGazette encourages comments from all viewpoints, especially those that disagree.
Comments submitted must, however, adhere to the following standards. Comments that violate
these standards may be edited or deleted without notice at the sole discretion of the editors.
Commenters who repeatedly or egregiously violate these standards or who attempt to argue
publicly with editors regarding the comments policy may be banned from commenting further.
(1) Comments should address the substantive content of the post. Comments that repeatedly
or blatantly misrepresent the content of the post or of others' comments are not welcome. Comments that
respond to something other than which the contributor or commenter may have said are irrelevant and should
not be posted.
(2) Comments should avoid vulgarity as well as racial, ethnic, religious, or sexual bigotry.
(3) Comments should not personally attack the character, personal integrity, or professional
reputation of any PoliGazette contributor or of other commenters.
(4) Comments should reflect the contributions of the commenters themselves and should not
include extensive cut-and-paste reproductions of others' words except insofar as necessary to supplement
the commenter's own arguments. Link spam, trackback spam, and propaganda spam will be instantly deleted.
(5) Public figures are considered open to all substantive criticism of their policies and statements.
Comments that present objectively false factual information about public figures (i.e. "Obama is a Muslim") or
that attack public figures by attacking their families are not welcome. Comments that merely repeat
slogans for or against a candidate without engaging in substantive comment are not welcome.
Questions or challenges to these policies or their application should be directed to the editors
by email only.
Airlines have guards onboard and nobody will ask questions if somebody is killed while trying to hijack a plane. Why shouldn’t ships have guards too?
The problem is that with ships the companies are more afraid of the guards than of the pirates.
Airplanes in the modernized West have government-trained and certified guards on board (sometimes). Not so in the Third World. And most ships are flagged in Third World countries.
Putting guards on a ship just means the pirates need more fire-power, which is not a problem considering how lucrative the business is. Besides, from what I understand a gun fight on an oil rig would not be a good idea for either side.
Also, an airplane has to be hijacked from the inside, so as long as passengers are screened, the fire-power that a hijacker has available is limited to whatever they can sneak through security (which is hopefully not very much). So the guards on planes don’t have to be heavily armed. However, a ship can be hijacked from the outside, with limitless fire-power. So you can’t just stick a guard with a gun on a ship and be done with it. You would need many guards with a lot of weapons on every ship. That’s seems like a very expensive proposition. It might be cheaper for oil companies to take the chance of losing a rig once in a while.