The attack on the VLCC Limburg (which, let us not forget, cost the life of one of her crew) has sent shudders through the shipping industry, which has no illusions about its vulnerability to terrorist attack. It needs practical and useful help, fast.
No doubt whatever, terrorism adds a new dimension to the various threats which the industry has laboured under for many years. It is worth recalling that in the first nine months of 2002, there were more than three hundred reported attacks on shipping, during which outrages a variety of arms were employed to terrify and traumatise the crews of ships. Several seafarers were killed, more wounded. Any of these incidents might have involved, instead of pirates, hijackers and robbers, determined terrorists, and the challenge for the industry is in devising genuine protection for these vulnerable crews, who every year see attacks upon them and their ships increase in number, and in more areas of the world.
Ships crews know what they do not want from this new attention upon ship security, enforced by the attentions of terrorists. They do not need solely paper defences, in the shape of more bureaucratic procedures, which they the ships crews have to comply with. They might be interested in the proposals for security officers in ships and ashore in the office, but they are rightly concerned about a whole range of related issues.
Drawing the short straw
Are these officers going to be properly trained and will their role be really beneficial and practically applicable to the security dilemma? Or will they be people forced to undertake a short course for the benefit of a paper certificate, and then found to blame for deficiencies in any subsequent auditing by port state control inspectors? Will they have resources? Will they have the time to undertake these security duties in addition to all their other responsibilities, in a ship where the available manpower for anything is strained desperately thin? These are questions that require to be resolved in the early days, as security plans are devised and codes of practice drawn up, rather than imposed externally on some half-comprehending ship's officer and shore official who suddenly find that they have drawn the short straws.
Plans and procedures are fine: they show that the problem is being thought about. But the real necessity is to have resources available to confront and confound the terrorist. Which is where the external expertise is so very necessary. Terrorism, lets face it, is outside the usual remit of even the best-trained ships officer or shipping company manager. It is a world away from ship safety or commercial practice and needs specialist help. Unanswered questions, which mariners nonetheless must ask, revolve around the reliance they can put upon ports around the world to afford their ships protection from terrorists, when they have been so ineffective at protecting them from pirates and robbers.
Seafarers need practical help, not merely reactive paper schemes which they suspect may well be to cover somebody elses real responsibilities. Some professionalism is clearly needed.
Date: 15 December 2002