It was sad to hear that the Americans recently captured by Somali pirates were killed by their captors. The ship that sent a couple of boatloads of Navy Seals to capture the yacht is the Sterett, a destroyer named after Andrew Sterett, commander on the US schooner Enterprise during the Barbary War of 1801. They were battling pirates in the Mediterranean. Interesting to me was the makeup of the four-ship American force chasing Somali pirates. One of them was my alma mater(?) the USS Enterprise! The huge nuclear-powered ship (still the fastest American aircraft carrier despite its fifty-year-old-ness) chasing pirates in outboard-motor-powered skiffs! Perhaps we need to re-balance our forces to a more appropriate size to match the task at hand. Or maybe the Navy has something else in mind, hmm?I’ll stay tuned.
Photo: US Navy
2 comments:
Hi, Tom. There's a newish book, Pirates of Barbary : corsairs, conquests, and captivity in the seventeenth-century Mediterranean / Adrian Tinniswood. The author draws some interesting comparisons between them and the current Somali pirates.
Thanks Ana. I'll check that out. Pirates are always fascinating, even if you don't like their politics.
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