Importance of Keeping a Good Lookout

In this news item an Australian describes in a somewhat nutty style an encounter that a cruise ship on which he was lollygagging had with  pirates who tried to climb aboard but were rejected with the aid of guns and firehoses, so that, despite bulletholes in the ship from about 100 rounds fired by the pirates, it was in the end all a big lark and a day's entertainment for the Aussie and the other 1,200 passengers.

The thing I never understand about stories like this is why none of the crew or, in this case, the passengers saw their attackers coming from a long way off.

Having been across the Pacific on a variety of large ships and having kept a good lookout, unbidden, all the while, without, however, ever seeing anything other than an occasional flying fish, I think I can reliably report that the open sea is like  a Kansas wheatfield just before planting, or  the Bonneville Flats in Utah, in that you can see everything moving on the surface for miles in all directions,  and there are no hills that a speedboat can lurk behind or use to mask a sudden sneak attack from behind.  But instead nobody notices anything, and the pirates are given all the time in the world to make their approach without being picked off, one after the other, with bazookas or some such,  till suddenly a bunch of speedboats are right there next to the ship, manned by highly excited and most likely drug-inspired  desperados  firing guns and tossing up grappling hooks, their eyes filled with as many dollar signs as locusts in a swarm.

But I guess that despite the frequency of those pirate attacks in or adjoining the Indian Ocean,, the probabilities are still so low and the crewmen and passengers have so many more interesting things to do, that maintaining a constant lookout is not cost-effective or exciting enough.

Maybe the ships could carry passengers like the one I was 50-odd years ago, to whom they could give big discounts in exchange for keeping a constant lookout at the rails.   

There are far  worse things that a man can do with his time,  all day long and at night, too.   Even a seemingly empty ocean is, with  its many mysteries,  a big entertainment all by itself.

The meerkats in the deserts of Namibia have something to teach us about this.