Fri, Nov 27 2009
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Bailey knows about pirates By GINA KINSLOWGlasgow Daily Times Merchant Marine ships are never armed, and unfortunately, pirates know this. What they don’t know is which ships are American and which ones are not. Ships never fly their flags when they are steaming through an ocean.
Without any weapons on board, Merchant Marine crews don’t have much at their disposal for defense. What they do have is a well-trained crew in self-defense, large fire hoses and the LRAD or long-range acoustic device, which admits a high frequency sound. “It’s an awful noise,” Ben said. The LRAD is used to drive pirates away. He pointed out that most Merchant Marine ships are quite large and move rather slowly. Ben’s ship was 650 feet in length and traveled at approximately 19 knots or 21 mph. “First of all, you’re not going to outrun them,” he said. “These guys were in, I would say, 16 feet to 18 feet speed boats. Your hope is that you can kind of just keep going (before they catch up with you).” Until the Maersk Alabama incident, pirates haven’t really been all that threatening. “They are forceful. They carry AK-47s. They are not exactly saying, ‘Can we come on board and say hi?’ But at the same time, they haven’t really been executing hostages,“ Ben said. The pirates rob ships and sometimes take hostages who they hold for ransom. “If you are steaming through the Gulf of Aden, you’ll see these huge groups of these little fishing boats. What these pirates do, they … hang out in the middle of these crowds, so when they see a ship coming along that’s when they break out. It’s sort of their camouflage,” he said. That’s why it is so hard for the Navy to locate them. “They all look like fishermen,” he said. “And every boat has to be considered a fishing vessel until weapons are found on board.” The Navy is not allowed to chase the pirates once they make landfall. “They are not allowed to chase the pirates into the country because they are bringing in so much revenue and paying off so many people,” Ben said. “They (the pirates) just go to shore and jump off their boats and they blend in like any other citizen.” 
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