Evanston: “I understand the sea.”
Evanston: “I understand the sea.”
The quote is not from me, but from a teen-age girl who is the latest child to set off in an attempt to become the youngest to sail around the world alone.
I do not follow such voyages. A video clip appeared on the morning television news, including the above sound bite.
I expect that these attempts will continue with ever younger participants until one of them is killed, or, considering that they are closely monitored puppets on a string, gets into serious trouble and has to be rescued, at which time I believe the parents should be prosecuted for child abuse.
Of course that won’t happen to this girl because she understands the sea.
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I had intended to write today about the movie, THE HURT LOCKER, but that can wait until tomorrow, and I’ll stick to the sea.
Several people have sent me photographs of a new anti-piracy U.S. Naval vessel.
It looks impressively fast and lethal. Something from Star Wars on water.
I’m not sure of the original source of these photographs, but at the end the email says: “Pirates Beware!!!” and shouts in big letters: “Hooray for the USA.”
There is one slight problem. Historically pirates have never been eradicated by patrol vessels, but by wiping out their home ports. The first line of the U.S. Marine Corp Hymn refers to such a mission “to the shores of Tripoli.”
It is no secret where these pirates are coming from. Their bases are known. Obviously no present government has the courage and determination of its predecessors.
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Wired has a map of world shipping routes for one year mapped by GPS. One of the reasons the North Atlantic is my least favorite ocean is obvious.
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There is a pathetic video clip online of a telephone call to a British television newsman from the English woman who was captured along with her husband by pirates off the Seychelles more than three months ago.
The original ransom demand of several million dollars has been reduced, but the British government has a firm policy against dealing with pirates, even if they won’t go in and wipe them out as they once did the pre-Johnny Depp pirates of the Caribbean. I quite agree with this stand of non-negotiation.
The woman, though, is broken.
She and her husband were forcibly separated two weeks ago, whipped and beaten as they were dragged apart.
You can hear in her tone and the hesitant way she speaks that she has no hope. She has been told that if the ransom is not paid she and her husband will be killed in a few days. While this might just be a ploy to pressure the British government, she believes it and says that death would be the easier way out, if she could just see her husband once again before she is killed.
As I wrote at the time of my own encounter with much less serious pirates: it is not the sea; it’s men.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010