January 25th - Another interesting day in the Red Sea

Today we had a briefing by the Royal Naval Commander Liaison Officer assigned to our ship.  He, and the Cunard Security staff and the private security team presented information about piracy but also touched on terrorism to some degree as well.  I took pictures of all the slides but since some of them discuss the response mechanism in case of emergency, I won’t post them all.  We weren’t told they were secret but it doesn’t seem like a good idea to post them either.

They also mentioned that we would get a delivery of weapons, by ship, later today.  Strange we didn’t pick them up in Aqaba and stranger still there is a ship roaming around here delivering weapons.  I was able to get some pictures (posted at the bottom).

After they talked about the measures put in place to protect us and the ship, the floor was open to questions and some of the passengers had some good ones.

One person asked, with all the precautions in place, how did that UK tanker run afoul of the Iranians a few weeks ago.  Good question…the Naval Commander said they strayed too close to an island that is in dispute between Iran and the UAE.  He said it was the tankers fault… they were in the wrong place.

Another person asked about refugees and what would happen if we came upon some (I never would have thought of this).  Well Cunard has a plan in place for that.  They’ve actually assisted with refugee boats in the past.  If we did come upon a boat, we would send a tender over to investigate.  If it was determined they were indeed refugees, we would render aid in the form of food, water and medical help.  We would generally leave it to ships from the international coalition to take them aboard but if we did have to take them on, they would be quarantined from the other passengers until they could be safely put ashore.

There was also a question about the new international virus in the news.  The chief of security said he knows no more then any of the passengers but headquarters is indeed monitoring the situation.  We are stopping in Hong Kong and taking on new passengers, might they be quarantined asked the questioner.  The security chief had no answer for that saying it was too soon to make any determination.

Another questioner (an American) asked if we were harassed by an Iranian vessel would we consider ramming it???  Yikes, that got a reaction.  The Security Chief, from the UK said something I didn’t pick up and then said his grandchildren were American and they were ‘nutters’ too.  This got a big laugh and I think the Americans in the audience laughed the loudest.  Fred says that not even a Naval vessel would ram another ship, it’s just too dangerous.

So later in the day we slowed down and this ship came along side.  A smaller vessel then came toward us, made the delivery and they were gone.  I didn’t see the actual delivery; we know it’s a weapon(s) but who knows what.  We’ll have a look around the ship tomorrow and see what we can see.

With all this, the chance of a passenger vehicle being attacked is slim to none.  We can go faster and the sides of our ship are too tall but they certainly have to take precautions.  There was of course one cruise ship taken by terrorists, the Aquille Lauro back in the 1980’s, I think.  An American in a wheelchair was thrown overboard, the only fatality.  The Naval Officer pointed out that the ship was not the target of the terrorists, they were just using the ship to get to Israel but a room steward came upon their weapons.  Then the ship was taken.

More days at sea ahead of us before we get to Dubai on Thursday.