PERSIAN GULF: The admiral, the pirates and Johnny Depp
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As commander of the U.S. Navy’s Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet, Vice Adm. William Gortney is the point man for the Navy’s reaction to the problem of pirates off the coast of Somalia.
Gortney has urged shipping companies to train their crews in evasive maneuvers and to consider hiring security firms. He has led the move to have more navies send ships to monitor the shipping lanes.
‘It’s an international problem that needs an international solution,’ he said.
But progress is slow. For one thing, only a small percentage of ships get hijacked and companies are reluctant to put out money for security firms if the odds are that they won’t be needed. Also, no nation seems eager to use its court system to try the pirates.
And then there is the perceptional problem. Gortney says the world has tended to romanticize pirates as colorful, whimsical characters rather than sea-going thieves and thugs.
On this point though he has to admit some fault.
He has a miniature schnauzer named Captain Jack Sparrow, after the Johnny Depp character in Disney’s ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ movies.
-- Tony Perry, Bahrain