MarEx Mailbag

This week’s Mailbag contains letters addressing a variety of issues. Piracy (of course) and maritime education highlight this week’s mail output. Last week’s lead editorial centered on the Maritime Education Summit and the quarterly MERPAC meeting which took place at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy in Buzzards Bay, MA. We’ll start this week with a letter from a MERPAC participant. You can read last week’s editorial, entitled “Defining Euphoria: Energy, Synergy and collaboration” by clicking HERE. Below, you can also see what our readers had to say this week:

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Dear Mr. Keefe - What a disappointment. You were there and I didn't get a chance to meet you. Yours is one of the few articles I make time to read each week from the Maritime Press. It is a real service and good journalism. My name is Eric Larsson and I am one of the MERPAC members. It was nice to see something on our work efforts that are, for the most part, invisible in what is an invisible industry. This committee sees all sorts of proposed regulations before they are introduced to the public. In many cases, we disagree with what is proposed, in many more we do our best to make any possible regulations as workable as possible. That is why we get so far down into the weeds. The devil is in the detail. If you saw the original version of the medical NVIC... In reading your articles, I get the sense that you love this industry too. In my day job, I am the director of training and education at the Seamen's Church Institute. This year we are celebrating our 175th anniversary. I would guess you have attended our Silver Bell award dinner in New York with 1000 of our closest friends that happens every June (This year it will be June 11th). I have been with SCI for more than 25 years now. During that time, it has become more of a vocation than a job. I want to make a personal pitch for you to write a column about SCI. I am not a communications person, just a guy who used to go to sea and ended up working for a great organization . The work of the Institute through the years has been remarkable. This year, I have taken it upon myself to write a weekly e-mail based on historical fact as printed in newspaper articles back to 1834. The research into this has been eye-opening. The manner in which mariners have been treated through the years was deplorable and the places they docked in New York were some of the toughest and most crime-ridden in all of history. In Gangs of New York in the chapter called "Sin on the Waterfront" they described the area for about a mile on Water Street and just how tough and debaucherous it was. There were 40 "dance halls" along this stretch and much murder, mayhem thievery and shanghaiing took place. Literally in the middle of this, SCI had the Floating Chapel of Our Savior, a floating chapel that was located there from 1844 to 1910. I can't imagine how hard it was to go to work. One other quick story about connections. This week at Mass Maritime had quite a few connections for you and our industry. Our first "missionary" who would be called our executive director today was Rev. Benjamin C. C. Parker. He held that position from 1843 to 1859. He went to work in the areas described above. In doing research on him, I found him listed in the Harvard graduating class of 1820. The connection that surprised me was that of one of his classmates, a mathematician that wrote the American Practical Navigator, Nathaniel Bowditch. They say it's a small world. I guess it always was. I hope I get to meet you some day, as opposed to being in the same place at the same time. Best Regards, Eric MarEx Editor’s Note: As a member of MERPAC, this reader puts in a lot of hours on sometimes thankless and as he so well puts it, invisible tasks on behalf of industry. Thanks for writing, Eric. The next letter, written with a wry sense of humor, addresses the very serious issue of piracy:

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Joe: Watching all the commotion about piracy on off shore Somalian waters with my spouse on the tube, I asked her what she thought would be a cheap and effective deterrent for the problem. Her response, " Just run high pressure water lines around the outside hull area of the ship with nozzles creating a high pressure blinding spray and where the deck meets the gunwale, have portable electrified razor wire which can be recoiled and deployed at will." She further added, "It's cheap and effective, environmentally non-polluting, uses readily available resources and needs minimal maintenance." I then added, add a few highly trained and motivated pit bulls as a final barrier. Pit bulls eat any kind of flesh. My mother in law pipes in with, "just hang huge signs on the ship in the language of the Somalis indicating the ship is in biological quarantine being contaminated with non curable AIDS and other diseases. Unauthorized boarding is at your own peril." Doable? I'll accept contracts. Gregory / USCI, LLC Gaithersburg, MD MarEx Editor’s Note: Here’s one more from a regular reader who weighs in from time to time:

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I am an active Merchant Mariner. Last year I spent the entire year out in those waters on the Maersk Vermont, Maersk Ohio and the President Truman. It's very difficult for those who don’t have first hand Merchant Marine experience in those waters to get a full appreciation of the situation. Pirates aren't new, just their tactics and equipment are. They have better boats, better guns and much more sophisticated electronic guidance systems. Perhaps the worst piece of equipment the USCG/IMO has mandated ships to not only carry but remain in operational service is the "AIS" or Automated Information Systems. For those unfamiliar with the system, here is an informational link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Identification_System Apparently, the pirates aren't complying with these mandates, because I have yet to see a "Pirate ship" identified on AIS, and I have sailed in pirate waters for a long time. In spite of all the ISPS Security measures, the USCG mandates that we broadcast all the information about our ships to the whole world in real time. The AIS, as a minimum broadcasts our position (accurate to GPS standards) our, course, speed, destination and number of crew aboard. As well, of course, our flag. It’s like a "menu" for pirates and terrorists they’re both the same in my view) to plan attacks on us when and where we are most vulnerable. It's ironic that you can be steaming along in the middle of the ocean, run across a US Navy ship all armed with guns, SEALS, and helicopters, and they are in full EMCON (Electronic Emission and Communications Control) and we are out there, slow, under manned, and unarmed being required to broadcast all the vital statistics of our ship to any pirate who can buy them on line from the WEST Marine catalog, although they usually don’t have to buy them. They just take them off the ships they highjack. Now the armchair Admirals, who haven’t got a clue as to what we are up against have this "knee jerk" reaction is to arm the crews. That looks real good on front pages of newspapers, but is idiotic in the real Merchant Marine. I want the cook to put a meal out, not play Rambo. What we don’t need, right now is an escalation in the crisis, using garden hoses to extinguish a raging forest fire. But then again, those who can, do; those who can’t, teach. The key to this problem is far more complicated and need to be Resolved at the very highest levels of government, and even the United Nations. Alfred Thayer Mahan wrote in his "Sea Power" thesis that the primary role of the US Navy must be to protect the US Merchant Marine. That doctrine is still the basis of Naval Sea power lessons taught at both the US Naval Academy and the Navy War College. Are these Admirals now passing off that responsibility to twenty-one sailors , already undermanned, rather than stepping up to the plate, as they certainly did, in the case of the USS Bainbridge? BTW: Well done, Bainbridge! If our over 250 capital ship US Navy, can’t defend our 189 (10,000gt and over) US Merchant fleet, with all their sophisticated weapons, and trained warriors, how can we, the Merchant seafarers have any hope whatsoever? These havens of refuge and support, where pirates can stage their attacks must be eliminated. Hopefully, through political (speak softly and carry a big stick) means, but if not ultimately, through whatever means are appropriate. In Somalia, we are dealing with a place where there is no central government, and an economy with absolutely no gross national product. Lawless and useless. As Captain of the USNS Harkness, I spent several years in operation off the coast of Somalia, and dealt directly with the ragged and disorganized Somali government of that time. Mogadishu was my base of operation, but I also had to call on many of the other ports along the Somali Coast, both in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden. What struck me most, was the difficulty in identifying organized Government officials from the rest of the population. Everyone wore the same sarrappi (affectionately referred to as Man Dresses), and everyone had an AK-47 strapped over their shoulders. It was like the African "Wild West". Waiting for the pirate to get alongside the unarmed or armed merchant ship means that we have already lost the battle. We can only win the War against pirates, by closing down their bases of operation, ashore, and making sure, there are no safe havens for pirates, anywhere in the world. Captain Bill Doherty, master mariner, MMA-67 CDR-USNR Ret MarEx Editor’s Note: I came across this in my in-box from another source. We asked Captain Doherty’s permission to use it. He brings up, I think, some valid points from a perspective of having been there and done that, too. Thanks for writing, Bill.