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Comment by fbonetti | Hacker News Reader

Well that's embarrassing. Could you imagine being the crew of the cruise ship and having to rescue the clowns that just tried to ram you?

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As I understand it, sailors have strong ethics because the sea is the common enemy of all. Even sailors on ships at war will rescue the enemy after incapacitating their boat.

Yeah, but if you're a ship with a skeleton crew of civilians, you're going to think twice about rescuing a full compliment of soldiers from a dictatorship that just tried to sink you with no reason whatsoever.

There can not be any thinking twice about pulling people from the water. Even Somali pirates were first pulled up from their junks, and only then the boats were used for target practice.

EDIT: and they, being pirates, were subject to being killed on the spot.

But still, the whole situation is hilarious.

I'm sure they had lifeboats.

In theory they're supposed to, but that kind of went out the window since WW2.

Notably after a US bomber knowingly attacked a surfaced U-boat carrying survivors of the RMS Laconia on its foredeck.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconia_incident

IIRC uboats were only “supposed” to sink ships if they could aid in rescuing the crew and passengers after... but gave that policy up when the Allies kept attacking them with aircraft while they were conducting rescue operations.

Did u-boats typically even have the capacity to transport the number of people on the ships they sank?

From the article :

"Columbia Cruise Services says Resolute remained in the area until it was clear its services were not required to help in the rescue of the 44 crew members. It then continued on, as planned, to the Port of Willemstad in Curaçao."

Then

"Even if the cruise liner had deliberately sailed within 12 miles of Isla La Tortuga, it very likely would have been legally entitled to do so under the right of innocent passage, unless Venezuelan officials believe the ship of conducting some other prohibited activity."

Rescue would likely be an upgrade from conditions in Venezuela for the Venezuelan Navy crew.

Military and law enforcement personnel tend to be pretty high up in the current hierarchy due to corruption and abuse of power i.e: they have easier access to food, for example. Not sure how that applies to the Navy, though.

Maybe that was the plan all along.

And then, full chutzpah, the rescued crew commandeer the cruise ship, having "boarded" it.

The linked article doesn't seem to say anything like this, did I miss something?

Speculating what could happen after rescue.

They ran away, they didn't rescue them.

Kinda shows that they might be on blame

Ps: Venezuelan here and I hate my gov but this looks really shaddy

The account I read indicated that the cruise ship offered assistance, got no response and remained on the scene until the MRCC arrived.

> They ran away, they didn't rescue them.

They were rammed by this military boat, headed by what looks like a crazy captain. Would you have brought them on-board?

They could have dropped an extra life-boat and called for help for them probably. But I can't entirely fault them for wanting to run away.

Of course they moved to a safe position, they were under attack by a navy ship. What would you have done?

And it wasn't just any navy, it was a Venezuelan navy ship, a country with erratic and unpredictable leadership.

So you're saying the navy vessel was both justified and acting in an intelligent manner when it rammed the cruise ship?

My guess is you are really troller working for the Maduro regime.

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