Tag: pirates

Pirate Party

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This isn’t some late entry for the upcoming municipal elections (although… no), this was the immediate and unequivocal choice of my son when asked what sort of party he wanted for his fifth birthday.

Personally, I couldn’t really see the attraction, but then I wasn’t looking at it through innocent 4.96 year old eyes.

No, what went through my mind was 20 kids taking one of two sides: Some playing poorly organised, desperate Somali gunmen, sweating over whether they’re going to get several million dollars or be shot dead by US Navy Seals while the others pretend to be Malaysian sailors, working under a Panamanian flag of convenience and terrified as to whether they’ll ever get to see their families again. All with cupcakes and the occasional green Fizzer.

Of course, there is a far more romanticised, swashbuckling image of piracy as well. Captain Hook, Captain Blackbeard and (thanks to Charlie and Lola) Captain Squidbones, all searching for buried treasure, parrots on shoulder, cutlasses in hand and eye-patches on… well… eye. And (thankfully, I guess) that’s the image that we’ll be going for.

It all happens this afternoon – had to think about that since this post has been pre-written – so expect photos at some point if things go well, no comment if things are just “ok” and no more blogging ever if it all goes a bit Fukushima.

Kind regards,

6k. (aka R. Jimlad)

LoL Private Navy (er… not)

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Found this, via here and here, which details alleged plans afoot by insurers Lloyds of London and some big players in the shipping industry to set up what amounts to, but… er… obviously isn’t, a private navy.

Under the plan, which has been developed over two years, a non-profit association involving private and public sector members would be set up. It would control a fleet of 18 vessels, each with a fixed gun position and an armed crew authorised to engage the pirates in battle.
Each vessel would carry eight armed security personnel and four additional crew as well as inflatable speedboats, known as “Ribs”, which could be dispatched into combat if the tankers they were protecting came under attack.
Although it would be managed separately, the fleet would be under the operational control of the relevant national navy and the crew would have to conform to international rules on combat and engagement.

This is a tad more hardcore than the recent plan to dazzle pirates with a laser, which we blogged on 6000 miles… earlier this year and indicates the seriousness with which the insurance business views the continuing problems off Somalia.

Success for the venture, which has tried to shun the “private navy” tag, would mark a gear change in international efforts to clamp down on piracy. Despite a successful recent intervention by the Royal Navy, the pirates have escalated their activities sharply in the past fortnight, seizing an oil tanker and its 125 million-pound cargo and killing two of its Filipino crew.

All of which makes me wonder whether we’re not in for something similar in South Africa. True, we don’t have pirates in our waters costing the local insurers billions each year, but we do have minibus taxis on our roads and they really do the same job: crashing into the side of other vessels, terrorising the occupants and… costing the local insurers billions each year.

So do we need our own private-navy-that’s-not-really-a-private-navy on the roads? Some would say that we already have one in the Police service, but – in the same way as the traditional navies off the coast of Somalia – they’re pretty ineffectual at stopping the pirates… er… taxis. And I don’t think that there would be any shortage of volunteers ready, willing and able to sign up for the SA Private Road Navy.

My best suggestion is that you cut out the middleman and contact Outsurance, since they seem to like off the wall, road-based thinking. Tell them I sent you and you want to join their navy.

Let me know how you get on.

Arr (my eyes) Jim Lad

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I guess that in 2011, few people would have thought that pirates still roamed the seven seas. Piracy was something from 300 years ago,with Captain Blackbeard and Long John Silver. Yet we have well documented cases all around the dodgy bit up the east coast of Africa.
And sometimes beyond Durban as well.

Equally, we’re still some distance (the other way) from laser weapons as well. We’ve had Star Trek for a number of years, but I was recently told that in fact, it wasn’t real and all those people were just actors. One would imagine that being an actor was quite a hazardless, risk-free occupation, unless you ended up cast as “Expendable red-shirted member of the away party”.
And so many of them did – at least one per episode.

R.I.P.

Well, now in 2011, those worlds of  the past and future have collided as Captain Kirk has just hijacked a oil tanker off the coast of Somalia British scientists have developed a laser weapon to combat pirates.

Already, you’re imagining photon torpedoes and shields to maximum on board the USS Enterprise, which is transporting cars from Japan to Europe under a Panamanian flag and with a Filipino crew (wearing red shirts and looking nervous). Then the Somalian (Romulan/Klingon) skiff decloaks off the port bow and is shot by a massive laser, instantly exploding into a million pieces.
But that’s where the good stuff ends, I’m afraid – in your imagination. Because this laser weapon just dazzles the pirates:

Bryan Hore, the head of BAE Systems new antipiracy arm, said: “We have started to look at the piracy issue over the past 18 months due to the increasing threats to vessels around the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea.

The laser provides a secondary capability: over larger distances as it can act like a warning.

Pirates approaching a vessel rely on the element of surprise, so by detecting those vessels and directing a laser onto them more than a kilometre away, it provides a clear signal to them. As the pirates come closer to about 400 or 500 metres of the ship, the power of the laser can be increased so that it affects their concentration and distracts them.”

Is this really going to work, Bryan? You’re going stick a massive laser gun on top of an oil tanker and then expect the pirates to be distracted and lose their concentration?

“Ahmed, let us attack the… let us… wait a minute… why are we here again?”
“Idiot, Mahir! We are here to… to… no, it’s gone…  Sarmad – what are we doing here?”
“I have absolutely no idea, mate. Clueless. Cigarette?”

And then – what about your worst case scenario – where the pirates (presumably wearing sunglasses) storm the ship, then use the laser on approaching navy vessels?

“Captain Sir, the hijacked vessel is within radar range and oh – did I mention that it was my sister’s birthday yesterday?”
“Idiot, Ensign! We’re not here to discuss your sister’s birthday. We’re here to… to… no, it’s gone…”

And so on.

Obviously, there’s a lot of time and money and thought gone into this laser weapon idea – which was probably sparked by an inadvertent shot in the eye during a powerpoint presentation at BAE – but personally, I just don’t see it working.

Sorry.