# No US flagged ship captured by pirates in 200 years?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-us-flagged-ship-captured-by-pirates-in-200-years/492483>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 9, 2009, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-us-flagged-ship-captured-by-pirates-in-200-years/492483 "2009-04-09T06:18:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![anson2995](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c77e96/32.png) [@anson2995](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anson2995)\
**Post date:** [April 10, 2009, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-us-flagged-ship-captured-by-pirates-in-200-years/492483/21 "2009-04-10T19:09:02Z")

</div>

> [@sailor](#):
>
> I find it extremely difficult to believe that in the last one hundred years no American flagged small ship has not been taken by pirates in any part of the world. That would be unusual. But if you start putting enough conditions like “over a certain size” then you can get any result you want.
> 
> This is one of those cases, like the “no wars between democracies”, where all you have to do is define the words to get the result you wanted in the first place.
> 
> Not to mention that in any case the result is of little or no consequence and not any landmark turning point as someone would have you believe.

You are absolutely right. But I also want to point out, again, that the word “captured” is also a bugaboo. If pirates board a ship, subdue the crew by force, rob them (or the cargo), and then leave the ship with their booty… does that constitute a capture? What if pirates attempt to seize a ship and are eventually repelled by force? Because both of those things have occurred to US ships in the region within the past year. What if it’s a luxury yacht that pirates board, and they either kill or dispel the passengers? That’s happened, too.

[QUOTE=suranyi]  
It came from the Associated Press, so blame them, not Beck.

[/QUOTE]  
I blame Beck for misquoting the story to spin it into one of his rants. Folks like him (on the left and the right) generate half-truths such a prodigious rate that it’s hard to keep up.

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-us-flagged-ship-captured-by-pirates-in-200-years/492483.md?page=1)