The Salty Barrister

Well, the 'ol pirate alley off Somalia's coast is heating up, huh?  Great news about the Captain, but Christmas, what to do now?  I'm sure there's a heap of vessel owners trying to navigate these tough strategic waters.  I know wherever I have a beer as of late, I seem to get asked whether you can arm the crew.  Well, can you?

To legally arm the crew so that they might use deadly force to repel a piracy raises a briar patch of issues.  Typically, the law of a vessel's flag (meaning the country in which it is registered) will govern issues concerning firearms.  Still, the flag state's laws can be overridden by local law when you're in port or even within a state's territorial waters.  Now as for using these firearms, we're in the thick of the thorns.  The United Nation's Convention on the Law of the Sea (Section 107) can be read to mean that only a government may seize a pirate vessel, but what about repelling a boarding by pirates?  Unfortunately, the Convention doesn't seem to shed much light on the issue.  Another thing, the United States isn't party to the Convention so that's got to play into the analysis as well.  (I've seen some United States' case law that seems to hold that a private vessel could seize a pirate ship.)

Merchant ships in the past have armed their crews, and so my gut is that today's vessel owners can do so.  Certainly, I haven’t seen anything to say they can't and I've seen some case law which seems to support a vessel's right of self defense -- remember, though, these are my off-hour musings, not a legal opinion, ok?  Still, I'm not sure you're going to see vessel owners head down the arming route.  Civil liability, the numerous and varying laws in the states at which vessels call, and the potential for raising the risks to crewmembers may well outweigh the benefits.  

Hey, one last thing, don't be thinking that piracy provides an alluring alternate career . . . here in the States, we have one nasty bit of statutory law sentencing someone who is convicted of piracy on the high seas to "be imprisoned for life."  Nope, there's no qualification or lesser alternative in the statute, take a look if you want: 18 U.S.C. Section 1651 (2000).

Underway and making way.

--- JKF

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