I was reading about piracy a few weeks ago, just for the hell of it.
It seems that Indonesia has a little problem with piracy as well.
The idea with the hose is exactly that; to literally hose them down.
Some countries won't allow a ship to be armed in their waters, and some shipping companies don't allow their crews to be armed either.
The alternative is to use the firehoses.
Many of these pirates are armed only with knives anyhow. They wait for a ship to come into a choke point and slow down, then climb aboard.
There are two classes of pirates.
The first are the little guys who just want to steal any money on the ship and maybe some valuable cargo. After that class takes over the ship, they often just let the crew tied up and adrift, then leave. According to what I have read, this has led to a couple near misses with oil tankers being adrift in Asian waters. In one incident, the crew managed to free themselves and avert disaster. Had they been just a few minutes later, they wouldn't have been able to regain control of their oil tanker before it ran aground.
The second class works for organized crime. They pick ships that are carrying valuable cargo, then take the ship. They sell the cargo, then take the ship and register it under another name and under another country's flag. Then they sell the ship.
These guys don't like to let witnesses around.
Either way, I think I would want to have a FN-MAG on the bow, a couple RPG's stored in an easy to reach place, and an AKSU-74 for those guys that still managed to get on my boat.
BTW-I read somewhere that the Jolly Roger used to be a good flag to see. It meant that the pirates were willing to give quarter to those who surrendered.
