Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Pirates, Pirates, Go Away. Come Again Some Other Day!

According to the BBC, those intractable Somali pirates nearly landed an army of lucrative hostages this weekend when they attempted to subdue a US cruise ship with over 1000 people on board.

After reading the full article, several questions come to mind:

1. Why does this boat require nearly one crew member for each passenger aboard? (656 passengers, 399 crew) Do the first 300 to book each get their own prostitute?

2. Who goes on a 32-day cruise?

3. Who goes on a 32-day cruise when the global economy is in the shitter?

4. How does a cruise ship with 1000 people on board outmaneuver and outrun agile skiffs carrying experienced pirates armed with machine guns and rocket launchers?

And, in case you were wondering, that Saudi oil tanker carrying 2 million barrels of crude oil is still being held for ransom, as is the cargo ship bursting with Russian tanks and munitions. So are TWELVE other ships.

I can't wait until they take an aircraft carrier next week and start REALLY fucking shit up...

1 comment:

LiteralDan said...

All are questions I asked myself when reading this, though number 4 I think is a matter of sheer engine power, but the biggest question of all is that given that there are people to answer numbers 2 and 3, WHO charts a cruise ship path through notoriously pirate-infested waters??

How about an identical cruise somewhere else in the world? The risk can't possibly be worth it for the cruise ship company or their liability insurers, and certainly the risk of death or long-term illegal incarceration can't be worth it for their foolish patrons. So how does this happen?