Firearms are not always the answer

By Nim Marsh

It was a salty and peripatetic group that fetched up at the Naval War College in Newport Dec. 13, for an Ocean Cruising Club talk on “Piracy in the 21st Century.” When speaker Dr. Richard Norton, professor of National Security affairs at the NWC, asked all in attendance to raise their hands if they’d had logged a 1,000-mile passages, most raised their hand.

This response was not surprising: “The sole qualification for full membership entails making a continuous ocean passage of at least 1,000 nautical miles, in a vessel not more than 70 feet overall,” reads the OCC nomenclature.

When Dr. Norton asked how many in the audience would carry guns aboard their voyaging boats, very few raised their hands, which Dr. Norton found “surprising.” Two-time circumnavigator Scott Kuhner (with his wife, Kitty, and their two sons) then asked to speak, and told an astonishing tale that should make one think twice about carrying guns on a blue-water boat. The following is excerpted from their 1987-91 circumnavigation newsletter:

“We anchored behind a deserted island called Karimata [Pulau Karimata at 1° 38’N/108° 48E, off Borneo] to get some rest before continuing on to Singapore. That afternoon, Kitty and the kids were down below doing schoolwork while I was up on deck doing maintenance work. I looked up and saw a fishing boat off in the distance. A short while later, I looked up again and saw that they were coming straight at us.
“There was a man on the foredeck with a ski mask and another peering out of the hold, who also wore a ski mask. The man on the helm was looking intently at us, and before I could react, their boat was right next to ours. The man on the foredeck jumped on our boat and tied his boat up to ours. In the blink of an eye, three awful mean-looking guys were standing in our cockpit.

“I was yelling at them to get off our boat. They were yelling at me in Indonesian. It was obvious they didn’t understand me, and I didn’t understand a word they were saying. Just then, Alex, our 13-year-old son, stuck his head out the hatch to see what was going on. I told him to get down below and tell Kitty to call Karl on the VHF and ask him to come up on deck and watch what was going on. Karl and his wife had been buddy boating with us, and was anchored about 50 yards away. Karl had a gun, and we did not.
“Kitty then poked her head out the hatch, and handed out three cokes and a pack of cigarettes. With that, the two with ski masks pulled the masks off their heads, and all three broke out in smiles, and soon we were soon conversing in a form of sign language . . .

“They were extremely interested in our chart, and one of the men pointed at it, asking if I had a spare. I had another chart of the area, and gave one to them. Soon they got up, brought me over to their boat, opened the hold, and started loading me with fish. Then they turned on their engine, cast off, and chugged away.
“We found out later that most fishermen, and even construction workers, in that area wear ski masks to protect their faces from the effects of the equatorial sun. A few years ago, we met a woman from that part of Borneo, who told us that, in that region, the lighter one’s skin color, the higher the social standing. She also said that, where she comes from, there is no such thing as private property: “We just walk into someone’s house and call out, ‘Is anyone home?’

“When we got to Singapore, we told the story to an official, who said that had we pulled out a gun and shot our boarders, we’d have been hung for murder. When we checked into Malaysia, we were asked if we had any weapons aboard. If we did, we were told, we’d have to turn them in and get them when we got our exit clearance. As we left the customs office, a sign on the fence read, “Unlawful Possession of a Firearm, Mandatory Death Sentence.”

The message here? At times, generosity and cultural understanding are safer and more eloquent than carrying firearms when sailing the sea.