TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums Afloat Cruise Ship goes dark to avoid Pirates

I read that the other day. Way to ruin 10 days of people's vacation! I've got to say though, wouldn't these pirates have radar? If so, it would be pretty hard to miss a cruise ship.

That ship is HUGE! You could blackout everything that could possibly be visible from outside, and still have plenty of lights on, and stuff going on, inside the ship. Put a bit of a crimp on things, yeah, but I can't see this really ruining the cruise.

And, no, actually, most of the pirates are operating out of extremely rudimentary boats. Some probably have radar available, but I doubt that it is very many.

Huh. I wouldn't think they could overpower a cruise ship with a boat that doesn't even have radar.

Have an uncle who works in marine security, so...

The pirates don't spend their money on things like big boats and electronics. They spend their money on things like automatic weapons and rocket launchers. They pull up next to your nice, big cruise ship (or cargo ship) in a rickety old, outboard powered, skiff and threaten to send an anti-tank round through your hull if you don't allow them to board. Then, once on board, they hold the ship and everyone on it hostage.

They tend to be very poorly financed, and very poorly equipped. The one thing they DO spend money on is weapons.