Re: Letters of marque

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ryan Gill" <rmgill@mindspring.com>

> All this talk of pirates aside, I have to point out that Nations of a
> certain size and larger guard their commerce with a vengance. Piracy
> only occurs now days on a really small scale since anywhere you can
> send a merchant, you can send a warship and trained crew. Pirates
> work in small numbers in the Carribean,  the Eastern Indian and in
> some parts of south east asia. When they start affecting larger ships
> and making a name for themselves, they loose really bad really fast
> when a Frigate rolls up and blows them out of the water.

You assume here that pirates would go toe-to-toe with a real warship.
This
has hardly ever been true. Pirates always preyed on weakly crewed
commercial
vessels, avoiding warships by stealth or speed.

Whether they are "small scale" nowadays, is of course, a matter of
judgment.
Most of the press I have read is that in South East Asia, it is a real,
if
limited hazard. Operating in small, fast vessels from a multitude of
islands, across mutliple, often disputed borders, they overload the
local
navies' surveillance and interception capabilities, can be in league
with
corrupt police forces, and are still, largely, below the horizon of
larger
navies, who are not really that well equipped to hunt them down, either.
Plus all the usual problems of putting together an international 
operation.

Greetings
Karl Heinz