Pirates in the News! June 6, 2008

This week one has to give due respect to Canada, which not only has a Navy, but one in the Gulf of Aden that actually intervened in a pirate attack successfully. See here and here.

"I am convinced that the presence of our aircraft drove them away from the traffic lanes and prevented any further attack today on merchant shipping in the area," said Cmdr. Kelly Larkin, commanding officer of the multi-purpose frigate.

"We continued to monitor those two skiffs and their crew as they were heading back toward Somalia territorial waters."

The Canadian Frigate took images of the skiffs as they ran back to coastal waters, just another example of the multinational efforts in place around the Gulf of Aden.

Moving west, Nigeria is in trouble, this isn't exactly a surprise when you're a fixture in a weekly digest of pirate news, but there are issues tangential to piracy that are plaguing this African nation. Among others, Food shortages are hitting Nigeria hard, and increased piracy is hurting Nigeria's fishing industry (second only to oil, also hit by piracy).

In New York City, a man was arrested for carrying a pirate sword into Macy's Department Store. The man claimed he was on his way to a kickball game where his team of pirates plays, which is likely, many of the hip young moderns play kickball, even the "Paper of Record" has reported on the craze.

Prince William of England is going to take a few months with the Royal Navy this summer in the North Atlantic and Caribbean. The serious article is entertaining, but is it as entertaining as....
No. Probably not as entertaining.

Finally, if your grandmother doesn't have a navy for you to join if you yearn for adventure and you have a few thousand dollars to throw around, just take a nuclear powered ice-breaker to the North Pole.