It is about an America’s Cup sailor who was killed by pirates on the Amazon.
I never knew there were pirates that operated on rivers. Does anyone know if piracy is still common in the Amazon region? I always assumed that most of today’s pirates operated in the Pacific.
And what are today’s pirates in the business of plundering and looting. I presume that drug trafficking would be their primary business.
I didn’t know that there was piracy in the Amazon either. Most modern day pirates seem to ply their trade near Asia in the Pacific or Indian oceans. This site lists reports of piracy weekly.
Well, all a pirate is is a thief with a boat, so anytime you have people with boats, you’re going to have other people with boats who want to steal from them.
I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that with the rise in numbers of First World people cruising up and down the Amazon, there’s been a corresponding rise in numbers of Third World people cruising up and down the Amazon preying on them.
Thanks for the link.
The map for South America has indicated a few attacks along the coast of South America.
It’s not surprising to see I guess. Sad that the person who was killed was there for the purpose of raising awareness of the Amazon region and not for commercial exploitation presumably.
I suppose a pissed off pirate who doesn’t end up with much money from his troubles is no different than a pissed off mugger who doesn’t get much money.
An interesting thing I’ve heard is that fending off pirates is one situation where fully automatic carbines or submachine guns - or even machine pistols - are an advantage. In normal land combat a full auto is not much of an advantage and can even be a liability if it tends to cause an inexperienced person to waste ammo.
In shipboard combat, however, you are shooting on (or between two) moving platforms which makes careful aiming harder. You can carry plenty of loaded mags on your boat so that is not as much of an issue as if you had to carry all your ammo on your person.
~~Just a minor point but in my navy days we were told that
anyone who prevented a US sailor from doing his/her duty was
a “pirate”. I’ll leave it to some other squid to give their
recollection… I have no link or anything…
A friend of mine was diving off the northern coast of Honduras, and just before the end of the trip, a boat was approaching them at full speed at night. He’s a little vague on the details, but his boat tried to evade them for some time, and they kept coming.
Eventually the captain said “Get out the stuff,” and he and his mates handed everyone an AK-47 with a couple magazines. Everyone, passengers and crew, opened up on the other boat on full auto for a while, which convinced the pirates to give up after a few minutes.
The federales apparently found out about it the next day, and weren’t too pleased until the appropriate palms were greased.
My friend does tend to tell a few tall tales, though, so I don’t know how much is truth and how much is fiction.
By the way the whole of New Zealand is in mourning for Sir Peter Blake, one of the countries favourite sons. TV programs have been cancelled to reshow documenteries on this guy. A full half of the TV news was devoted to this guy who was one of the best ocean racers in the world before he lead the sucessfull challenge in 1995 and defence in 2000 for the America’s Cup.
Remember Bob Medd getting his throat slit by Mexican pirates a few months ago? That story (and the Mexican’s government’s denial of it to possibly keep tourism up) is still posted all over the internet.