Well apparently saturday there was an unsuccessful attempt to board the Seaborne Spirit by pirates off the coast of Somalia. One crewmember injured, all passengers safe, minor damage to ship from RPG and machine gun fire.
Just thought it interesting since we were didcussing piracy and cruise ships a few months back here
Glad to see that even the smaller cruise ships are able to fend for themselves out there.
I thought it was cool that the Captain tried to run over one of the pirate ships.
Do cruise ships have any kind of arms on board? I would think a ship of this size would at least have a rifle or two in a locker somewhere. Seems like pirates in little speedboats would be easy to pick off from the height of a cruise ship deck.
What was a cruise ship doing off the coast of Somalia? Did Carnival already have the Ethiopian route tied up?
The weird thing is that that’s actually a damned good question. These are the most dangerous waters in the world for pirates. Just last month there was an incident where Somali pirates were holding a freighter hostage.
WTF were they doing in those waters?
Well that link just had stuff about the marble bathrooms. Here’s a link to the article. It’s not clear why they were in those waters, although it did say they were headed to the Seychelles. The article mentioned the increase in piracy around Somalia. It also mentioned the marble bathrooms, BTW. I didn’t need the Robin Leach part there.
They were headed from Alexandria to Mombasa. Somalia’s kind of hard to totally avoid, and they were more than seventy miles from shore.
Unlikely. The IMO really frowns on having guns aboard ships, but ultimately that decision belongs to the flag administration of the ship. As ships travel from country to country, you can see where this may be problematic. I’ve heard of only two countries that arm their civilian ships - the Russians and Israelis.
Oddly, I just read somewhere that this particular ship is US flagged. The US doesn’t flag many cruise ships; I thought there were only 2.
What, it’s weird that I could ask a good question?
Okay, I know it’s true. I’ve made peace with it.
Did I read correctly: they used SOUND to thwart their attackers? If so, cool.
Can’t you just see it?
Captain Stubing: We’re under attack!
Bartender Isaac: C’mon, Gopher-let’s go kick some ass! 
Normally the main arnament against pirates now a days , is the ships fire hose. What was interesting is that these speed boats should never have made it out that far ,and they suggest that there is a mothership nearby.
So its either a very sophisitcated pirate operation , or thats a commerce raider.
Declan