The Virginian-Pilot
©
Apparently unsuccessful in marketing it for anti-piracy operations, Xe has put its 183-foot ship McArthur up for sale.
In an online advertisement on the Web site Yachtworld.com, the McArthur is listed at a reduced price of $3.7 million. The vessel is docked in Alicante, Spain.
Xe, the Moyock, N.C.-based private military company formerly known as Blackwater, acquired and refurbished the 40-year-old ship three years ago and declared itself ready to begin patrolling the Gulf of Aden to protect merchant vessels against pirates.
In an interview with The Virginian-Pilot in 2008, Bill Mathews, then Blackwater’s executive vice president, placed the value of the overhauled vessel at $15 million.
Based in Norfolk, the McArthur was built in 1966 by Norfolk Shipbuilding & Drydock Co., now BAE Systems Norfolk Ship Repair. For most of its life, it was used as a research vessel by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It contains a helicopter pad and two-bed hospital.
The impending sale was first reported Monday on the blog of the U. S. Naval Institute, a nonprofit forum on global security issues. Xe had no immediate comment on the report.
In legal complaints last year, three McArthur crewmen alleged verbal and physical abuse, racial harassment and retaliation by superior officers while the ship was in port in Aqaba, Jordan.
The company said several employees were fired as a result of the racial harassment allegations.
For more details, return to PilotOnline.com later and read tomorrow's Virginian-Pilot.
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USE ONE EVIL TO FIGHT ANOTHER
Blackwater/Xe's $5 billion in profits means boats like this are unimpressive anymore for their tastes; besides writing it off at a loss of x5 its declared value from a couple years earlier is a convenient tax loss declaration. Blackwater/Xe should be forced to give it to Ecuador in South America. Why Ecuador? Watch the film CRUDE (documentary re: how Texaco (now Chevron) has ruined the rivers and livelihood and loss of many lives/health of several tribes of Indians for over the 10-years this legal battle has stagnated in the court system while Chevron simply plays a legal waiting game till the native population surrounding their drilling sites simply die off altogether. For the CEO of Chevron and their gaggle of lawyers who INSIST they are not at fault and the river water (where all the animals as well are dying who drink it), Ecuador can use this ship to send to these guys and their families this so-called good water and under court order be forced to drink, bathe and wash their clothes in it -- until a court date for trial is agreed upon.
No surprise
With all the legalities involved with such an operation and liability concerns being so high in that region, it's no surprise this venture failed. When shipping companies are leery of even having armed guard teams on ships transiting dangerous waters and being pulled off before they enter ports, you know they wouldn't be willing for fork over the money for something like this.
Convoying ships along with quick commando strikes against pirate bases are the best bets to counter piracy in that region. Shipping companies don't want to have their ships delayed waiting for convoys to form up: they'd rather take the chance of their vessels being attacked. So far, no government has been willing to go ahead and attack pirate bases either, so the inefficient methods being used now are as good as it gets. As always, it's about the money and not about people's safety.
Yet another VP hack attack
Ah, yet another in the seemingly endless thinly disguised "news" articles negative of Blackwater/Xe. I wonder what the VP will do for "news" if Xe ever folds up?
Take a haircut xe
Sell the floating black hole and pay the legal bills that are coming up.
I know
I guess that happens when bogus charges and slander are being brought against the company.
Blackwater Navy
I guess they go around the world being un PC and over bearing. Real life private enterprise is much different than taking government dole. Your customers have to like you and believe in your abilities as they have other choices. The solution to piracy lies with the crew being armed and the regular US Navy/Marines standing by. We don't need to pay triple for resources that we already have.
I take it...
you either do not know, nor care about, firearms on foreign vessels and porting rules set by each individual country that allows ships to come into their ports.
But yeah, just spout off uninformed opinions...that's cool.
Navy/Marines
"The solution to piracy lies with the crew being armed and the regular US Navy/Marines standing by"
Now we just need a commander-in-chief with the guts to do just that!!!!!!!!! Can we really wait another 3 years to have one?
It's a big pond
In reply to vabeach757 idea of solving the piracy situation, we, along with a host of other countries, already have our Navy patrolling the waters around Somalia. The problem is that the area is so large that it is impossible to always be in the vicinity of an attack. Many of these attacks are now taking place 800 miles off of the coast. Arming individual ships is solely up to the owner of the ship. Most have decided that the risks of arming the crew outweigh the benefits of doing so. Many of the captured ships didn't even know that they had pirates on board until their guns were in their face. As for our Commander In Chief, I think that this country will benefit greatly over the next 3 years having one that is intelligent enough to think through all the options. If we only had such thoughtfulness in 2003 - - -
Just wait...
till you get the tax bill for the bogus health plan he and his cronies are ramming down our throats. Lets see if you then think he is so intelligent.