How Do Cruise Ships Prevent or Protect Themselves From Pirate Attacks?
In: Technology
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There are a few layers to this:
1) Intel, basically when a route is planned they know which areas to avoid which decreases the probability of a pirate encounter.
2) Lets say you are unlucky and do encounter pirates coming for you. Just because a ship is large doesn’t mean it can’t sail fast, so trying to lose pirates by heading full steam out to open seas is a viable option.
3) Large cargo ships especially if they expect pirates have water cannons around the deck. These can spray sea water at high pressure making it near impossible for anyone to board.
4) If all these measures have failed usually ships employ armed guards. I have met a dude who used to be a mercenary and told us he was most doing guard duty on cargo ships.
Mostly by not going where pirates are known to operate.
There are exception of course such as the Italian cruise liner during the 80s that was hijacked by the PLA, that one got famous with them pushing a guy in a wheelchair overboard and was made into movies and such, but it was more a terrorist hijacking than piracy for profit.
Mostly cruise ships don’t go places where they might be in danger for insurance purposes alone.
Cruise ships while potentially holding potentially more and better hostages than a giant cargo ship crewed only by a dozen people from a place where wages are extremely low are a bad idea for piracy for profit.
Yes you get a lot of valuable hostages from rich countries but you also have to deal with a large number of hostages and their rich country militaries.
It doesn’t take many pirates to control a dozen crew on a cargo ship, but hundreds of crew and even more tourist on cruise ship will be harder to control.
Also cruise ships are big and dangerous to be around evene if they aren’t hostile.
In 2020 a small cruise ship with engine trouble drifted close to Venezuelan waters and for some reason a Venezuelan warship tried to board them. Due to bad luck and bad planing on their part, the cruise ship went right through the warship and sank it without meaning to. (It helped that it had a reinforced bow to deal with ice.)
Cruise ships are not a common target for piracy.
there are multiple things they do.
first of all they avoid any area with pirates as much as possible.
then they often have military protection in areas with known pirate activity and lastly they have armed guards and procedures on how to handle these areas.
for example when my parents were on a ship passing near Somalia they had the lower decks outside area completely blocked off and armed guards stationed on there.
they also turned off all exterior lights and closed off the top deck so everyone was inside the ship.
its also only a small area where they had any risk so they simply pass through there quickly so they can get out in less than one night.
Several ways:
* Don’t go where the pirates are.
* They are high. Boarding them from small boats is close to impossible.
* Ships, even civilian ships, are made from thick steel. Rifles won’t penetrate, and even if a RPG round hits, it’ll make a hole above the water line.
* Cruise ships have their own security onboard. They are mainly there to handle unruly passengers, but, if need be, they can fend off pirates as well.
* Radio. The can call for assistance. As boarding is next to impossible, any attack will take time, and that means time for support (probably air support) to arrive. Remember, the attacks usually happen pretty close to land.
* Secrecy. They don’t really announce their planned route to the world ahead of time, and the sea is big. Sure, there are “lanes of traffic” on the ocean as well, but the pirates can’t just hang around, that would get them caught. They need to do fast hits.
Also, cruise ships tend to ply the waters around and between wealthier tourist areas. There are fewer pirates in those waters because a) wealthier people don’t need to be pirates and b) those areas already have broader defense patrols underway .
The lack of anything valuable on board. Some grandmas costume jewelry just doesn’t equal container ships full of goods
People have posted lots of stuff but I haven’t seen mention of the lrad which can be used as a sound weapon.
I see some good answers already, but wanted to add this:
Tldr: there are good reasons why the Navy prefers to use helicopters for boarding.
It’s actually very difficult to get from a small boat to a large ship if the ship isn’t cooperating. Honestly, it’s dangerous even when the ship is cooperating. Two Navy Seals were lost at sea just this week trying to board a ship.
The ship can use what speed it has, the wind, and waves to make boarders’ lives difficult.
When a ship is intentionally launching or recovering a boat, they’ll slow to bare steerage way (as slow as the ship can go while the rudder remains useful).
You position the ship between the wind and the small boat. This pushes the ship towards the boat rather than away. (You try getting on a rope ladder that’s floating away from you while you’re bobbing alongside in a tiny boat)
You don’t turn the ship while a boat is alongside.
And you don’t try it if the seas are too rough. Even say 3ft sees (which you absolutely wouldn’t notice from the bridge of a ship that size) feel like *a lot* when you’re in a small boat in open ocean.
If you’re a captain that’s decided to contest a boarding, you can do the opposite of those things. Keep speed on and maneuver. Even the very slow turns of a cargo ship can be significant as a delaying tactic and for using the wake as a weapon.
Also get on the radio and scream for help.
The real answer here is that there are too many crew members.
Pirates go after oil tankers/container ships because there’s only 6/15 people working on them at any time. The cruise ship has THOUSANDS. So when the pirates take the bridge (where you drive the boat from), the crew shuts down the engine (from inside the engine room 10 floors down). If the pirates take the engine room, the crew calls for help from the bridge. The cruise ship is so large and has so many employees that know the ship very well, it would be almost impossible to take control.
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