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Piracy today is a global disaster. Statistics on piracy do not accurately paint the current picture. As many as half of attacks are estimated to go unreported (Anon 2005b). Ship owners are reluctant to detain their ships to participate in an investigation, as doing so costs them significant loss. Incidents of piracy can also make it more difficult for them to recruit high-quality crew members (Clark 2004). Reporting piracy would also cause an increase in their insurance premiums, often costing more in the long-term than simply absorbing the loss (Armstrong 2004). “Since many shipping companies do not report incidents of piracy, for fear of raising their insurance premiums and prompting protracted, time-consuming investigations, the precise extent of piracy is unknown “ (Loft and Koran 2004, 64).

Various international and shipping organisations make the attempt, however, and can at least document trends in piracy events that are reported. Both attacks and their violence are reported to be on theorise. International Maritime Bureau, in its annual piracy report, recorded 325 piracy attacks and thirty deaths in 2004, a decrease in attacks (from 445) but increase in deaths (from 21) in 2003 (Anon2005b). “The number of seafarers taken hostage last year almost doubled to 359, while 311 ships were boarded and 19 vessels hijacked”(Akbar 2004, 27). Armstrong (2004) similarly lists piracy as growing at twenty present annually. Armed attacks increased by nearly fifty present in 2003, with the death count more than doubled from 2002(Akbar 2004).

644 incidents of violence to crews were reported overall, including six on UK-flagged ships and twenty-one on vessels owned or managed from the UK (Akbar 2004). These attacks tend to be clustered in and near some of the busiest Third World ports, particularly off the shores of Indonesia, Malaysia and Nigeria(Mihailescu 2004, Halloran 2003). In two incidents receiving high media coverage in the UK, pirates executed Sir Peter Blake, the Greenpeace activist, off the coast of Brazil in 2002. Alan MacLean was similarly killed by pirates off the coast of Somalia during an adventure-related trip (Akbar 2004).

The financial impacts are huge. Loft and Koran (2004) report a loss of ships, loss of cargo, and increased insurance costs the shipping industry in excess of sixteen billion US each year. This trainslates to a weekly cost of pounds 300m per week (Akbar 2004, Reynolds 2003). As much as 10 billion US of this loss is to the insurance industry alone, with the true amount being significantly higher due to underreporting (Crawford 2004).

Pirates today are additionally too broad a group to truly generalise. However, technological advances have allowed pirates to become better equipped and have greater information as to their targets, which contributes to an increased number of attacks on larger ships (Lewis. 2004). In addition, the end of the Cold War has reduced the number of sea patrols in certain areas of the world while simultaneously making a tremendous volume of weapons and munitions available on the black market, often a本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。