Pirates

They’re all wet.

And that is about all they’ll be after taking these classes

With an alarming number of tankers and cargo ships getting hijacked on the high seas, the nation’s maritime academies are offering more training to merchant seamen in how to fend off attacks from pirates armed not with cutlasses and flintlocks but automatic weapons and grenade launchers.

Colleges are teaching students to fishtail their vessels at high speed, drive off intruders with high-pressure water hoses and illuminate their decks with floodlights.

Anti-piracy training is not new. Nor are the techniques. But the lessons have taken on new urgency — and more courses are planned — because of the record number of attacks worldwide in 2008 by outlaws who seize ships and hold them for ransom.

Our good man, and former uniformed sea goer, Mollbot, sent me this article. After reading it, I had the exact same reaction as he did; That water cannons and bright lights may work on the Sea Shepherd creepos (and give them something to whine about afterwards), but it will in no way work on violent predators.

The instructor gives multiple excuses as to why the ships can’t or aren’t arming themselves, each of which is lamer than the last. Tell those nations who won’t let ship’s crews be armed that they won’t be getting any shipments anytime soon. Tell the Captains who are afraid of mutiny or crew violence to train and arm a select portion of his crew. One thing about the ocean, you can see them coming from a ways off and you have time to get the guns out of the lockers.

And speaking of the Sea Shepherd creepos, why aren’t they considered pirates? They intend to damage and/or stop the legal activity of ships and their crews. Sounds like piracy to me.