How It’s Done
An Italian cruise ship conducts a demonstration in Anti-Piracy Operations 101. BBC:
Capt Pinto told the BBC that the pirates had tried to hijack his ship late on Saturday, about 290km (180 miles) north of Victoria in the Seychelles.
“One white small boat with six people on board approached the port [left] side of the ship and started shooting.”
The captain said the pirates fired some 200 shots at the vessel.
He said “our security started shooting in the air… and also we started spraying some water” to beat off the attackers.
Capt Pinto said the pirates were forced to give up after about five minutes of shooting and a high-speed chase.
Samantha Hendey from Durban, South Africa, told the BBC that her sister Tabitha Nicholson was on board the ship during the attack and the situation was “pretty dramatic”.
“She said that there were lots of passengers on deck watching it unfold and they even took action themselves by throwing chairs overboard, trying to hit the pirates,” Samantha said.
“She said there were lots of bullet holes in the ship but that they were not serious enough to force it to return to port.”
Toss your Italian surrender jokes overboard. Awaiting vid of the chair-throwers. There’s gotta be some. Surber notes the delightfully named MSC Melody’s security team was Israeli. Always a good choice.
Topics: italy, law & order
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:07 am on Monday, April 27, 2009
3 Responses to “How It’s Done”
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April 27th, 2009 at 10:22 am
I still maintain, as I did at Blair’s, that “firing shots into the air” is just an inexcusable waste of good ammo, when there are pirates to be shot. At least the passengers were trying to hit them.
April 27th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
[...] What Do You Know…Fighting Back Works! April 27, 2009 Posted by taoist in The Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Tags: Cruise Ships, Italy, Pirates, Security, Self Defense trackback An Italian cruise ship was attacked by pirates, but since the crew had guns of their own and shot back, the pirates gave up. [...]
April 30th, 2009 at 1:32 am
I agree with RebeccaH that firing shots into the air is a waste of good ammo, but they may have been doing it standing back from the edge so the pirates
a) couldn’t hit the security people and
b) couldn’t see how few security people there were.