BY DIETER BRADBURY

Portland Press Herald

Kevin Clancy of North Yarmouth saw plenty of pirates when he sailed through the Gulf of Aden last fall as an engineer on a container ship, the Maersk Montana.

The ship is much faster than its sister vessel, which was boarded last week by Somali pirates who took the captain hostage, so Clancy said he never felt like he was in danger.

"But it would have been nice to have a couple of Marines on board," he said Monday.

The dramatic rescue Sunday of Capt. Richard Phillips by Navy Seals, who shot and killed three pirates, has rekindled a smoldering debate over whether to arm the crews of merchant ships.

Clancy, 41, said he would feel more comfortable if his ship had weapons, but others in shipping circles in Maine said arming merchant mariners raises questions of safety and liability.

"The risk of a sailor getting badly injured or killed is big," said Nicholas Walsh, a Portland lawyer who specializes in maritime law. "The financial liabilities are going to be huge."

About a dozen ships with a total of more than 200 crew members are being held hostage by pirates off the eastern coast of Africa, according to the International Maritime Bureau. The nonprofit organization, based in Malaysia, works to halt piracy and other forms of maritime crime.

But the odds of any one ship being seized by pirates are still very small, Walsh said, and those risks are outweighed by the potential dangers of having guns on board a vessel.

He said shipping companies are studying the piracy issue closely and likely will turn to governments to solve the problem rather than take on the security job themselves.

"It's not up to the crew to act as some kind of armed naval detail," Walsh said.

Ralph Pundt, chairman of the marine transportation department at Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, said maritime schools have long been teaching security as part of the curriculum.

That training emphasizes vigilance and avoidance, rather than confrontation -- in part because international shipping groups generally don't support the idea of arming crews.

"If that's part of the job description, you're not going to find enough mariners to go and man the jobs," said Pundt, who was a captain for 21 years before joining the academy.

Mark Lucas, a Yarmouth resident who serves as first officer on ships that travel the East Coast and Central America, said he agrees with Pundt, but noted that some ships already carry armed crews.

He referred to vessels of the Military Sealift Command, which carry Defense Department cargo but use civilian crews who are trained to use weapons.

Lucas said shippers might want to consider hiring private security companies to protect merchant ships.

"We're pretty short on crews," he said, "so we just can't have roaming guards or things like that."

Clancy, the North Yarmouth engineer, graduated from the academy in 1990. He said he saw plenty of pirates during his voyage in the Gulf of Aden last fall, as well as many fishermen who approached the huge cargo vessels trying to sell the crews their catch.

"You can tell the fishermen -- they don't have the AK-47s strapped to their backs," Clancy said.

He said ships try to make themselves "hard targets" by always operating with lights on, keeping fire hoses charged to repel potential boarders, and putting more crew members on watch.

Pundt said he served on an armed Military Sealift Command vessel when tankers were under attack in the Straits of Hormuz off Iran in the 1980s and 1990s.

"When push came to shove, I questioned who was going to pick up those arms and were they actually going to use them," he said.

Pundt said he would prefer to see an international armed force handle piracy, rather than putting merchant marine crews in the position of having to do what Navy Seals did Sunday.

"This particular incident, as fortunate as the outcome was, could have gone very bad," he said.