When you see massive transit ships they must have a huge amount of investment in security and they’re mostly steel, they’re so tall and big, must have quite a few crew on board, and surely have lockable containers inside, and the pirate ships are motor boats with a handful of individuals, how does that little boat with a few people take over such a large steel container with so much money behind it?
EDIT: such interesting replies! My question is now, eli5: with everything you all have said, why aren’t there more pirate ships?
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short answer: Guns.
Slightly longer answer: those huge ships still have fairly small crews (like maybe a 20-30), and rely heavily on automation. Everything is controlled from the bridge.
Thus, if you can get aboard via grapples and such, you storm the bridge and Volia! you control the ship. From there, its just a matter of coercion to get the crew to surrender (I dont know about you, but *I* wouldn’t risk death for a bunch of cargo someone else owns, given the high likely hood of survival and eventual ransom). They then steer (or rather, force the crew to steer) the ship into a friendly port where you can hold it for ransom and/or looting. Given the high payoff of a successful raid, it doesn’t take many to turn a profit, or at least keep people trying (kinda like winning the lottery. not many win, but lots play hoping to score big).
Theirs been a few ships with private security onboard, but that stuff is expensive, and its not that common. even at the height of the piracy off somalia, the amount of trade that passed without problems was sufficient that it was a hard sell to the shipping companies, who’d rather pressure the governments into trying to sort the issues allowing piracy to exist.
The recent Houthi efforts have been different, mind, as they have been using stuff like a full on call of duty style helicopter assault to board one ship, and most of their attacks have been drone and missile strikes intended to damage or sink ships, not to take control.
Cargo ships have tiny crews for their size
It takes only a very small number of pirates in boats to outnumber the crews of huge civilian ships.
The Ever Given, the largest container ship in the world that became briefly famous a while back when it blocked the Suez Canal, only has a crew of 25 people.
The USS Gerald R. Ford, an US aircraft carrier which will be smaller than such a cargo ship will have almost 5000 people on it and it is more automated and requires fewer crews than older carriers.
Cargo ships are run to be as cheap as humanly possible with as few people on board as possible. They generally don’t contain armed personal to repel boarders. Just a bunch of people half of whom are asleep at any given moment, because they work in shifts trying to run enormous vessels.
Basically, it’s illegal in most countries for those boats to have any sort of guns when they dock in ports.( To prevent illegal gun sales, or false flag type operations.) So practically they have to be unarmed in order to go anywhere.
And there aren’t that many people needed to run a cargo ship. On one of the huge ones, they might have up to 25~30 people on board, basically doing maintenance stuff. While some might have military experience, it’s likely going to be in the Navy, which doesn’t really teach hand to hand to hand type stuff outside of special forces.
Usually, navies perform piracy protection when it does happen. Which is why Somali pirates aren’t really much of a thing anymore, and why the Houthis are being bombed at the moment.
Basically, think of it as driving around in a nice car where the cops drive a tank through a carjackers house, and bomb the neighborhood just to be sure.
Occasionally, some idiots will try it, but having the 7th fleet knocking on your door is the ultimate example of FAFO.
A destroyer has somewhere between 100 and 150 people whose job is to fight by using the ship’s technological systems. It is not a good target. Pirates try to avoid these.
A bulk carrier, which can very often be larger than a destroyer, probably has only 20 guys or so, 30 at most. Its entire job is to get from one port to another with the cargo safe. It doesn’t need to have a lot of people operating the best sensors and communications systems that its owner can afford to keep track of everything going on around them. It just needs the stuff to know where it is, where it’s going, and the locations of potential hazards to avoid crashing into stuff. Its crew isn’t going to consist of a bunch of guys mostly 18-25 who have all bonded through shared background and experience who are eager to fight. The crew of a bulk carrier will probably be some older guys, mainly Filipino but from all over the world, might have never met each other before boarding the ship, and who are not looking for a fight even if malnourished 16-25-year-old Somalis wouldn’t be able to win boxing matches against them. And they don’t typically carry weapons of their own for a variety of reasons, while those malnourished Somalis in a small boat each have a Kalashnikov.
Go watch that movie with the pirate saying “Look at me, I’m the captain now.” Having a brain fart but Tom Hanks is in it.
EDIT: Captain Philips is the movie. I’m sure there’s some liberties taken with the movie but it does show some antipiracy measures like giant, powerful sprinklers that can knock a pirate off a boarding ladder.
Well if cargo ships can’t have guns, then they should build them with traps, that can be activated from the bridge. blast doors or something to seal the bridge off from the rest of the ship. if they get boarded they can trap them in a segment of the ship and haul there sorry arses to port for arrest.
Me personally i’d be cool if there was a pump system that would fill said segment with sea water to drown them. then once they’re all dead there would be a little hole in the bottom of the outward facing wall that would open drain the water out back into the sea. then they unseal the segment and toss there carcasses into the ocean for the sharks to chew on.
Oh but thats cruel and unusual, and highly Illegal eeh, yeah getting sold into slavery is the same danm thing so its fair.
In response to your second question: US Navy go BRRRRRRRRRRR (but also because there’s far fewer places in the world that a pirate can safely dock now. Most of those that I know of specifically come from countries that candidly allow the piracy to take place)
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