You sit in your ship staring up at the darkness, listening to the water move by. Surrounding you are 12 other able-bodied seafarers with the one goal in mind of reaching their destination and getting home safely.
Suddenly, up ahead in the darkness, you hear voices — one them claims to be a pirate and warns of the deadly consequences of disobeying him. You try to think of what to do next when suddenly you hear a loud click then a noise like the crack of thunder and you plunge … 30 feet into an artificial cave filled with 1960s-era animatronics singing a jolly tune.
While it’s true that for most of us this thrilling romp through Disneyland’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride is the closest we will get to a pirate confrontation, for thousands of sailors around the world, piracy has become a very real and very dangerous threat.
With the seizure and subsequent rescue this past week of the Maersk Alabama and its captain, piracy has jumped up and become a hot-button issue in America, with everyone wanting to know what will be done to stop this threat. But despite this recent media coverage and popularization of the topic, pirates have been a growing global concern for almost five years with seemingly no end in sight.
Coming mostly from the Puntland region of Somalia, these pirates are mostly comprised of desperate fishermen and ex-militiamen looking for any means to support themselves in one of the poorest countries in the world. They threaten ships with rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons obtained on the black market, then board them and hold the crews for ransom.
Although these tactics may seem crude, their results have been quite rewarding, with an estimated $150 million in ransoms paid last year alone.
The destructive path that these pirates have forged through one of the world’s busiest shipping and fishing lanes has thrown a wrench into the machine known as global trade, and something must be done.
But how do you stop a threat that appears out of nowhere and then disappears into oblivion with no discernable leader?
We could just go on as normal, paying their ransoms and marking it up as just another business cost? Or should we go full force into Somalia with a house-by-house search of the country until we find their pirate king?
Well, what about simply empowering the sailors of these ships with the means to prevent these pirates from boarding their ship in the first place?
The crewmen of the Maersk Alabama, much like the majority of crews that pass through these waters everyday, had not a single gun among them. I’m sure, like many of you, when I first heard that a group of four pirates in a dingy were able to take a 17000 ton with a 23 men, the first thing that came to my mind was, how? But when I heard that the shipping company that owns the Alabama doesn’t allow their sailors to carry arms, I could only ask, why?
These men risk their lives traveling thousands of miles in the middle of the ocean to make sure that their shipments get in on time, yet when their lives are truly endangered we expect them to go all John McClane in order to save themselves.
In the hands of a properly trained, well-meaning person, a gun can be a powerful tool. If giving sailors this tool means that they are able to deter these pirates from running rampant, then why not take a chance?
I’m not saying that we should pack our merchant ships with mercenaries armed to the teeth, but these aren’t your conventional rum-drinking Black Pearl-searching pirates, and we may just need an unconventional solution.
Avast maties and pillage yourself a computer to e-mail Captain Andrew at andrew.hadder@asu.edu lest ye walk the plank.
