Well, first of all, piracy is not the greatest concern, as said, it’s on high seas and mostly the pirates don’t have the vessels to attack in those waters. Armed robbery on the other side, has become a huge concern, that’s where most casualties are made. The number of 216 was not even correct, that seemed to be the number of the first quarter of a year, don’t know the exact number for the entire year… Onboard, you are warned by the Navtex, it prints out “Piracy Reports”, where they describe the place and type of attack (and casualties and stolen goods). Most these attacks happen near the South-Indian Coast and Malacca Strait, mostly in anchorages (certainly the anchorage at Singapore). Mostly these attacks are done by more than one small boat that approaches from the stern, because the huge funnel blocks the radar in that part (blind spot). Also because the freeboard of the ship is smaller there (better for mooring gear), so they have to climb less. We are not allowed to carry weapons (although some companies give the captain a gun in case there would be a mutiny, very likely in that company Vaiar mentioned 😉 ). That leaves us with very little to defend, on tankers they use the foam canons to “blow” these guys off, on other ships they use the firehoses, most of the time fastened to the fences (no one outside, because they could start shooting at you).
UN doesn’t have any fleet against that, some countries do work together to fight this, US for example has a good cooperation with the Dutch and Belgian Navy for Drugbusting ops in the Caribean (one wonders why US has such a large Coast Guard and Navy, their Coast Guard likes to annoy the merchants more than they try to do something about the drug traffic).
I think nowadays, some talks are going for guarding the Strait of Malacca, when we were anchored at Singapore, there was a guard vessel just outside the port, but I don’t know how they would come to aid…
The other question, no, they also attack large vessels. But mostly, they don’t highjack the large ones, since they don’t know what to do with it. They don’t have installations for unloaded Crude Oil or liquified Gas. On General Cargo and sometimes containers, they can sell the cargo, mostly they repaint the ship when still at sea and give it a different name. So afterwards they use it too.
On the Tankers and Gascarriers, they mostly attack for food, money and electronics (cameras, TVs,etc.) and leave as soon as they have what they need.
One Piracy Message I recall went like this:
Anchorage in Indonesia, seven small crafts approached a tanker, the tanker’s crew reacted by using the lights and the small crafts fled. Shortly after, the boats approached a tug, they put the crew overboard and fled with the ship.
(I do hope they put the crew in a lifeboat, although that was not even mentioned).
Pictures, that takes a bit too long for now, I’ll do that later, but I can tell you that taking pictures of radarstations is not the smartest thing you can do! (Normally you’re not even allowed to do that from within 1-1.5m of the radarscreen). Engines are more fun. It’s hard to get a full picture of them, since they are mostly six floors high… But I’ll see what I can find.
Vaiar: Is die kadet een marine cadet of een koopvaardij kadet, als ie van de marine is, dan vind’k het wel heel raar dat ie op een koopvaardijschip stage moet lopen, bij ons gaan die allemaal in de zomer met een mijnenjager of de Godetia mee!
Quite bad for him, onboard we had two bars, one for the ratings, one for the officers, both were equiped with a large screen TV, DVD player, Video recorder and Playstation II, also a very large stereo was there. A large collection of movies (approx 500), music cassettes and cds (400) and a library. We also had an improvised pool.
On large tankers they mostly have a sauna (with the exhaust pipes going to the funnel) and a pool.
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