11-28-2008, 01:23 PM
Spoke with my FIL yesterday about pirates. He currently captains a tanker filled with molten sulphur and has been all over the world.
He said it's pretty easy to disable and board a ship that's underway if the pirates know what they are doing. Grappling hooks make it easy to board and captains don't want their ship disabled which could mean disaster for an oil tanker in a narrow straight, which is normally the point of pirate attack.
He said one time pirates tried to board his ship on in the Malacca Straits. His crew used diesel pumps to shoot fuel through hoses at the pirate boat and then they fired a couple of flares at diesel. He said that drove the pirates away really quickly.
Basically he said that it'd be pretty easy to equip a ship to repel a pirate attack, but most of the time the ship owners don't want to risk damage to the ship so they preach non-resistance.
He said it's pretty easy to disable and board a ship that's underway if the pirates know what they are doing. Grappling hooks make it easy to board and captains don't want their ship disabled which could mean disaster for an oil tanker in a narrow straight, which is normally the point of pirate attack.
He said one time pirates tried to board his ship on in the Malacca Straits. His crew used diesel pumps to shoot fuel through hoses at the pirate boat and then they fired a couple of flares at diesel. He said that drove the pirates away really quickly.
Basically he said that it'd be pretty easy to equip a ship to repel a pirate attack, but most of the time the ship owners don't want to risk damage to the ship so they preach non-resistance.