So these ships are just sitting there off shore?
What stops pirates from taking over the ships? What about the crews just taking what they want and leaving?
What stops pirates from taking over the ships? What about the crews just taking what they want and leaving?
Where are they offshore? Pirates are not globetrotters with ports all over the world. But if this was off the coast of Somalia type things you'd think it would happen. Unless they are only interested in the ransom in which case probably mot a good score anyway.
> What about the crews just taking what they want and leaving?
Most people dont steal because they know its wrong. Not because they couldn't get away with it before. And where are they off to? If you're a Filipino on a ship sitting off US coast, what your going to fill a lifeboat full of Chanel perfume, head for the coast, lug it from lifeboat and hail a taxi? Sell it somewhere and try and get out of the country you have no visa for and get back home... doesn't sound too appealing.
If you have another self-loading container ship you might be able to pull off a big heist, but who has one of those just kicking around?
But then what?
The navy kills the pirates and liberates the vessel... And Hanjin refuses to take it back? The navy now has the responsibility of getting it to port and unloading it, despite ports not wanting to do that?
These are just random ships at sea. No such advantage here. It's truly a needle in a haystack problem.
If you want to steal the ship, a more practical plan would be to convince the crew to abandon ship (bribes?) and then claim it as salvage.
The sorts of ships routinely subjected to piracy are those carrying an easily transportable commodity (e.g. oil) that can be pumped out or stolen quickly and offloaded on a market without arousing suspicion.
You'd spend weeks going through all those containers to look for anything useful. Many, I'm sure, contain half-finished products, super cheap consumer goods, promotional merchandise, and niche application bulk supplies with almost zero value on the grey market.
If you had someone on the inside that could position the crate you wanted to steal right on top and ready to pick off, you'd just do that with a helicopter anyway and save yourself the trouble of hijacking it.
There's various physical limitations. You cannot have too many cranes working on a vessel (need to have space between cranes). Further, most cranes aren't that quick. Depending on a region you might hit 45 containers per hour, but that's pretty high (usually only seen in Asia).
Smaller vessels can be cleared out inside a day, but the larger ones are still a project for all but the best equipped ports.
The containers. Stopping the crew from stealing the cargo is and always has been one of their primary purposes.