Friday, May 22, 2020

The Battle of Tortuga

In yet more bizarre Venezuela news, this item from April 3: Venezuelan navy warship attempts to stop and board a cruise ship in international waters. The cruise ship captain attempts to contact corporate headquarters for guidance, but before he gets an answer the warship fires several shots. The warship then attempts to ram the cruise ship, but the cruise ship is much larger and has a strong hull because it does Arctic tours in the ice, so it is the warship that sinks. There are things that you just can't make up.

You have to love this fake wikipedia graphic about the battle:


11 comments:

David said...

You have to love the old Royal Navy, Hearts-of-Oak-style name for the cruise ship too. Imagine if the cruise ship was named something like "Sunny Horizon." Of course, that would have been even worse for Venezuelan national dignity, so maybe "Sunny Horizon" is something they would have deserved.

Shadow said...

I read this weeks ago and kept looking for the Babylon Bee moniker.

G. Verloren said...

So which military genius was it who thought the best way to stop a much bigger ship that won't comply with your orders was to try to ram it, rather than... ya know... board it with the squad of marines you have on board and take control at gunpoint?

Mário R. Gonçalves said...


ANBV Naiguatá VS. RCGS Resolute will remain in the Annals of Naval History as a feat of the Joke Wars of the Caribbean. The result, or resolution, was quite unfair, as the knowledge, the reason, the justice and the heroic bravery were all on the Naiguatá side.

G. Verloren said...

@Mário M. Gonçalves

You're praising the actions of the Venezualan navy for foolishly destroying their own ship while attempting to ram and sink an unarmed civilian vessel (after first opening fire upon it), simply for allegedly straying into their territorial waters.

Meanwhile, in a recent post, you argued that in a hypothetical scenario where a plague ship was denied entry into a port to be placed under quarantine at sea, and sailors attempted to break quarantine by leaping overboard and swimming to shore, authorities opening fire on and killing said sailors after they refused to turn back - in order to prevent them potentially exposing the resident of the port to the plague - would qualify as Fascism.

Before you were ranting about "Freedom" and the injustice of governments trying to tell people in a boat where they or were not allowed to go, but now you're taking the exact opposite stance and claiming it's unfair what happened to the Venezualan navy while trying to use force to make this cruise ship obey their orders.

Strange, how flexible your principles are. One might think you don't truly have any.

G. Verloren said...

Typo - "Venezuelan", not "Venezualan".

Shadow said...

I'm still looking for the Babylon Bee Moniker!

Shadow said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Shadow said...

The backdrop to this is a pandemic.

Some captain wants to corral a cruise ship filled with crew, who may have been sick, (not sure there were passengers), bring it into harbor, and take people off ship to infect his own people? Are we sure the captain wasn't a CIA mole? I still get a whiff of Babylon Bee. And isn't indicting a Central-South American ruler for drug trafficking a little too 1990s? Can't we think of something more woke?

Mário R. Gonçalves said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mário R. Gonçalves said...

You really don't get it. How can you think I was praising Venezuela or lamenting its defeat? I was evidently joking about it, like the fake Wikipedia image did. I even name it the Joke Wars of the Caribbean.. OMG, Verloren.