Captain Phillips: new Tom Hanks movie about Somali pirates and commercial shipping

Mariner69 said:
I was amazed to be told at one meeting that the reduction in attacks in July was attributable to the new interdiction force. They were not best pleased when it was pointed out to them that the south west monsoon was far more effective at curbing small boat operations than any number of warships.
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There has been a monsoon season twice a year, every year. To claim that the monsoon season has more of an effect on pirates now than in 2009 would take us into MMGW territory.

The drastic decline of piracy off Somalia is due to 2 factors:
1. The large majority of vessels now passing through the area now carry private armed security teams.
2. The change of the rules of engagement for some military task forces which allowed them to go after pirate installations ashore. Pirates never really had money set aside for a rainy day. Once their craft ashore were destroyed, and there were no more easy pickings to be had they could not afford to replace them.

Mariner69 said:
A Greek ship owning friend of mine had one of his vessels taken hostage and it cost him shed loads to have it released.
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Didn't he have insurance? :rolleyes:

Some, more cynical, ship owners even made money out of whole thing by making the negotiations drag on longer the necessary..
The owners of the oil tanker SMYRNI come to mind.
Fully laden oil tanker held for nearly 7 months and released after the payment of a 12 million USD ransom.
In that time the value of crude had gone up significantly making him a tidy profit even after deduction of the ransom.
 
I've just seen the movie, and pretty good it is, I thought. Hanks on his usual solid, believable form. Interesting to have a bit of a backdrop on the pirates too.

I thought the crew of the container ship, however competent, were shown to be sadly out of their depth in an undefended vessel in dangerous waters.

My impression overall was that if there was a locked gun-safe on the bridge of cargo vessels, it might very well never need to be opened...but had there been any firepower on board the Maersk Alabama when it was needed, the pirates would likely have been deterred from boarding, hijacking and kidnapping, without needing the US Navy as back-up.

I was surprised that such enormous technical omnipotence (three warships with helicopters, RIBs, etc) when it arrived to surround the Alabama's lifeboat, weren't able to use infra-red to tidy away the pirates pretty swiftly. Doesn't infrared pass though GRP?
 
dancrane said:
I've just seen the movie, and pretty good it is, I thought. Hanks on his usual solid, believable form. Interesting to have a bit of a backdrop on the pirates too.

I thought the crew of the container ship, however competent, were shown to be sadly out of their depth in an undefended vessel in dangerous waters.

My impression overall was that if there was a locked gun-safe on the bridge of cargo vessels, it might very well never need to be opened...but had there been any firepower on board the Maersk Alabama when it was needed, the pirates would likely have been deterred from boarding, hijacking and kidnapping, without needing the US Navy as back-up.

I was surprised that such enormous technical omnipotence (three warships with helicopters, RIBs, etc) when it arrived to surround the Alabama's lifeboat, weren't able to use infra-red to tidy away the pirates pretty swiftly. Doesn't infrared pass though GRP?
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Of course they were out of their depth, its not something that happens on a frequent basis.
As for guns onboard, most shipping companies are against having either guns and/or security forces onboard, AP Moller being one of those companies.
Number of reasons for this, arms and ammunition onboard leads to all sorts of complications when clearing into ports, in many cases, will lead to refusal to enter, or having the ship detained once in port.
Ship's crews are not trained to use guns etc
Pirates are going to be really p#ssed at the crew once they board and having been fired at
In the past, armed security guards have killed innocent fishermen (only just recently)

FYI, there is an armed so called escort vessel operated by a private security company, under arrest in India

Back to the movie, does it shed any light on all the extra bullet holes found in the 3 pirates on the lifeboat (believe photographic evidence shows a minimum of 19, and any idea where the $30,000 went, which was handed over to the pirates by the Alabama Captain?
 
Well I enjoyed it. Yes it does get the Hollywood treatment but it is a big name film in the cinema so no surprises there. Quite true to the book from the ship point of view with a few bits left out that don't really impact on the story. Nothing about the home/family point of view though, which does feature in the book. Builds up the tension nicely and keeps up a good pace. Tom Hanks at his best.
 
Ship in the movie is a sister ship of Alabama, lent by Maersk complete with crew and containers. The story is 10 years ago, so those ships are now obsolete and straight off to scrap after filming. New Mearsk ships are 20% cheaper to operate aparently, and 50% bigger.

I was in Valletta Malta spring before last, having overwintered in Gozo, when they were filming all the Maersk stuff there. 5 weeks filming ended up as fifteen minutes in the movie.

Saw the movie in a preview last week, its a good Hanks vehicle and a good action movie if you like those, but it doesn't explore the story behind the pirates at all. At the end its just all a gung ho advert for mililitary America. ie. how to spend millions killing a couple of out of work fishermen, when obviously the money would be better spent on development aid for Somalia
 
I can appreciate that armament per se creates legal problems with local laws in ports, but I don't see that that has to leave ships' crews so utterly on the defensive when dealing with heavily-armed, determined pirates.

What's the cost of those crowd-dispersing, truck-mounted directable water-cannon, used on rioters? The ship in the film had impressive water-pumping ability, but its indiscriminate output didn't deter the pirates at all.

The ship's captain had a good try at aiming distress flares at the pirates' skiff...perhaps apparatus like a scaffolding pipe could be improvised to aim such pyrotechnics with better effect? I doubt any laws anywhere forbid a merchant ship from carrying more flares/rockets than a mandatory minimum.

I'd be sorry to think it might become normal to arm cargo boats generally, but there's doesn't appear to be very much that's normal, about going round the horn of Africa these days.
 
dancrane said:
I'd be sorry to think it might become normal to arm cargo boats generally
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This is the norm already.
The VAST MAJORITY of ships in the area now have an armed security team on board.
These people are NOT part of the crew, nor do they stay with the ship for te entire voyage, but they are only embarked for the transit of the high danger area.
Nearly all of these 'armed security types' are former military. The largest contingent are from either Russia or Ukraine.
NO weapons are kept on board when the ship is in port.
 
OR4751 said:
This is the norm already.
The VAST MAJORITY of ships in the area now have an armed security team on board.
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But not Maersk, this from my own experience with them, and as stated on their website
Continuously updated measures
To mitigate the risk of piracy attacks on our ships, we continuously update our comprehensive set of security instructions for ships that transit the Gulf of Aden or the Somali Basin. Based on the very latest best practices and often updated more frequently than once a month, these instructions include detailed reporting procedures as well as precautions to be taken on board the ship when transiting these areas. We maintain our policy of not arming crews or allowing armed guards onboard our ships. However, in certain instances when force protection is government mandated, we will work with and comply with government instructions. Occasionally, we still reroute certain ships away from the Gulf of Aden. Ships that have a low freeboard and/or low speed are required to sail around the Cape of Good Hope if they cannot be part of a naval convoy system.
 
Without wishing to spoil the debate that is developing, there is a detailed and very positive review of the film in today's Observer.
Going on Wednesday evening.
 
dancrane said:
Anybody heard anything about this?

It looks like a big-budget movie on the subject mentioned here a good deal - a massive container ship (Maersk Alabama?) being attacked by pirates off the coast of east Africa.

I haven't been to the cinema yet this year, but if there are any positive reviews of this, I'd like to see it. :)
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It opened the BFI festival this year. Quite good, but I preferred the Danish film A Hijacking.
 
dancrane said:
I can appreciate that armament per se creates legal problems with local laws in ports, but I don't see that that has to leave ships' crews so utterly on the defensive when dealing with heavily-armed, determined pirates.

What's the cost of those crowd-dispersing, truck-mounted directable water-cannon, used on rioters? The ship in the film had impressive water-pumping ability, but its indiscriminate output didn't deter the pirates at all.

The ship's captain had a good try at aiming distress flares at the pirates' skiff...perhaps apparatus like a scaffolding pipe could be improvised to aim such pyrotechnics with better effect? I doubt any laws anywhere forbid a merchant ship from carrying more flares/rockets than a mandatory minimum.

I'd be sorry to think it might become normal to arm cargo boats generally, but there's doesn't appear to be very much that's normal, about going round the horn of Africa these days.
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This device apparently works

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...illion-plastic-rail-STOPS-pirates-tracks.html
 
That certainly does look like a cleverly simple answer, not very costly either. But I wonder how long the plastic would stand up to Kalashnikov fire?
 
We saw this on Saturday, gripping throughout. Tom's your man in a crisis be it in space (Apollo 13), or desert island (Castaway), WW11 (Shaving Ryan's privates) or now Container ship captain.
 
dancrane said:
That certainly does look like a cleverly simple answer, not very costly either. But I wonder how long the plastic would stand up to Kalashnikov fire?
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Reasonably long time, I reckon. Spraying it with bullets is going to punch a lot of holes, but actually removing big chunks of material to make a gap you can climb through is going to take a hell of a lot of rounds. When I used to shoot at school, the teacher had an ongoing competition in which you could pay £1 into a special tin and were given a special target with a red dot in the centre. The dot was the size of a bullet, and you had either five or ten (can't remember) shots at it - if Mr Baker could not find any red paper remaining after your shoot, then you won the contents of the tin.

I don't remember anybody ever winning.

Pete
 
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