Three of the best

From yesterday's FT:

Heave-ho, me hearties!

Sir, Perhaps the owners and operators seeking naval protection off the Horn of Africa should appeal to their respective flag states. Surely they investigated the capabilities of the naval forces in Panama, the Marshall Islands and Liberia before they “flagged out” their vessels’ registry to these or other non-maritime nations.

That these owners would now demand action from the world’s naval powers under the guise of global commerce is a predictable display of hubris. These “flag of convenience” operators should not be afforded the naval assets of the nations they ran away from [sic].

In today’s world, some buccaneers wear suits.

Barry Shea, Sunapee, New Hampshire, USA.

(If shipping companies can choose to pay higher taxes in exchange for flying the flag of a larger naval power and being afforded the protection of its navy, that sounds like a sort of seaborne Land Value Tax to me. Bring it on!)

Shiver me timbers!

Sir, I have sailed in a very small yacht off the Horn of Africa and I have worked in the shipping industry and aboard a cargo ship. As everyone has already pointed out, 450 nautical miles (830km) south-east of the coast of Kenya is a long way out into the Indian Ocean. It is too far to make a return journey in the type of fast outboard-driven boats that these pirates use. You would run out of fuel.

The pirates must have known where the ship was. This was an inside job. A crewman with a GPS and a sat phone, or one of the ship’s position reports falling into the wrong hands?

Tom Russell, Coton, Cambridgeshire.

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

Sir, I have seldom read and heard so much rubbish about the piracy problem aided and abetted by the non-response from governments around the world.

The Malacca pirates, once they started hitting the shipowners in the pocket with increased insurance costs, were soon put to flight by the local governments. The Indian navy’s success in sinking a mother ship is a precursor of solving the problem: robust action with imagination*.

The pirates’ nest should be routed out, the anchored ships taken back, and the mother ships sunk on sight. It would once and for all end this scourge which should never have been allowed to develop.

I sailed through these waters in 2000 in my own yacht when the piracy problem was just beginning.

Captain I G Tew, Milford on Sea, Hampshire

* Oops!