How the Navy came to protect cargo ships

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.6 • 29.8K Ratings

🗓️ 16 February 2024

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Genco Picardy is not an American ship. It doesn't pay U.S. taxes, none of its crew are U.S. nationals, and when it sailed through the Red Sea last month, it wasn't carrying cargo to or from an American port.

But when the Houthis, a tribal militant group from Yemen, attacked the ship, the crew called the U.S. Navy. That same day, the Navy fired missiles at Houthi sites.

On today's show: How did protecting the safe passage of other countries' ships in the Red Sea become a job for the U.S. military? It goes back to an idea called Freedom of the Seas, an idea that started out as an abstract pipe dream when it was coined in the early 1600s – but has become a pillar of the global economy.

This episode was hosted by Alex Mayyasi and Nick Fountain. It was produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler, edited by Molly Messick, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Valentina Rodríguez Sánchez, with help from Maggie Luthar. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.

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Transcript

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0:22.0	Maybe the worst possible call you can get if you run a big global shipping company
0:27.0	would go something like this.
0:29.0	Unfortunately, the Picardy has been attacked.
0:33.4	There is a fire on board, and I will ring you back
0:38.8	after I have more details.
0:40.6	John Woven Smith got exactly that call last month. The Picardy is a cargo ship
0:46.1	owned by John's company, Genco, and it was in one of the most dangerous places for
0:51.1	a ship to be right now. Off the coast of Yemen, where a militant group called the Houthis
0:55.8	has been attacking ships for months now.
0:58.0	To protest Israel's war in Gaza, they say.
1:00.4	For weeks before the Picardy was attacked,
1:02.4	John had been preparing to get the ship out of the Red Sea.
1:05.0	Right, and so before the ship started its journey, they made a plan.
1:09.0	The Picardy would turn off its tracking signal.
1:12.0	John would get a status update from the captain every 30 minutes.
1:16.0	They doubled their security detail to six ex-military people with rifles, and the crew knew.
1:21.3	If things went bad, they would head to displace on board.
1:24.3	Apparently it's called the citadel.
1:26.1	If the ship is under attack you get in that citadel and you lock that door.
	...

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