By the way farren, do you think it would be possible to smuggle weapons aboard a ship like yours? Do they check a lot of stuff to make sure no one is trying to, say, smuggle a bunch of RPG-7's or assault rifles? Do they use x-rays, sniffing dogs, etc all the time or , like, only if they suspect anything?
I'm security on here so as far as the vessel itself is concerned I'm the one that looks through the baggage and keeps an eye out for shit like that. But the way shipping is setup nowadays , you cannot get onboard a vessel unless you've got the right paperwork and approval in the first place. When we go to foreign countries, before we're allowed to actually enter the country and work there they bring that countries custom agents onboard. Some of them are as thorough as dog searches and locker searches (United states and mexico sometimes) but in the non-first world ie: Singapore, vietnamn, trinidad its not really as important.
The captain has a firearm locked up in his room, I think this one has a shotgun. But other than that unless the shipping company has some sort of special permit (very expensive and hard to get, plus kind of risky) to carry firearms onboard its not likely at all. The only time I would really be worried about security though is drydock or if we're serving as a floatel. Thats when its hard to keep track of whos who and how many people are coming onboard. When we went to singapore for drydock I had to do the security and there were 400+ workers coming onboard to do shit.
All of em were pretty much either indian/asian I think and not to sound like I'm stereotyping but that country has a huge muslim community and its ingrained in the culture too so if you were going to be worried about terrorism or someshit thats about as close as I got? Didn't have a problem with any of them though they were all cool as fuck its just hard to get 400 people to sign in and out on my little clipboard. Also singapore and the malaka straits (where we were at) is infamous for piracy and there were attacks on small tugs a couple hundred miles away from us.
Other than piracy attacks though you dont really here about any sort of politically driven attacks on the shipping industry. The piracy is from desperate people trying to support themselves so they aren't very organized and usually get diverted. I think the main reasons why terrorists don't target the shipping industry is because you need more than just an experienced pilot to navigate/control/maintain a ship. And sailors aren't really the best people to fuck with. Because usually after a prolonged amount of time peoples tension rise and really it would be a bad idea for a terrorist to fuck with a bunch of old, grumpy ass, salty, mostly ex-military working men.