Combating piracy
There are lots of meetings being held on how to combat piracy but how do you go about making your ship less of a target for pirates and how do you stop them getting onboard?
Mark Langdon writes: John Twiss, chief operating officer for IMS (Independent Maritime Security Associates) says: “At the end of the day, it very much comes down to a very good ship's crew and I am not knocking seamen, but with lean-manned ships it is not the same merchant navy that it was 10 or 20 years ago.”
The problem boils down to the fact that the lean manning of ships means the crew do not have time to do much more than the job they are employed to do – crew the ship. “So that is where more and more professional security teams are being used,” says Twiss.
“I was on a vessel last November when we were boarded under fire off Mozambique by pirates. We were unarmed on a low (1.7m freeboard) and slow (making 9.3 knots) vessel. I took the crew and security team to the citadel and because we had put everything in place and done everything right, we were relieved within two hours by a coalition warship and we had the ship back in our hands after four hours. The reason that we managed to do that was a very systematic approach to security based on a lot of experience.”
He told The Motorship; “Unfortunately the ISPS Code has its place but the ship's security plans are based on anti-terror measures, not anti-piracy measures. And with the best will in the world on most vessels the ship's security plan has half a page, or a paragraph if you are lucky on anti-piracy.”
He explains; “So we bring experience of anti-piracy to the table with a deep understanding of ISPS and we present it in a format that generally ship managers, CSOs (company security officers) and such can understand. We use lots of photographs and lots of recommendations as to what can be put in place.”
The big issue is the freeboard and the speed of the vessel. “We were on a low and slow product tanker,” says Twiss. ”Unfortunately she had product onboard so we couldn't get them to do any welding to put stanchions up, so we couldn't support more wire.”
This left them with the standard guard rail with just another rail on top. They also greased all the guard rails and anything that provides a point to grip on, and removed the ladders. “I employ what I call a lock down procedure in what they define as the HRA, which is the hostile risk area below 17 North and above 17 South. Once you are into that area you go to ISPS security level 2 anyway, so you have only got one ingress and egress into the superstructure. It is just all about trying to deny the pirates access.”
