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Guerrillas of the Sea
Nov. 21st, 2008 04:09 pmAs all of my readers know, I have an interest in pirates and modern piracy. Thanks to the recent captures of various high-value merchant ships, a lot of people have become aware of the long-standing and ongoing piracy problem off of the coast of Somalia. This has led to some interesting and (occasionally spectacularly) uninformed suggestions.
Case in point is Mark Noonan. His suggestion? Lease out ex-Spruance class destroyers to private individuals and let them hunt pirates, collecting half of what the pirate's ransom would have been. Just to be clear, the problems are:
1) Most of that class of ship were sunk as targets or otherwise unavailable.
2) At 7,000 tons and a crew of 300, they are very expensive to operate.
3) This is technically called a Letter of Marque and has been illegal since 1856. The problem was that holders of such letters tended to go from privateering ("legalized piracy") to straight piracy depending on economic conditions, crew desires, and good old fashioned whim.
There are other issues, the biggest of which is the nature of piracy. Pirates are to naval warfare as guerrillas are to land warfare. The problem isn't usually defeating the pirates in combat - even small naval ships outgun the typical pirate. The problem is finding the pirates. It's not so much the size of the ocean, although that's a factor, but determining who's a pirate. Unless the ship is flying the Jolly Roger (only done in movies) it looks just like the merchant ship you're trying to protect.
There are two ways to deal with the Somali pirates. The first way is to establish a functioning government in the port cities. This is also known as "send in the Marines" who happen to be busy at the moment. The second way is to set up convoy / Q ship operations and whittle down the pirates. Neither option is cheap or easy.
Case in point is Mark Noonan. His suggestion? Lease out ex-Spruance class destroyers to private individuals and let them hunt pirates, collecting half of what the pirate's ransom would have been. Just to be clear, the problems are:
1) Most of that class of ship were sunk as targets or otherwise unavailable.
2) At 7,000 tons and a crew of 300, they are very expensive to operate.
3) This is technically called a Letter of Marque and has been illegal since 1856. The problem was that holders of such letters tended to go from privateering ("legalized piracy") to straight piracy depending on economic conditions, crew desires, and good old fashioned whim.
There are other issues, the biggest of which is the nature of piracy. Pirates are to naval warfare as guerrillas are to land warfare. The problem isn't usually defeating the pirates in combat - even small naval ships outgun the typical pirate. The problem is finding the pirates. It's not so much the size of the ocean, although that's a factor, but determining who's a pirate. Unless the ship is flying the Jolly Roger (only done in movies) it looks just like the merchant ship you're trying to protect.
There are two ways to deal with the Somali pirates. The first way is to establish a functioning government in the port cities. This is also known as "send in the Marines" who happen to be busy at the moment. The second way is to set up convoy / Q ship operations and whittle down the pirates. Neither option is cheap or easy.
