“Every economic sector bears the primary responsibility for the safety of its employees.” For Berlin, a proposal like Stolberg’s poses legal problems, partly because most German ships are registered in low-cost nations. But if the ship owners are now forced to hire private mercenaries, the shipowners’ association countered, it would be a “failure of the state and a return to the Middle Ages.”
The Ernst Komrowski shipping company will now have its 20 ships protected by armed guards. When the German Interior Ministry told the Hamburg-based company that it could not deploy armed men on a container ship registered in Germany, the company registered the ship under a flag of convenience. Now the laws of Liberia apply on board.
A ‘return to the middle ages’? lol We are talking about armed security guards on boats, and not hiring the German Landsknecht to take out the Swiss Guard.
But where we are at right now, the state’s current methods of stopping this piracy scourge is not working. Or better yet, the main states involved with implementing strategy have failed to eliminate the threat of piracy and have failed to protect ships. That is unacceptable to me, as it was unacceptable to Pompey or Woodes Rogers.
What is cool about this article is that it highlights what the German shipping industry has had to resort to in order to insure the safety of their crews. They gave their government and other countries a chance to take care of the problem and this is the end result–turning to private industry.
The quote up top also mentioned an interesting tactic that German shipowners are having to use in order to get armed security on their boats. If their government won’t allow armed security, then register the vessels under a flag of convenience that will allow that kind of security. Liberia was mentioned and I am sure there are others out there that would work too.
The article also mentioned a few maritime security companies involved with protecting all of these German owned ships (German ship owners control 3,500 ships, the world’s third-largest commercial fleet). Those companies are Hart Security and Templar Titan. I would expect more German security companies to come forward for providing protective services to meet the demands of these ship owners. So it was odd that they did not find any for this article.
Finally, the article mentioned something that I forecasted here on the blog. That the pirates would eventually use the tactic of boarding ships with blow torches so they can breach the ‘safety rooms’. The pirates are also entering the realm of torturing their captives, probably to put pressure on hostage negotiations and get that fat ransom. All I know is that private armed guards on a boat is about your best option for protecting a vessel these days. It is a shame that it has taken this long, and with this many expensive and deadly lessons, for shipowners to come to this obvious conclusion. –Matt
Escalation off Somalia: German Shipowners Turn to Mercenaries to Protect against Pirates
02/01/2011
By Clemens Höges, Holger Stark and Andreas Ulrich
An attempt to rescue the pirated German freighter Beluga Nomination off the coast of Somalia ended in tragedy, with at least one crew member dead. Now shipowners are demanding that the German military protect their ships. Some have already resorted to hiring armed guards.
When he received the distress call on the afternoon of Saturday, Jan. 22, the officer on duty at the UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) office in Dubai could hear immediately that someone was firing live ammunition. The ship, apparently in serious trouble, identified itself as the Beluga Nomination, a German freighter. When the pirates attacked, the Beluga Nomination was located in the middle of the Indian Ocean, more than 700 kilometers (435 miles) north of the Seychelles.
