Hiring armed guards to protect ships and crews in pirate-infested waters could expose civilian captains to risks and responsibilities they are not trained to handle, a veteran mariner said yesterday.
As Hong Kong and mainland shipowners plan to arm their ships and hire guards to fend off pirates, questions have been raised about crew safety and how to manage the guards.
Reverend Stephen Miller, senior chaplain at the Mission to Seafarers in Hong Kong, said while the ship's captain is responsible for the crew and the vessel, armed guards are the responsibility of the shipowner, under Marine Department rules.
But in theory, if the unexpected did happen and crew members were hurt, the captain would bear the ultimate responsibility. This could lead to criminal charges against the captain under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The pastor, who gained first-hand experience of the impact of piracy when he headed the seafarers' mission in Dubai before moving to Hong Kong, said: 'My biggest concern is the safety of seafarers.'
He said there had already been 480 cases of seamen being tortured by pirates, and 62 seafarers had died in the last couple of years.
Quoting shipping industry figures, the pastor said 8 per cent of the world's shipping in tonnage terms was travelling through the Indian Ocean at any one time. These ships had on board about 100,000 crew members, out of the 1.2 million seamen employed on ocean-going vessels worldwide.
