US SEAMEN ARE BEING TRAINED TO FEND OFF PIRATES

I am not sure what to make of this article.  Has no one who can make a decision studied history.  I was waiting for someone to say, it would not be fair to the pirates to defend your ship, they have had a hard life and are not really responsible for taking ships and killing or hurting people. 

The huge convoys of WWII that kept Britain and Russia supplied during the war were a mixture of Naval ships, merchant ships and armed merchant ships,  The same could be done on a smaller scale.  Merchant ships could be armed with light and heavy machine guns.  The Germans brought armed Merchant Raiders to a point of perfection in WWII.  These were heavily armed merchant ships, that would disquise themselves as variouis countries ships by building false superstructures and painting.  When the victim had been lured in close enough, siding would swing away, tarps would be pulled off, false walls would be collasped, and guns from light to heavy would appear. I say let some Trojan Horse, armed, but innocent looking Merchant ships ply the pirate infested areas, and blow them out of the water if they try to attack.

 Some pictures and information about one of the WWII German Merchant Raiders is inserted in the article.  The Bold Face I added, and the Italics are my added thoughts. . .

US SEAMEN ARE BEING TRAINED TO  FEND OFF PIRATES  (Are they really?)

Feb 2 02:37 PM US/Eastern
By CLARKE CANFIELD
Associated Press Writer

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - With an alarming number of tankers and cargo ships getting hijacked on the high seas, the nation's maritime academies are offering more training to merchant seamen in how to fend off attacks from pirates armed not with cutlasses and flintlocks but automatic weapons and grenade launchers.

Colleges are teaching students to fishtail their vessels at high speed, drive off intruders with high-pressure water hoses and illuminate their decks with floodlights.

Anti-piracy training is not new. Nor are the techniques. But the lessons have taken on new urgency—and more courses are planned—because of the record number of attacks worldwide in 2008 by outlaws who seize ships and hold them for ransom.  (Have to laugh at that one, the techniques seem very new, no guns, no cannons, no firepower, just water hoses and bright lights. And then let the pirates know how you are going to respond.. . .)

At the California Maritime Academy in Vallejo, Calif., professor Donna Nincic teaches two courses on piracy. Students learn where the piracy hotspots are and how they have shifted over the years.

GERMAN MERCHANT RAIDER PINGUIN

KANDELFELS / PINGUIN

PINGUIN WAS A GERMAN MERCHANT RAIDER COMMANDED BY CAPTAIN KRUDER, SHE STARTED OUT LIFE AS HANSA LINES  KANDELFELS. SHE REEKED HAVOC IN THE INDIAN OCEAN AND SOUTH ATLANTIC. SHE SANK THIRTY-TWO VESSELS, IN A CRUISE LASTING ONLY ELEVEN MONTHS. SHE SANK SHAW SAVILL & ALBIONS 'MAIMOA' AND CAPTURED THE 'PELAGOS' ( FORMERLY THE WHITE STAR/SHAW SAVILL & ALBION ' ATHENIC' ) IN 1940 SHE LAID MINES ALONG THE VICTORIA COAST, AUSTRALIA ONE OF THE MINES SUNK THE AMERICAN VESSEL 'CITY OF RAYVILLE',  A BRITISH WARSHIP WAS ALSO MINED. SHE WAS EVENTUALLY SUNK BY H.M.S CORNWALL NEAR THE SEYCHELLES IN 1941. 340 OF THE PINGUIN CREW DIED ALONG WITH 200 PRISONERS THAT SHE WAS CARRYING. 60 ODD CREW MEMBERS AND 20 PRISONERS WERE PICKED UP FROM THE SEA BY CORNWALL ( SHELLS FROM  CORNWALL HAD HIT THE REMAINING MINES THAT PINGUIN HAD ONBOARD, WHICH ACCOUNTED FOR HER BLOWING UP ) THE BOTTOM PICTURE SHOWS PENGUIN DISGUISED AS THE GREEK MERCHANTMAN 'KASSOS'

"If I've done anything, I've shown them that this isn't a joke, it's not about parrots and eye patches and Blackbeard and all that," Nincic said. "It's very real and it's a problem without an easy solution."

Emily Rizzo, a student at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy in Buzzards Bay, Mass., worked aboard a 760-foot cargo ship last year as part of her training. As the vessel sailed the Malacca Straits in Southeast Asia, she served on "pirate watches," learned to use hoses and took part in drills with alarms indicating the ship had been boarded.  (I wonder what they yell over the loud speaker:  Watch out We are on Watch and have water hoses!!)

The training "brought to light just how serious it is," said Rizzo, a 22-year-old senior from Milwaukee. "The pirates can get on board these huge ships and they know what they're doing. It's not like the old days."

The International Maritime Bureau reported 293 piracy incidents in 2008, an increase of 11 percent from the year before. Forty-nine vessels were hijacked, and 889 crew members were taken hostage. Eleven were killed and 21 reported missing and presumed dead, according to the bureau.

Piracy hotspots have been identified off East Africa and in Southeast Asia, South America and the Caribbean.

Typically, small numbers of pirates—as few as two and up to 15 or 16—draw up alongside ships in motorized skiffs and use grappling hooks and rope ladders to clamber aboard. Some of the biggest ships might have no more than two dozen crew members.

Often the pirates are armed with knives and guns. Pirates off the coast of Somalia have taken to firing automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.

In the old days, ships were armed with cannons to guard against pirates. But nowadays, crew members for the most part do not carry guns. And maritime instructors say that arming crews is not the answer.  (hmmm, WWI, and especially WWII saw merchant ships armed with light, heavy  machine guns and Deck Guns, sometimes some of the crew were trained in their operation, other times a Naval Detachment was on board to man the guns. These were for defence against air raids and  U-boats.)

It is illegal for crews to carry weapons in the territorial waters of many nations, and ship captains are wary of arming crew members for fear of mutinies, Nincic said. Also, some worry that arming crew members would only cause the violence to escalate.

Instead, the best defense is vigilance, Nincic tells students.

"If you demonstrate a culture of awareness, that you look like you know you're in pirate waters and are clearly standing watch, patrolling, etc., the pirates know you're going to be more difficult to board and are possibly going to wait for the next ship and board the one that's easier," she said.  (Such feely good, warm and fuzzy!! They know you are unarmed, do you really think looking like you know you are in pirate waters is going to stop armed pirates from boarding you if they want to!!)

The Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, Maine, is putting together a new anti-piracy course on nonlethal defense for ship crews, said Ralph Pundt, chairman of the school's marine transportation department.

The course would teach how crews can use observation techniques, lights, fire hoses and evasive action. The best way to combat pirates, Pundt said, it to keep them from boarding in the first place.  (So they can learn a lesson and improve the next hijack attempt.  What about sinking their boats?  Taking them, if they survive the sinking, to  trial.  Hmmm, does international maritime law still call for the hanging of Pirates)

Michael Durnan, a 42-year-old senior at Cal Maritime, was working on a tanker filled with soybean oil in 2001 when he confronted four pirates standing on the ship's stern in the Bay of Bengal off Bangladesh.

Durnan approached the men with a 2-by-4, but they threw some equipment overboard and then jumped over themselves, escaping into the darkness in small fishing boats.  (I can only hope he somehow knew the men were not armed.)

"They take everything and sell everything," he said. "Anything on a ship can be sold to somebody for something."