Chinese crew used beer bottles to fight off pirates
While I salute the captain and crew of the Zhenua 4, I cannot help thinking that guns might have been more convenient. What, exactly, is the difficulty over providing them?
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A lot of bottleDecember 20th, 2008 |
 16 comments to A lot of bottle |
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What, you can’t guess?
Governments.
They probably gave the wrong password to the Somali pyrates before purchasing some weaponary.
Thus no weapons to fight them off with.
It’s not very difficult to get a second-hand AK-47 in Africa.
RaÈ›ionalitate, I see your point, but are you sure this applies to the Chinese government as well? Anyway, it’s a good thing the crew are at least allowed beer on their ships.
Cost. In two ways:
1. Pirates still aren’t common enough that having ships to be armed and their (relatively very small, compared with earlier eras) crews trained to use arms is going to make the necessary marginal difference.
2. Pirates who hold ships and cargoes for ransom – as, I understand is the practice in Somali waters – can be bought off relatively more economically if the ship, cargo and crew are undamaged.
It is a perfectly rational strategy for shipowners to accept a certain amount of economic piracy. For crews too, when they are likely to be ransomed. On the Spanish Main in the 17th and 18th Centuries, crews would be slaughtered or sold into slavery, and the ships and goods sold or used by the pirates much more easily than ransomed.
Perhaps the Chinese crew fought because their previous acquaintence was with the pirates of the east indies who generally prey on smaller vessels and are less modern in their approach.
Cf. the approach to airline hijacking up to 2001. For decades almost no-one had been killed, and very few hijackers had got away, by following the standard practice of cooperating quietly and giving time to negotiate the hijackers’ demands. It only came badly unstuck when the hijackers had no meaningful demands; but that in itself changed the tolerance of airlines and passengers (in the latter case within an hour or so) for the former policy. It doesn’t mean the former policy was wrong.
The terms of trade may change in favour of armed merchantmen, but probably only if piracy gets much worse quantitatively. It might however alter as a non-economic decision, if piracy becomes or (in any sufficiently celebrated case becomes) the province of murderous maniacs rather than rationally self-interested warlords.
It is my understanding that British merchant seaman already have some kind of training in the use of weapons, though perhaps that is more to do with protecting the Crown in times of War than practical self defence from piracy.
I’ll try to find out more.
I’m sure this applies ESPECIALLY to the Chinese government – authoritarian regimes are generally the first to be afraid of guns.
Not to mention that Chinese shippers don’t send ships from Beijing to Shenzhen…then send them from Shenzhen to the industrialized world, sometimes making multiple stops in multiple ports in multiple countries, each with their own gun control regimes.
You have a point.
I don’t think this is necessarily true. For example, many shippers decided to take up to a half million dollar hit by rerouting their ships around the southern coast of Africa rather than going through the Suez Canal and subjecting their ships to the risk of pirate attacks. If it’s worth spending at least a quarter of a million dollars to go around the coast, it’s worth spending an order of magnitude less on security.
I believe the problem is that they would have serious problems goign from country to country as they would effectively be importing firearms into each country, or short of that they would need a lisence for it from that country they were docked in to have it on board. That just wouldn’t be practical or probably in a lot of places possibile..
There was a retired Sea Captain a month or so on the BBC explaining this same point.
Isn’t it obvious? Guns cause violence! Those pirates were probably peaceful people before a gun-monger came around with his weapon catalogue!
Guy Herbert; it is like suggesting to a woman who is being raped to negotiate the best outcame of the rape with her rapist. I have always thought that the best way of dealing with a rapist is to cut his balls off…
Some have touched on it.
Hiring trained teams or training and arming some,
most, or all of the crew is NOWHERE near as expensive as the ransoms.
Marginal difference. I don’t think so. From a strategic point of view, it is relatively easy and painless to hijack a large UNARMED ship with just a few men. Arm a few of the crew and that task changes rather radically.
The real cork in the bottle is local laws.
Many years ago in another life, I was going to chuck everything, get a sailboat and travel the world. then I did some research. Travel the world UNARMED – sorry, not me. An expensive UNARMED sailboat is just as tempting as a large UNARMED vessel. Different reasons, profit levels etc. but the temptation/lure is still there.
Unarmed ?
Yep.
WHY ?
Because when you are in port, you are under the laws of that country.
The local authorities can come aboard and search ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING they want.
If they find contraband ( firarms – which are illegal seems like near everywhere – look at Mxico’s firearms laws sometime ) it’s seized and you find yourself and your ship in ‘custody’.
In some countries, bribes ( ransom of another color ? ) may be sufficient. Maybe not. You can lose a LOT, maybe everything.
The decision therefore becomes to remain unarmed regardless of how stupid, idiotic and dangerous that may be.
But then we all know that wherever guns are illegal, that place becomes a veritable paradise of safety !!!
/so
Am I the only one made a bit nervous by the revelation the crew had enough beer bottles on hand for a running four hour battle?
The arming of merchant ships is strictly forbidden under International Law — specifically, the 1856 “Declaration of Paris,” which among other things declared the practice of arming merchant vessels and of issuing Letters of Marque and Reprisal to “Privateers” to be themselves the moral equivalent of sanctioning piracy.
Subsequent to the Declaration of Paris, only military vessels are allowed to mount deadly weapons of any type, and only military officers are allowed to be armed at sea.
While no President of the U.S. Federal Government has ever signed the “Declaration of Paris” treaty, it has remained the policy of every President of the U.S. Government since 1861 to nevertheless abide by its terms.
Perhaps we need to revisit the “Declaration of Paris” then. At a wild guess, I’d suggest that a law that is over one hundred and fifty years old is in dire need of modernisation, it being drafted in times where the threat of piracy had largely been defeated. From a brief scan of the linked article, the law seems to have been intended more as a control on privateers. Was there no mention at all of the right of self defence? It would seem to be a remarkably poor piece of lawmaking if not.
If you read the actual text of the Declaration of Paris, you will see that it does not contain a general prohibition on the arming of merchant ships, especially for defensive purposes. It prohibits privateering, which is the arming of private warships for the purpose of attacking foreign shipping. Defending oneself against pirates in no way comes within its purview. Furthermore, by its express terms the Declaration applies only when the nations involved are at war with one another.
I would also point out that pirates fly no nation’s flag, and thus would be no more covered by the Declaration of Paris than by the Geneva Convention.
The U.S. Constitution specifically authorizes the issuance of “letters of marque and reprisal”, and that authority cannot be overruled by a mere treaty. We retain that power, if we should choose to exert it (and I believe that we should, both in the case of pirates and also non-state terrorists such as al Qaeda).