Tanker Scares Off Pirates With Water Hoses

If fire hoses work on Greenpeace and hippie protesters, I suppose it would work on pirates too. A Greek oil tanker chased off some Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden. From AP:

Crewmen fired high pressure water jets to fight off heavily armed Somali pirates trying to board a Greek oil tanker in the dangerous Gulf of Aden on Friday in the fourth such attack since the start of the year, authorities said.

The pirates in three speedboats and armed with guns and rocket-propelled grenades twice tried to board the Greek-flagged Kriti Episkopi but were scared off when the crew turned fire hoses on them and EU aircraft scrambled from a nearby EU naval flotilla to help, company and Greek government officials said.

A strong statement on the ability of maritime self-defense while these pirates continue to make a laughing stock out of international shipping and worldwide Navies. The USNI blog had some cheap ideas on how to effectively combat this menace, and I hope someone from 5th Fleet was paying attention.