From the Annals of 20th Century Piracy

Once again, Ivan is dousing himself in the warm bath of memory :

In 1948 I was an able seaman on a freighter that carried cargo to pacific ocean ports starting with Pusan (called Fusan by the Koreans). we went to Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Penang, and several ports in the Philippines. going south along the china coast from shanghai, we had been warned to be especially wary of pirates. at that time on American merchant ships there were three men to a deck watch -- two able seamen and on ordinary seaman.The able seamen had passed a test and been certified, after sailing 18 months as an unrated ordinary seaman. I was an able seaman and after finishing my turn at the wheel I went to the bow and the seaman there went to what we called standby. one guy at the wheel, one guy on bow lookout -- you rotated, and that completed a four hour watch. Did that twice a day.

Dark, moonless night, kind of cold, and i started to hear a clanging ahead. I picked up the bow phone, called the bridge, they had already heard it. It was a bunch of Chinese in small boats, sampans, anchored and tied together off shore beating pots and pans together to warn us that they were anchored out there in front of the way we were headed. Fishing boats? Pirates setting a trap? We didn't know. I sensed the ship was picking up speed. In a few minutes we were plowing right through them. I could hear them right under the bow as we moved through them but it was so dark I couldn't see anything -- couldn't see or tell if we were plowing the boats in half or they were out of the way. Sounded like we crunched a few. We didn't swerve an inch -- held our course and they beat the hell out of their pots and pans. in a few minutes they were astern of us and the clanging cut out. we didn't slow down.

Maybe the reason that we havent hear much about piracy until recently is that so few ships fly American flags. Maersk is an ancient steamship company from one of the Scandinavian countries -- they arranged to lease or somehow get the Maersk Alabama registered under the American flag. i think a ship has to be flagged American to carry govt paid for relief help -- mostly food -- to foreign countries.

I wonder if Ivan has seen this:That's the number of pirates killed, per US president, going back to McKinley. Source: here.