I really doubt any country would allow guns on board in port however a show I watched on New Zealand Customs had the ship report directly to Customs who immediately impounded the weapons for storage until the ship left. They didn’t seem at all concerned with a private boat having a machinegun although they completely searched the boat until he found some missing ammo, there is obviously some tracking of what’s out there on the high seas.
Paint the ship with luminous paint, get some medical school skeletons, dress them like pirates—also with luminous paint—and set them up “manning the rails,” and only sail at night.
Hey, it worked on Scooby Doo, didn’t it? (Or was it Jonny Quest…or the Hardy Boys?)
That, or scatter the deck with fake corpses, doused liberally with fly bait, and crudely spraypaint plague quarantine—keep away! on the hull. Adjusting the ballast to sail with a slight list is optional, as is substituting mutilated dead pigs in sailor suits for fake corpses, if you’re on a budget.
You just sail 4 decoy Cargo ships 200 miles out and around the somali coast bristling with long distance surveillance, weapons, and aremed fast response boats with an escort dirigible with guns and missiles. The ship is it’s home base. A consortium of private shipping companies could easily finance a response.
What about having a relatively small escort ship that will stay out of territorial waters once the cargo ship goes to port? It could hold all of the weaponry until the cargo ship sails out and meets it again. Forget machine guns, the cargo ship could be packing bazookas this way.
Or am I missing some fine point of maritime law?
I think what you’re missing is that most piracy seems to take place in territorial waters. It’s just that the territories involved can’t or won’t do anything to stop it.
I kind of doubt that, as far as international cargo shipping vessels are concerned. And if the territories involved “can’t or won’t” do anything about piracy, surely they couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything about the countermeasures I suggest?
Sure they would. For years, when the Malacca Strait was a piracy hot spot, the Indonesian government refused any offers of outside aid to deal with it. Even this story from 2004 has the official gov’t spokesman downplaying the problem. While my linked story says that Indonesia may be willing to accept first world military aid in the future, they were refusing it at the time.
The two top reasons for a government (or its spokesperson) to react this way that I can imagine are:
National pride: accepting international help in policing its own waters is tantamount to admitting that a nation cannot adequately police its territory, itself. A rather huge insult. How would you react, if you were told that France wanted permission to run a separate police force in your neighborhood, after all?
Greed: a lot of the pirates will be operating with either the active, or passive, blessings of the powers-that-be. Bribery is often a way of life for government officials in many countries. Protecting the bribery money would lead the government officials to using any and all arguments to prevent effective policing of the nation’s waters.
Some of the worst piracy occurs off the coast of Somalia. Technically still terratorial waters but they don’t really have a government or navy to enforce those waters.
Clearly most of the suggestions for Phalanx CIWS guns and Bushmaster chain guns are ridiculous. They are clearly overkill, illegal and too expensive for most merchant ships.
How do pirates get aboard large container ships anyway? They move relatively fast and the deck is like 50+ feet above the water line.
Czech Scorpion Submachine pistols in .32 for onboard.
And M79 Grenadle Launchers (aka Bloop Guns or Wombat Guns) for light anti-ship. Explosive, illumination, & remember to carry the shotgun rounds so it can be used onboard.
Explosive for light antiship, illuminators for nighttime.
Arm 4 men & one sergeant.
Virtually all this stuff is going to be useless for civilian ships. You just can’t open fire on an approaching boat because you suspect it’s a pirate ship. Which means you have to have enough men armed with small arms to control them once they come aboard, and a brig to hold them in until you can give them to some civil or naval authority.
OR
The major shippers should do a deal with one or more navies, and have their cargoships declared naval vessels. That overcomes lots of legal obstacles, and maybe some financial ones too. A navy could provide a deck gun and a crew for it. Or a squad of marines, which might actually be more effective. If you want to draw the pirates in, mounted cannon and machine guns aren’t the way – but having a dozen armed marines to meet them as they board should preclude most shooting.
Funny story;
Back in 1983, in my misspent youth, I was traveling through SE Asia with a Chinese girl from Singapore. We were in our twenties and had no real higher purpose than seeing the world. We were having a grand old time. Well we were nearing the end of our 6 month holiday and decided to take ourselves off to an uninhabited island off the coast of Malaysia.
There were only two or three huts on the island, you had to bring and cook all your own food and arrange a fishing boat to drop you and come back and get you. Once in the bay, you had to jump into the water and carry your goods, over your head style as there wasn’t even a pier. It was very Robinson Crusoe, and we were loving it. There were two other British girls there when we arrived. After about 3 days, and out of seemingly nowhere a motorboat shows up with two guys in it. They tell us they are Captain and first mate of a ship that is currently on the other side of the island, a Malay Navy vessel.
They are pretty happy because they have found 4 foreign young women to hang with and we were happy as they had access to equipment that meant we could go spear fishing and the like. So we spend a few days with them hanging about, we’re all having lots of fun. They spear fish up a ray and cook it up on the beach for us, also a flying fox. Both kind of tasted like chicken really, but I digress.
Now they are never in uniform and we never see any other sailors or anything, just these two in their motorboat. Still, they were nothing but sweet and kind to us, we enjoyed their company and they ours. It didn’t hurt that my friend spoke fluent Malay.
Finally the day comes when we have to think about getting back to the mainland, having just enough funds, at this point to take the bus back to Singapore. At which point they say, “Don’t take the bus, come with us we’re headed down the coast as far as Pulau Tioman, we can drop you there.” This is a great plan for us, we’ll save enough money to spend a few days on that island so we say, “Sure”. 
Next morning, 6 am sharp, as directed, we’re at the beach, and here comes the powerboat, apparently the bay isn’t deep enough for their big ship. Once out of the bay I am astounded at the size of the big steel ship that is waiting for us there. It had 90 some sailors on board and for the first time we see the two of them in their uniforms.
So now they have 4 girls on board their boat, which, I’m pretty sure isn’t standard procedure. I have no familiarity with things naval or boaty so I am way out of my element. For one thing, I keep calling it a boat. :smack: It’s not, it’s a ship (as it was explained to me, ships have life ‘boats’ on board, boats have lifevests). We have free run of this ship and are, as you might imagine, warmly welcomed by the crew, being special guests of the Captain and First mate. They are anxious to show us all around, and there was a lot to see. (Had a lovely luncheon of fresh crab, liberated from the closest fishing boat, in the Officers mess, played cards and napped.)
I was astounded to see huge mounted guns, not unlike the ones that have been linked to in design, only smaller on each side of the ship. They turned 360 degrees and had these cool rails to step up on, and very powerful sights. Equally cool was the, (I’ve forgotten the word now), steering room, tons of radars and night vision stuff, all of it the latest and coolest stuff. It was very interesting. When I asked what the big guns were for and was told “Pirates”, I almost laughed out loud. Alone with my friend, I questioned that there were really any pirates. She assured me that this part of the world did, indeed, have pirates and not that ‘Ho Ho Ho and bottle of rum type’ either. I was still skeptical.
Later, when we were back in Singapore, sure enough, all over the news, brazen pirates had come up on the beach and robbed people who were camping out at an east coast park site. :eek:
When I returned home and tried to tell my friends, in the west about it, they howled with laughter and flat out refused to believe there were pirates. :dubious:
And creates about a zillion others. Trading vessels are able to trade freely from country to country precisely because they are not naval vessels, they are just carrying stuff. You would need careful diplomatic liason with every country you visited. The cost and delay would drive you out of business.
And then the master just gets dressed and packs his toothbrush and pyjamas, and waits for the cops to knock on his cabin door and drag him away to some 3rd world cockroach infested hell hole in which to languish for the next few years without legal representation before even getting a trial, because his ship shot up a local fisherman, right?
The best way to arm yourself is with a chart, some coffee, a fire hose and the key to the safe. You use the chart to avoid the two or three tiny areas of the world where piracy is a real threat. You use the coffee to ensure the officers of the watch and their lookouts stay awake. You use the fire hose to keep any pirates at bay if you see them and they aren’t heavily armed. You use the key to the safe to open it and give the pirates the money so that they go away if they get on board.
…find a Jedi.
New Zealand’s gun laws are surprisingly liberal; the process for importing a gun into the country involves the following steps:
- Bring gun with you
- Tell police officer at airport/harbour you have a gun with you
- Fill in form and pay $25 administration fee, receive Visitor’s Firearms Licence
- Enjoy your stay in New Zealand; please don’t wave your gun around in public, leave it unattended, or do anything silly with it.
Australia is somewhat more problematic; there are many, many forms to fill in/permits to obtain, and then Customs will want a word with you. Shotguns and bolt-action rifles on a boat aren’t likely to be permanently seized, but you’ll probably have to leave them in the custody of the local police while in port.*
*Not legal advice, I’m not a lawyer etc, check with the appropriate local authorities before importing firearms into a country, etc.
Thorium Rum