How Does Captain Phillips Portray Modern Pirates

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The movie, Captain Phillips, it is about a cargo ship, Maersk Alabama, who is captured by Somali pirates as it travels around the horn of Africa. The crew hides hidden below deck as the heavily armed pirates threaten to shoot Captain Phillips. Later, the captain would be kidnapped for ransom. This film is made accurately portray modern pirates and how they become threat on the waters. Historical movies are important because they are tool used to educate the audience about what events occurred in the past. The suspense and thrill embedded in the movie has made this movie popular with the public. Although the plot of the movie has been altered through Hollywood, for example, the real captain did not volunteer to risk his life in order to save…show more content…
In one scene, as the crew notices that they were being chased, so as a result, the captain tries to keep his distance by dodge the pursuers when they try to hook the ladder. Later, water sprays from the ship’s sides as the pirates were navigating around. When the pirates begin to board, a cargo ship member tries to spray them with a pressurized water hose hoping to swamp the pirates. When all the tactics fails, everyone except the captain hides below decks in order to avoid being taken as hostages. All of these methods are real defense tactics. This is because ships are not allowed to own firearms as means of defense. “IMO warns companies not to allow crews to bring firearms aboard or hire armed security cautioning that doing so could escalate the situation by encouraging pirates to use more dangerous weapons and become more aggressive” (Curry). Due to this tremendous disadvantage, cargo ships are reduced to petty defense tactics. One of them is water cannons. The high-pressurized cannons spraying from the ship are designed to prevent pirates from scaling up the side or swamp their vessel as they approach (“Repelling Pirate Attacks”). Also, the fire hoses are a common method, but are not very effective when up against automatic guns. For example, in the movie, a crew member was trying to spray the pirates, but had to stop when they were shooting at him. Since ships are usually unarmed, it is inefficient to face the heavily armed sea robbers. The movie clearly shows the heightened disadvantage between the unarmed ship crew and pirates who are armed with lethal

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