Not everybody seem to agree, per your cite.
And this is neither useful nor relevant in any shape or form to the present circumstances.
The people who disagree are being selfish and short-sighted, putting everyone at risk to save single individuals. Since the law banning payments to kidnappers was passed, the number of kidnappings fell by 5/6ths. You know why? Because the people paying the ransoms were the people making kidnappings worthwhile.
It’s perfectly relevant: Just like paying ransoms funds kidnappers and provides an incentive to continue kidnapping people, paying ransoms here funds pirates and provides an incentive to continue capturing ships.
Nope. Not even distantly similar. In Italy the kidnapping and the paying of the ransom happen under the jurisdiction of the Italian state. In this case who is going to enact and implement this law? The Somalian government? Good luck with that because they hardly control a few city blocks.
Who else has jurisdiction? An American law can only apply to American vessels or American citizens. How are you going to control vessels under other flags, owned by companies around the world, chartered by other companies in other countries, carrying cargoes form other countries, insured by companies aof other countries and with crews from other countries? Who has jurisdiction to forbid all those people from dealing with the kidnappers? Who has the capability to enforce it?
Sorry, I said “ship,” meaning the boat they’re on. I haven’t had time to follow the story to see what kind of vessel they’re on. But my question is the same: if they refuse to release him, sink it. If it’s a lifeboat, it should just a matter of having a frogman punch a hole in the bottom of the thing. You pull the captain out of the drink, and leave the pirates to swim.
I guarantee you recover the captain’s dead body.
Yeah, I don’t know about that. Surely the pirates would notice and shoot the captain.
My capsizing idea may work, but even then it’s a huge gamble with the captain’s life.
To add to that idea, I wonder if the Somali pirates understand morse code? The captain most certainly would. The US ships could communicate messages to the captain with their louvred light thingie and let him know what was going to happen, although the pirates might be able to read it too.
You may be right, but I’m not sure. If the world’s industrialized nations got together and made it illegal (backed up with stiff fines or even jail time) to negotiate with or pay off pirates like these, it might work.
Americans resort to violence to solve problems more often than other nations? Ok and…? Last time I checked the crew of the Alabama resisted the pirates and RETOOK control of the ship, and threw 3 pirates OVERBOARD. It is because of this resistance there is one hostage and not 20. Didn’t the French just recently storm a yacht getting a hostage killed in the process?
Both, of course.
Many a king or city-state had no issues housing pirates within their harbours, as long as said pirates only plundered the right ships - i.e., those belonging to other kings or city-states - and paid a percentage. The history of the Baltic Sea, for instance, is pretty much a list of what king hired which pirates to mess with what other king’s shipping.
Some of the pirates/privateers were basically freelancers, moving from port to port depending on who’d have them or who paid better.
The Danish crew on HDMS Absalon caught 10 pirates before realizing what a legal mess it turned out to be.
Danish and EU law specifically prohibits handing detainees to jurisdiction where they’re likely to receive the death penalty, which is pretty much any local authority. The other option was a trial in Copenhagen - expensive, and probably making it necessary to house the pirates for life, first as inmates, then as refugees who could make a good case that it’d be very dangerous and thus inhumane to send them back to Somalia. (To say nothing of the necessity of taking sailors and officers off the mission to act as witnesses.) In the end, they sank the pirate boat and let the pirates themselves go. Morale on the ship was not high after that.
Couldn’t they have sunk the ship with the pirates on it? 
The latest I’ve heard is that the lifeboat is now 20 miles off the African coast. ISTM that unless the Navy takes action soon, the pirates and their hostage will be ‘feet dry’.
If they sank the boat, how did they let them go? Ashore? Lifejackets? I think I recall reading in that story about the French yacht that it was close to shore, so maybe that’s it. So the pirates have no shortage of available boats and live to pirate another day, wonderful.
Anyway, that sucks. How would it be inhumane to send them to Somalia? There isn’t even a functioning government there, which is why the pirates are so successful in the first place!
What a convoluted mess.
Maybe the Navy can send out light boats with an armed crew to block them from getting to land. Where did you hear that they were that close to shore already?
I recall reading that the lifeboat had the capability to be motorized and had 10 days worth of food and water…
Shit, if they attain land ahoy then that captain’s life became very expensive for the company he’s employed for, as they’ll just ransom him instead of the failed attempt to capture the Maersk Alabama, while the US Naval ships impotently follow the boat to shore.
Damn.
I may have heard it on CNN earlier in the day. Or not. But here’s a cite from ABC:
I’m not sure what can be done to rescue the captain while the boat remains in the sea, and the chances of him being freed if the boat is allowed to put into shore without a ransom seem remarkably small.
You may not have read the whole thread, but just in case: they violated company procedures, and while I am not going to speculate on what possible outcomes it would have had they not done so, it seems that the situation is a little more complicated now.
Reading between the lines the company does not seem to be entirely happy about their action either. I know for a fact that in this company procedure is law and religion, it’s a miracle they don’t have procedures on how to fart and burp.
(I didn’t read the entire thread, having come in late.)
Hm… A cunning crew could make some extra cash by ‘following procedure’. I could see a cozy arrangement with the pirates.
Why you have a sick mentality!
I had the same idea too. 
A Coen Bros type of situation.
Do you know how many holes you would have to put in a life boat to sink it? They have floatation devices built into them. A life boat full of water should still stay afloat. Another end result of the Titanic.
Good luck with getting everybody to agree on anything. And then enforcing it. Because I can’t see how you could effectively control it.