Q-Ships: The Only Alternative in the Indian Ocean.

Although in wartime merchant vessels are often armed with modest defenses its obvious that such guns and gun-crews are hardly a major deterrent to attack. Q-ship was the term used to designate a heavily armed merchant vessel that was acting as a decoy. As enemy craft approached the Q-ship and its crew would act as a merchant vessel until the enemy was close enough and then the deck cargo and cabin walls would drop and experienced gun crews would engage the enemy at point-blank range.

With some of these pirate attacks being conducted by skiffs filled with 20 armed men, its clear a yacht has no real chance of defense. Add the fact that several attacks utilize two or three skiffs approaching from different directions and even if each skiff has only two or three armed men aboard it is still an indefensible situation for the average yacht owner who has too few weapons aboard and too few crewmen to operate them. When one considers the nature of the weaponry involved, the range, accuracy and the nature of the shooting platform, its obvious that yachts really are virtually defenseless.

The only thing that will work in the Indian Ocean is a series of decoy yachts each equipped with sufficient weaponry and sufficient personnel to immediately deal with the approaching skiffs and their crew in a permanently effective manner. Nothing else is going to end this situation. The politicians lack courage to do ought but bluster and rattle sabers, the military lack resources and are committed to more valuable protective duty. The direct and immediately effective action can only be taken by a well-armed, but also well disguised, yacht.

It is obvious that direct and immediately effective action against the pirate skiffs and their associated mother ships would be the nautical equivalent of targeting drug mule peasants employed by major narcotic traffickers. It is well known that the Somali pirates are not themselves entrepreneurs but are merely employees of a variety of land-based businessmen. Eventually there would certainly be escalation by the warlords who see their income diminishing. Bring it on!

Piracy: A tradition of the Sea

Piracy is a tradition of the sea with many cultures considering that harvesting the bounty of the surface of the ocean to be no different than harvesting the bounty of its depths.

The FoolsGold posting on a yachting blog about a nation's viewpoints on piracy was deleted by the blogging yachties who didn't care to be reminded of the truth at this particular time.

The post was nothing more than a description of a nation wherein people in its very agrarian southeast sector openly supported piracy with even the wives of wealthy landowners routinely attending open-air auctions of pirate booty. Also discussed in the posting was the more industrialized northeast sector of the country wherein major merchant firms in three separate cities make a fortune selling weapons and various naval stores to pirate vessels in the Indian Ocean. On the outskirts of that country's northeast sector there is a common practice of showing false lights on moonless nights so that sailing vessels will think it to be a lightship and will turn onto a rocky shore. The blog post mentioned that locals who harvested the cargo obviously had no particular interest in the continued safety of any sailors who happened to make it to shore alive.

This blog post that was deleted by the yachties happened to end with the tag line that the nation being described was quite obviously the United States during the 19th century.

How often we forget our history. England likes to take great pride in its seafaring tradition. Well, let us not forget that the English Crown took all property if there were "but one man or beast" aboard a shipwrecked vessel. It was therefore quite common for residents in the area to make certain that shipwrecked sailors did not survive, lest the cargo be taken by Crown revenue agents rather than local merchants.

Traditions of the sea? Or simply a very convenient lapse of memory on our part?